How to Play Drums

Series Summary

Nice the dawn of time man has sought to create rhythm and harmony among everything around him. It's only natural that drums have become a staple in todays music. In almost every band there is some form of rhythm and usually a drummer. As a drummer it is your job to make sure, not only that tempos of songs remain steady but also that dynamics and rhythms are appropriate for each song section.

In this free video clip series our expert, Joel Siegel, goes through dozens of different drum beat variations focusing on the bass drum as a reference point to show you how easy it is to change one beat slightly and achieve a totally different and exciting feel. Each beat is first explained thoroughly and then played to a metronome to ensure the most important thing... timing. So take a look at these videos and go have fun!

Video Transcript

"JOEL SIEGEL: All right. So we've done some variations with quarter notes, with those hi-hat lifts. So now we're going to get into some even beefier stuff, okay? Hopefully, you've done some practicing with further variations on the quarter notes and those lifts. We're going to get into eighth notes with the kick, all right? Eventually with the snare and the hi-hat, too. Eighth notes, just briefly to recap, that's what you've been keeping on your right hand, okay? It's that one-&-two-&-three-&-four-&, okay? Those are eighth notes. Eight eighth notes in one bar, okay? Over the course of four beats. The first thing that we're going to do--I mean, firstly, the eighth-note beat will really expand your playing when you're working on the eighth notes in your kick. This is when you're going to really start to feel like, especially if you're kind of focusing on rock music, that you're really making some headway and starting to sound more like the drummers that you have been listening to. We're going to start out with pretty much a simple--just two eighth notes in the bar, and then we'll do another quarter note. So basically, what we're going to do is we're going to take our basic beat that we have been working on. Okay? And we're going to add an eighth note on that beat three, okay? So this is what it's going to sound like. All right? Think about it in a minute. Take some time to think about what's going to line up. We'll talk more about that in a second."