Author: Joe The Drummer

Here’s a quick video explaining how to develop your fill playing for Train beats. The key thing is to drill a bunch of accent patterns (and ideally memorise them) at a slow tempo and in relaxed style. Once you can…

I can’t for the life of me decide if I should write hihat as one word or hi hat as two words. What do you think? Here’s the lowdown on how to play the left-handed hihat bark as you might…

Or whichever is your dominant hand. This is one of the funkiest things you can do to spice up your grooves, a quick and cutting hi hat bark will serve you well as part of a funky groove whether its…

Not a Train Beat but a Boat Train beat which is like a train beat sort of but in triplets. This video was made on request by one of my YouTube viewers. I wasn’t familiar with the song but it’s…

I finally got around to completing (more or less) the series of YouTube videos I started a while back in which I provide a ten step introduction to playing the drums aimed at absolute beginners. I’m going to add a…

I got a request from A YouTube viewer to do a Dr Feelgood song and I was delighted to oblige. I think Brillaux et al’s She Does It Right is one of their best and is a great exercise in…

This is funny, I’ve just discovred that putting the word SLOW into the title of a YouTube video is a guaranteed path to obscurity. Why do we fear the slow so much? It’s one of the best ways to learn…

It’s Tony Allen’s second pattern of Afrobeat as presented to us by the master himself. I love Tony Allen’s drumming and Afrobeat music in general. The style is quite challenging to play and I guess it qualifies as a hybrid…

So many people getting their start on drums seem to grab a chart and attempt to learn to read and play note-for-note renditions of some person’s transcription of what was played by a drummer on a recording. With most pop…

I finally made a YouTube video in which I explain how to go about playing Tony Allen’s first pattern of Afrobeat. It’s the first of a series of videos I’ll be making on the subject. Download a PDF here with…