For this 'blast beat' you will be playing the subdivided eighth note blast beat learned previously, but applied over a triplet timing. The movements involved will be the same but the timing of them will be different. eighth notes on the kick and a cymbal then adding a snare between them on the sixteenth note count. The point of a blast beat is to be incredibly noisey and aggressive and this form of blast does that by creating a very fast 'wall of noise' style sound. These grooves are usually used at high tempos, but be sure to make sure you have the part down accurately slowly before pushing the speed. To get you started I'll give the groove as subdivided quarter notes first (basically the groove played as eighth notes) then the pattern will be developed through each exercise.
These parts are a little bit more difficult so I have added in a couple of steps to the learning process. It will be very helpful to work through some other blast beat lessons to get familiar with the basic movements, these are listed below.
Example 1
I'll start off by showing you an eighth note triplet version of the part. This is going to start with a bar of quarter note triplets played with the right hand on a cymbal and the bass drum.
You then split each quarter note in two by adding a snare in between them. This creates a single stroke triplet between the hands. You could count this '1 + 2 + 3 + 1 + 2 + 3 +'.
Use this exercise to get comfortable with the pattern this groove uses. Aim for a tempo between 180bpm and 200bpm before progressing.
Example 2
You will then double the note values to create a version of the final groove. The base for this will be a bar of eighth note triplets.
As before, you then split these with a snare in between in note. As above, this gives you a single stroke sextuplet between the hands which is quite fast.
Aim for a tempo between 160bpm and 170bpm before progressing.
Example 3
What you may have noticed with the previous exercise is that keeping the groove going for an extended period of time is very draining. One thing that can help with this is to use a double kick pattern for the feet. This example will sound exactly the same as example 2 only two feet are used. Notice here that the hands are playing singles as sextuplets notes and the feet are playing singles as eighth note triplets. First off here's the eight note triplet version. Not that the grouping of the feet has a different foot starting on each beat.
Then with the hands added back in.
Aim for a tempo between 170bpm and 180bpm.
TASK
- Apply a blast to a structured pattern either as the groove or fill.
- Experiment with the orchestration of the grooves.
