Displacing Snares One Quaver Beat

In this lesson you will be taking some basic groove patterns and shifting the snares one eighth note to the right. This creates a slightly off beat groove that has a very distinctive sound. Some of the grooves here use Dotted Notes so read up on these if you need to.

To demonstrate the idea we will use the groove below as a starting point:

The starting groove

To achieve the groove we are after, the snare on beat two will be moved to the '+' after beat two and the snare on beat four will be moved to the '+' after beat four. To prevent unnecessary rests within the bar, dotted notes are used on beats one and three. The groove would look like this:

A groove with displaced snares

Spend some time playing the pattern above and getting used to the new position of the snares. When you are ready move on to the examples below which add in some more kicks.


Listed below are some ideas for kick placement in this sort of groove.

Example 1

Here you are using the Four On The Floor idea.

A groove with displaced snares


Example 2

A groove with displaced snares


Example 3

A groove with displaced snares


Example 4

This example takes the groove we used as a starting point at the beginning of this lesson and displaces everything to the right.

A groove with displaced snares


TASK

  1. Learn the grooves above to a tempo of at least 120bpm.
  2. Vary the right hand left hands to create more grooves
  3. Create your own grooves using this concept
  4. Experiment with only displacing one of the snares in the bar.
  5. Create some two bar grooves that make use of displaced snares.

This sort of groove can be used quite effectively as a fill as well as a standard groove. Shown below is a short piece that demonstrates this idea being applied practically in both uses.

A groove with displaced snares

Lessons

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