The aim of this lesson is to teach you an interesting basis for a groove in 5/8. It will have a half time feel to it as the main snare beat will be on the first count of the second bar. The right hand is going to play a 'staggered' sounding rhythm that is built from a quarter note followed by a dotted quarter note which will sound particularly cool played on a china cymbal.
Let's start by getting the right hand, which I'll show on the hi hat to start with, and the snare in place. For that you are going to play this:
In the counting under the pattern I have highlight which counts will have a stroke on them, in the example above it is the '1's and '3's. This is the foundation of the grooves you will be learning on this page so you will need to make sure you can play this rhythm in the correct timing or it all may go horribly wrong later on. Keep the eighth note '1 2 3 4 5' going all the time and just remember to play on the '1's and '3's.
Below I have listed several examples of this hand pattern with kicks applied. I have tried to keep it relatively simple here but it is a hard pattern to get your head around. To help I have included counting in all examples.
Groove Example 1
Groove Example 2
Groove Example 3
Groove Example 4
Groove Example 5
TASK
- Learn all exercises upto a tempo of at least 120bpm.
- Experiment with different kick and snare placements.
- Combine the patterns with fills to create short phrases.
