In this free double kick lesson you will be taking a sixteen beat hand movement and applying straight sixteenths on the bass drum underneath. This means the hands and feet are playing the same rhythm and sticking just over different orchestrations. The movements are relatively simple but you will need to really focus on lining up the hands and feet, exercises have been given at the bottom of the page to help with all the more mechanical elements of the movements.
To familiarize you with how the two limbs work together, we'll start by giving a quick exercise. In this exercise you will play sixteenth notes on both the hands and feet, using hi hats for the hands and bass drums for the feet. As discussed above, the two rhythms should line up exactly.
Spend some time getting comfortable with the exercise and how the hands and feet line up. As usual, start with a low tempo but build up speed gradually.
Listed below are some variations on this exercise where the hands are orchestrated in various ways.
Double Kick Lesson 1
A common time sixteen beat double kick lesson. To achieve this, move the right hand from the hi hat to the snare.
Example 2
A half time sixteen beat, similar to the previous step but only move the right hand to the snare on count 3.
Double Kick Lesson 3
A common time version where the right hand plays the ride and the left the hi hat.
Example 4
Another common time double kick lesson where the right hand uses the floor tom and the left the high tom..
TASK
- Using the 2 minute rule, get all grooves up to a tempo of at least 160bpm.
- Create further variations on these grooves. Think about where else you could place the grouping.
- Apply these grooves to a phrased piece.
- Look through further double kick lessons.
