Starter Grooves and Drum Fills
By Nate Brown
This lesson shares some good sounding drum beats and fills designed to keep beginner to intermediate level drummers motivated (and sounding cool).
Drum beats 1-4 use only 8th note phrasing (i.e. 8th beat grooves). The two-measure repeating patterns in the groove draw out the groove and make the beats sound less repetitive. Number 4 introduces sixteenth-note phrasing with the snare drum on the “e” or “ah,” which of course falls directly in between the hi-hat strokes.
Numbers 5-10 introduce some great sounding, yet playable, drum fills. You can experiment with these fills by moving the strokes around the kit to different drums or introducing a crash cymbal along with the other strokes.
