This exercise will further develop your ability to use the left foot on the bass drum pedal to play sixteenth notes on the feet at a higher tempo. The pattern you are building up to in this lesson is in 4/4 and made up of groups of eight notes. You will start by learning the absolute basic grouping for the exercise, which is two notes played on the feet as single stroke quavers followed by six on the hands also as singles, all in the time signature of 4/4. This will then be doubled up to sixteenth notes within the same time signature. This is a straight reversal of This Previous Lesson.
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
Before progressing make sure you can play this exercise at at least 130bpm.
Sixteenth Notes
Next you will double the note values to sixteenths, giving you two occurances of the pattern within one bar.
Two Bar Syncopated 6/8 Exercise
In other versions of this style of exercise we based the original pattern on a syncopated 4/4 rhythm. With this pattern being a simple and straight part I thought it might be interesting to syncopate is over two bars of 4/4. The movement is exactly the same, it will just fall at odd places within the compound time signature. Over the two bars it will be played three times in full.
TASK
- Using the 2 minute rule, aim to get the exercises up to a tempo of around 140bpm.
- Orchestrate the exercises to create fills.
- Apply these fills to phrased patterns.
