How to Play the Drums: Intermediate
- 1). Practice bass drum independence. Keep your snare and high-hat rhythms simple and constant while placing bass drum hits in various place in a 16th note section and repeat.
- 2). Increase your snare drum independence by practicing exercises that change the pattern played on the snare drum every other bar. Place snare hits on the 5, 6, 10 and 11th notes in a 16 note bar. Keep the bass and high-hat patterns simple and play the pattern until you feel comfortable. After you are comfortable, place the snare hits on the 2, 3, 5 and 9th notes of the 16th note pattern and alternate pattern with the snare only.
- 3). Practice 16th-note groves with the high-hat. Start by using two hands playing 16 hits on the high-hat per bar of music. At slower speeds, use only your right hand in a quick motion, leaving the high-hat closed and work your way up in speed over time. Practice the grooves by themselves and slowly introduce other drums, but make sure that the snare and kick-drum beats start simple and slowly work in the lessons learned about poly-rhythms.
- 4). Introduce longer, more complicated drum rolls into your rhythms that include quick flourishes on the snare drum and fills that include choking cymbals during rolls. To choke a cymbal, grab the cymbal immediately after striking it and move on to the next drum in your roll. Do not improvise fills, but create them before hand and attempt to execute them during routine drum beats that you practice often.
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