How to Play Drums: Beat 1

Video Transcript

"JOEL SIEGEL: All right. So I want to breakdown what's going on with this eighth note beat, the eighth notes in the kick drum. So we're playing--we've got beat one. That's the same as we've been doing our basic beat, and we've got beat three and that's actually the same as far as the downbeat goes. The eighth note that we're adding is on the upbeat of beat three, okay? So let's think about where this is going to line up. Your left hand is just playing two and four, okay? So it's not going to be there; there's no lineup there. Your right hand is playing eighth notes, though, okay? So it's playing one-&-two-&-three-&-four-&, okay? So it's going to be lining up with the kick on one-&-two-&-three-&-four-&, okay? So it lines up on those three eighth notes: the one, the three and the upbeat of three. Okay? So I'm going to play through the beat. We're at 80 bpm, as per usual. I want you to have a listen and watch what my kick drum is doing, okay? It's going to be doing those two beats in unison with the hi-hat, and then the beat four that's going to follow is just the snare drum and the hi-hat, just like usual, all right? Check it out. All right? So that's what it sounds like. I want you to go ahead and try and play it with me. I'm going to go ahead and slow this down a little bit just because we're playing what is essentially twice as fast in our kick drum, okay? We haven't done a lot of eighth note work in the kick drum yet. So I'm going to slow it down to 70 bpm and I want you to play along with me. This is kick drum on beats one, three and the upbeat of three."