For this 16 beat groove construction idea you will be taking the standard 16 beat hand pattern and just applying it to the new time signature. The parts will be fairly straight forward if you are familiar with the time signature but this is one of those groove building ideas that often gets forgotten about. At the bottom of the page you will find some useful links, I recommend looking through some of these if you get stuck with anything on this page.
As before, you will have two hands on the hi hat playing a single stroke roll. For the compound version of the groove the right will move over to the snare for the '4' count and in the simple version the right will move for the 3 and 7 counts. All left hands will be playing on an '+' count, remember, the counting for semi quavers in 9/8 is '1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9+'. The hands for this groove pattern in compound time will look like this:
And in simple time like this:
Written below is a list of full grooves where 16 beat style hands are used. I have included some with additional snares, in these remember that a single stroke sticking is used throughout and anything on an '+' count will be played with the left hand.
Example 1
Example 2
Example 3
Example 4
Example 5
TASKS
- Using the 2 minute rule, get all patterns up to a tempo of at least 125bpm.
- Create your own variations on these patterns. Write as many down as possible.
- Use this groove idea in a structured piece.