In this lesson you will be applying a swung feel to grooves in the time signature of 12/8. These will sound very similar to some of our level 1 swing time grooves which you can find linked at the bottom of the page a long with other lessons that may be useful when learning these parts. The right hand part will be a quarter note followed by an eighth note repeated over four times through the bar. This is essentially a block of three quavers where you play only on the first and third of the block. That looks like this:
Spend some time familiarizing yourself with this rhythm. To create a common time feel groove part under it you just need to add snares on the '4' and '10' quaver counts, as you have done in many other 12/8 grooves. Several examples of this are shown below with various different kick/snare parts and right hand orchestrations. A particularly interesting right hand is shown in the fifth example where the quarter notes are played on the ride bell and the quavers on the ride body. This gives a strong quarter note style pilse.
Example 1
Example 2
Example 3
Example 4
Example 5
Example 6
TASKS
- Using the 2 minute rule, get all grooves up to a tempo of at least 120bpm.
- Create your own kick/snare variations on these patterns. Write as many down as possible.
- Use these patterns as part of a Structured Pattern. This idea works well as both a fill or groove.
- Experiment with more right hand rhythms in 12/8 grooves.
