Hello and welcome to another lesson blog. In this one, I am going going over a couple basic ways to play groups of five notes. This is more about building a foundation for some upcoming patterns and fills that are a bit more challenging.
1) This is just a simple accent pattern where we are accenting every 5th note. I have kept all of these examples in 5/4 so the resolve naturally. We will get into some more advanced applications soon. Take this slowly to start, really focusing on keeping the left foot strong and once you have it together, play along to a metronome.
2) Okay, lets see how well you’ve internalised the accent rhythm. Now we are just playing the accents along with a quarter note pulse in the left foot. Once you are happy with this, try increasing the speed and move it around the kit. At that point, it is great to alternate between 1 and 2 where you play the same accent pattern around the kit and keep all the unaccented notes from 1 on the snare.
3) Here is another super common accent pattern through 5s. In this case it is two accents which alternate every two notes between each hand. Follow the same steps from 1 and have some fun
4) As with 2, now we deal with just the accents over a 1/4 note pulse
5) This is the same accent pattern as 3 but the sticking has changed from alternating to RLRLL. This is a great sticking that will open up a LOT of grove and fill options so spend some time really internalising it. Be warned that some find the independence required to keep the left foot going a little trickier than in previous examples.
6) Okay so if you can play 4, this should be fairly straight forward. However, as it is all in the right hand, you will hopefully start to think of this as a right hand pattern over a groove. We will cover this exact application and more in the next lesson so do spend the time making this feel smooth and effortless.
I hope you all enjoyed that and got something beneficial out of it. Try and get these examples feeling solid so that we can really take these odd groupings to a more musical place in coming lessons with lots of cool groove and fill applications.