Hi, my name is Mike Michalkow, welcome to the learn to play drum section at freedrumlessons.com. This section is for the absolute beginner, so if you’d never played drums before, this is where you wanna be. Now, all you need to know how to do is count to four, one, two, three, four. The first thing you wanna do, is take our right hand, if you’re a right handed drummer, and I want you to play four beats or four counts on the high hat. Now if you have a metronome, which hopefully you do, I’m gonna set the metronome at 100 beats per minute, which is four quarter notes, at 100 beats per minute, and I’m gonna do this, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. Now, that’s exercise one on the Sheet Music provided. Exercise two, we’re still gonna count four quarter notes, okay. This time we’re gonna add the bass drum, if you’re not sure what the bass drum is. The bass drum is the one that you play with your foot. Okay, so that’s bass drum. Now, we’re gonna put the bass drum on counts one and three. So without playing the high hat, just so you hear how this sounds without the high hat, it sounds like this, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. Now, let’s try it with the high hat playing quarter notes at the same time, something like this, one, two, three, four. So that seems pretty easy. If you’re finding it a little bit challenging, you might wanna slow it down a bit. Now I’m playing at 100 beats per minute on the metronome, you might wanna start at 60, and then challenge yourself by bringing it up to that tempo. Exercise three, what we’re gonna do now, is we’re gonna still continue to play four beats on the high hat, but we’re gonna play the snare drum on beats two and four. If you’re not sure what the snare drum is, it’s the drum right in front of you. Okay, so now, let’s play four beats on the high hat and beats two and four on the snare drum, something like this. So if you notice, it’s starting to sound like something now. It’s starting to sound like a beat, something maybe you’ve heard that sounds familiar in a song that you’ve heard at some point. Now exercise four, in the Sheet Music provided, is a complete, what we call a quarter note or a basic rock drum beat, okay. Now, we’re gonna combine what we did with exercises one, two, and three. So we’re gonna have the high hat, playing all four beats, the bass drum, is gonna be on beats one and three, the snare drum, will be on beats two and four. Now this might sound like a lot of stuff. Before I put the metronome on, let me show you how to try this without the metronome first. Very simple, all you gotta do is learn two things, high hat and bass, which is what we’ve already done. High hat and snare, which is also something we’ve already played. Now, if you can do that, you’ve got it, coz the second half of the beat is exactly the same. High hat and bass. High hat and snare. High hat and base. High hat and snare. Okay. Practice that and then put the metronome on, something like this, one, two, three, four. So you notice, that’s pretty cool, you know, it’s a beat that is sounding like something that is gonna convince people that you’re playing the drums. Now, one more cool thing that I’ll share with you about this drum beat is it’s also called a classic two beat, which is used virtually in many, many different styles of music, simply by speeding it up. Now, without playing with the metronome, I just wanna show you how this beat sounds a little faster, so if you could play it almost like a polka style, so you can get all the polka gigs you’d ever want, one, two, three, four, speeding it up. You definitely impressed the grandparents with that one. If you play it even faster, you’re getting into punk territory. So you can see that this beat is relatively easy, the challenge for you might be to speed it up, and to get it sounding that fast. So be sure to go to your drum set, start practicing, slow tempo, speed up, always have fun.
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services