Friday, October 18, 2013

Survival chops: cymbal and bass drum licks

Here is a collection of moderately easy, very functional, right-hand lead licks for the drum set. Normally I would arrive at these by other means— like, by playing Stick Control, Syncopation, or any paradiddle rudiment, with the right hand on the cymbal, with the bass drum playing in unison. You can make major workouts out of any of those. But I wanted to write them in “Chop Buster” format, as a single column of composed patterns, representing about fifteen minutes worth of practice, after you've had a basic introduction to them.




Play the unaccented snare notes softly, and don't overplay the accents. You should have little problem learning these quickly. They're designed to be easy to be played fast, too, as long as your doubles with your hands and right foot are together. The metronome marking of 140 beats per minute is a reasonable goal— you may be able to play them faster than that, or it may take you some time to reach that tempo.

There are no repeat signs, but assume each pattern is to be played many times. In the pdf there are some examples of ways of practice them along with any time feel of your choice, in any style, like:


Or, using a partial measure of the pattern:



Get the pdf

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