How to Play a Disco Drum Beat

Video Transcript

"PAT LOUIS: On behalf Expert Village, I'm Pat Louis in Miami, Florida. And today, I'm going to show you some basic drum rhythms. Of course one of the most popular types of musical, and especially for dancing, is the disco feel. Even though that disco era has kind of waned, we still hear a lot of songs that lend themselves to the disco beat. The difference with disco and the others is the key is the high hat. The main thing in a disco beat is that the bass drum is going that one, two, three, four, solidly all the way through, it's a very heavy sound all the way through, right on the beat all the way through. The other part of it is you still have your two and four beats on the backbeat on the snare but that difference is the offbeat on the high hat. Every other beat, it's on the offbeat, every other offbeat, the high hat is lifted by your foot. You just lift your foot up a little bit and you get that tssshhh, that sound. That is the key to all of disco music, and also, some of the new dance music that you hear today still uses that flavor."