In this exercise you will be reversing the pattern presented in our 2 Hands, 4 Feet double kick exercise. This means you will now be starting on the kick with the hands following. The aim of this is to further improve your ability to include double kick in your playing, particularly when used to break up groups of sixteenth notes. This lesson will follow the same layout as that linked above so you will be starting by learning the simple grouping in 6/8 then applying it to a bar 4/4 as a syncopated rhythm.
As in all double kick exercises, make sure your left foot is falling exactly where it should and that it is playing at the same dynamic level as the right foot. Use this exercise to develop technique and speed before moving on to applying it as a fill.
Eighth Notes In 6/8
The grouping that makes up the final pattern contains six notes so to demonstrate you will learn it in 6/8 first. I'll start by giving the exercise as quavers to encourage you to start slowly.
Before progressing make sure you can play this exercise at at least 130bpm.
Sixteenth Notes In 6/8
Next you will double the note values to sixteenths, giving you two occurances of the pattern within one bar.
This gives you the basic grouping for the final syncopated pattern in 4/4. This will be referred back to as the 'original pattern' in the next two exercises.
One Bar Syncopated 4/4 Exercise
At this point in our previous lesson with used a mathmatical process to work out how many times to play the orginal pattern and how many notes are left over. Please refer to the lesson linked above to recap on how to do this. For this exercise you will be playing the original pattern twice then you have four sixteenth notes left over. For this exercise I have applied these as the first four notes of the original pattern, giving it a 'cut short' feel. As always, don't be afraid to change these around. Phrase markings have been included to highlight where the original pattern falls within the bar.
Two Bar Syncopated 4/4 Exercise
Next you'll extend the pattern to fill two bars. Again, a mathmatical process was used to work out how many times you play the original pattern and this is discussed in the previous lesson. You will be playing five occurances of the original six note pattern and will have two sixteenth notes left at the end. In this first example I have wrote these in as two sixteenth kicks. This means you will be playing four kicks in a row when the exercise is repeated.
Be careful with your timing in this exercise, with it being syncopated over two bars it is quite easy to loose your place.
A Variations On The Two Bar Syncopated 4/4 Exercise
As discussed in our previous lessons on syncopated double kick groupings, it is quite common to only play the grouping four times and have eighth sixteenth notes at the end to do something else with. This is demonstrated below. For this example I have followed the idea of starting with the kick.
TASK
- Using the 2 minute rule, aim to get the exercises up to a tempo of around 140bpm.
- Try working out a four bar version of the exericse.
- Orchestrate the exercises to create fills.
