Free Drum Lessons
Balancing the Hands - Swing
This is an exercise designed to balance your hands through playing the jazz swing rhythm with either hand. In the first bar, the right hand leads, playing the rhythm on the floor tom. In the second bar, the left hand leads, playing the high tom. The spaces are filled with ghosted snare drum notes. These ghost strokes help you to hear and feel the underlying triplets in the swing feel.
The Groove
We've all got that go-to beat that we play first every time we sit down at the kit. Here's my most recent go-to beat. For whatever reason, I've been attached to this groove lately. It's a lot of fun to play and is full of ghost strokes. What could be better than that?
Ghost Lesson
This lesson explores embellishing grooves with ghost-strokes. Starting with a foundational groove, each exercise adds more ghost strokes.
Classic Fill From Stairway To Heaven
This fill creatively applies the hybrid rudiment, the herta, around the toms and bass drum for an explosive, instantly recognizable drum fill. In the excerpt below, we've provided the grooves leading up to the fill to make the context clearer.
Carlock Inspired Groove
This lesson explores a groove and variations inspired from a technique that Keith Carlock used in a drum solo in 2005.
Cool Tom and Snare Groove
Tom grooves are cool. They can sound powerful, tribal, happy, you name it. This is a syncopated tom groove that was built by orchestrating a regular drum beat to the tom and snare.
The Pad - Exercise 9: Ghosts
This weekend is Halloween. It's only fitting that this week's pad exercise focuses on ghost strokes.
Six Linear "Skeleton" Drum Fills
The term "Skeleton," in drumming, refers to drum parts that use only the snare, bass, and cymbals. In other words, no toms or other drums are used. If you see a drum kit with only snare, bass, and cymbals, you could call it a skeleton setup (or skeleton kit).
Six Ghostly Beats
Enjoy a collection of six drum beats using varying ghost stroke techniques to fill out the sound. After learning these, try adding ghost strokes to beats that already play. Note how the sound/feel of the groove changes.
