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Coordination

Paradiddle Ghost Notes Exercise

Improving Your Ghost Notes With The Paradiddle

Here’s an introduction to how we can use paradiddles in a groove context and make patterns with which we can practice and improve our ghost note playing. I demonstrate how to make grooves with the single Paradiddle and its three permutations and use those patterns between the hihat or ride and the snare to create busy grooves with soft and loud notes played on the snare.

Offbeat 8th Note Groove Snare & Bass 16ths

Here’s an addendum to the recent video about offbeat 8th note grooves. Let’s add some 16ths on the snare and bass. Once you’ve got the hang of all that, try combining snare and bass 16ths. You can have hours of fun with this. The objective is to internalise these patterns and then learn to mix them up. Don’t forget you can vary the snare and bass 8ths too as demonstrated in the previous video. Maybe you can do that in… Read More »Offbeat 8th Note Groove Snare & Bass 16ths

Developing Coordination With Afrobeat Drumming Pt. 3

If you haven’t seen them already, Check out part 1 and part 2. So let’s continue to develop our coordination with Tony Allen’s first groove of Afrobeat. Now that we can play a bunch of different ride and snare patterns, it’s time to do some work on the left foot. A unique aspect of Tony Allen’s style is the way he creates an interesting interaction between his hi-hat foot and his hi-hat hand patterns. I missed this facet of his… Read More »Developing Coordination With Afrobeat Drumming Pt. 3

Developing Coordination With Afrobeat Drumming

I’ve been spending a fair amount of time working on my Afrobeat chops. I’ve been listening to a lot of Fela Kuti and his artistic descendants such as Antibalas and Abayomi Afrobeat Orquestra. I am slowly starting to grasp the complex style of Tony Allen’s drumming in particular and it’s a lot like developing jazz chops. Anyway, I wrote myself a sheet of exercises based on Tony Allen’s first groove of Afrobeat. There’s a bunch of tricky stuff I wanted… Read More »Developing Coordination With Afrobeat Drumming

Funky Left-Hand Open Hi Hat Splashes

Here’s a sheet of exercises I wrote to develop the facility to play open hi hat splashes on the ee’s and ah’s using the left hand. These exercises are based on the famous Bernard Purdie lick you can hear in Aretha Franklin’s Rocksteady and which is a staple of funk drumming. If you watch Purdie play the lick, you’ll notice he plays the open sounds with his right hand but I find that when you use the left hand it… Read More »Funky Left-Hand Open Hi Hat Splashes