Hi everyone and welcome back to another free drum lesson from Hackney Wick Drum Studio. If you’re looking for more information on 1-2-1 drum lessons in London, take a look here. If you missed any of the previous lessons on the quarter note, you can check them out here. In todays continuation of the Reading Rhythm series, we’ll be taking our first steps into reading the Eighth note. As with all the lessons so far, a pair of drum sticks and a snare drum/practice pad or any other suitable surface will do.
As with the previous drum lessons, the most important thing is the 4 count. However, when dealing with the Eighth note, we need to sub-divide this count into 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and. Make sure the ‘and’ counts fall evenly between the numbers.
Take a look at the exercise below.
In the first line, you’ll be counting 1 and 2 3 4. The second line will be 1 2 and 3 4, the third line is 1 2 3 and 4, and now I’m sure you’ll be able to work out the fourth line!!
Let me just take a short break in this exercise to tell you that I offer face to face drum lessons from my drum studio in Hackney, East London. If you’re interested in taking your skills further and need some guidance on anything related to drumming, you can drop me a message, check out further information on what I do on my main webpage, or book a drum lesson directly here.
So, back to todays drum lesson. In the eight bar repeated exercise on lines five and six I have just mixed the bars up a little, so use this to practice your counting, slowly with a metronome.
Finally in the last three lines, the bars have been jumbled up even more. Try following these, making sure your ‘ands’ fall nice and smoothly between the pulse of the metronome.
The follow on lesson from this can be found on the next page, but I would suggest going through this one a good few times first until you’ve really got the hang of the counting at various speeds.
As always, if you have any questions about todays drum lesson, you can get in touch here. If you would like to book a Drum Lesson with me, just hit this link.
See you again for another Reading Rhythm Drum Lesson.
Happy Drumming
Jack x