Many different ideas for the 16 beat construction have been covered in level 2 (some of these are listed at the bottom of the page). All of these have involved taking a straight single stroke roll and orchestrating the hands between the hi hat and snare and adding some bass drums. On this page a very similar idea will be covered only this time using an eighth note single stroke triplet as a basis. These grooves will have a lot in common with the 16 beat in swing time (linked below) as they both fall in that triplet timing. The big difference in these patterns is that the hand that plays the snare will now fall on a left hand rather than a right. Whilst this does take a little getting used to, it shouldn't be too tough. These make for some interesting patterns, particularly when you start combining with displacement and syncopation ideas.
The hands for these grooves will look like this:
Play single strokes ('R L R etc..') all the time. Spend some time getting comfortable with this basic pattern then work through the list of exercises below that have bass drums added in. Bass drums will all have a swung feel to them. If this isn't something you are familiar with a some lessons on the topic are linked at the bottom of the page. Remember, you can always line up the kicks to the hands to work out where they should fall.
Example 1
Example 2
Example 3
Example 4
Example 5
Example 6
Example 7
TASKS
- Learn the grooves above up to a tempo of at least 135bpm.
- Create some 4 bar phrases using these grooves.
- Create more grooves by varying the kick placement.
- Create more grooves by re orchestrating the hands over toms or cymbals.
