Hello and welcome to a new series of blogs.  In this and following lessons I will be sharing some of my favourite drum loops and grooves.  I am going to mostly focus on more "electronic" genres as often these get overlooked as there isn't always an actual drummer involved.  Sometimes it will be a drummer playing the groove, other times it will be a programmed beat or a sample from another song. Today we have the classic track by Most Def, Umi Says.  This is a super funky groove that is basically a two bar loop except for a variation on beat four of the second bar, making it a four bar loop.  Watch your dynamics with this one as it'll make or break the feel of the groove and have some fun. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcxLFXbECsY The second loop is a classic.  Possibly THE classic loop. Of coarse, I am referring to the "Amen Break" from the track "Amen Brother" by The Winstons.  This drum break at 1:26 of the song has been sampled and used in more songs than arguably any other break.  Here the first two bars are the same and in the second two, there is a displaced snare and bass that give it a really cool feel, similar to song like "Cold Sweat".  A big feature of this loop are the 16th note bass drums.  I have heard "amen" used as an adjective more than once when dealing with producers.  They are usually looking for both a displaced back beat feel but also the bass drum pattern found in the first two bars.  Have some fun with this one as you'd be surprised how many artists have used this break (Squarepusher, Prodigy, NWA, Venetian Snares, DJ Shadow, Dialling,  Skream, LTJ Bukem, Lemon D, Goldie, Apex Twin, Roni Size, Erik B. and Rakim, Salt-n-Pepa, Amon Tobin and even David Bowie to name a few!) https://youtu.be/GxZuq57_bYM?t=1m26s    

In part two of “5+7=12” we are going to look at a couple more applications of 5757.  We will start off where we left off and then move onto some examples using the bass drum to break up the hands. 1) After the previous lesson on 5+7=12, I had a couple people ask me for some specific applications.  I don’t want to give you too many because the process of exploring various orchestrations around the kit, is part of the process of really learning these phrases as options and not just a single use application.  However, here is a really simple fill where the accents in the right hand are moving around the kit.  Just make sure you are playing the subdivision accurately and not being pulled off time by the accent placement.  Once you have this, move it around and come up with your own versions.  This is just a very simple starting point. 2) Here is a simple groove example.  I have placed the back beat at a different point in each grouping of seven.  Have some fun in moving the backbeat yourself and also re-arranging the groups of 5 and 7.  They don’t have to alternate nor do they have to start with the 5s each time. 3A) In the following three examples, I have added some bass drums in.  This example is just three notes hand to hand and two bass drums.  Please note that in all the examples in 3, I have written them as either quintuplets or septuplets.  That is just to group each phrase neatly.  In the later examples of 4 and 5 we will still be playing them as sextuplets.  For now just get confutable playing the grouping of 5. 3B) This is the same as 3A, except we are playing the the first three notes RLL instead of hand to hand.  This will open up other orchestration possibilities when moving round the kit. 3C) In this example we have take the basic hand to hand version of a grouping of 7 notes and replaces the last two with bass drums.  What I really like about this is that the hands are now playing a grouping of 5 so you can utilise some of the orchestrations I am hoping you have worked out from previous lessons. 4) Here we have a grouping of seven and then the five with bass drums added.  It flows really nicely around the drums so take some time orchestrating this in a whole load of different ways. 5) This is the same as the precious example with the exception that we have changed the grouping of five to RLL instead of RLR. 6/7) I hope you enjoyed that.  I just wanted to mention that, when it comes to using this in “real songs”, to be honest I wouldn’t.  These are the kind of things that unless you're playing math-rock, they should stay in the practice room.  That said, if you do want to play them, patterns like 4 and 5 can be tough to pull off as the bass drums are at the end of the bar.  I would either, reverse these sticking (KKRLRLR for example, as seen in 6), or replace the last beat with something more straight forward such as in 7.

Here is another rudiment that, lets be honest, you really should know. Today I just want to introduce the 6 stroke roll in its simplest form. 1) Before we get to the actual rudiment itself, I’d like us to take this opportunity to warm up our hands and make sure we have our subdivisions and dynamics dialled in. To start with, lets just play RLL where the right hand is accented. Make sure your dynamics are defined and consistent. Once you are happy with this, make sure you play along with a metronome at a nice slow pace. 2) Next lets look at the RRL where the left hand is now accented. Once this is feeling comfortable and sounding good, play along with a metronome. Pay extra attention that the accent is on the last partial of the triplet and you do not move it to the downbeat. 3) One more exercise before we get to the actual rudiment itself. If you are unfamiliar with this style of transcription it can be a little intimidating. All it is, is swung 16th notes with accents on the down beat and the “a”. Take your time to get the motions smooth. It doesn’t have to be Moeller but a fluid motion works best here. Make sure, as in the previous exercises, your dynamics are accurate and consistent. 4) You made it! So here it is. The 6-stroke roll. Once you have the basic pattern, try alternating between this and the previous exercise. We will go into more detail in a later lesson on how we can interpret 16th note rhythms as 6-stroke roll type stickings. 5) In the final exercise we are just moving the accents in the simplest way. All right hand accents go to the floor tom and all left to the high tom. This can be a great exercise to help strengthen your accents in general. There is a LOT of milage in the 6-stroke roll so make sure you have the basics down first. Once you have mastered all of the above, make sure you play them with both a 1/4 note and an 1/8 note pulse in the left foot. I hope you got something out of that even if you are familiar with the 6-stroke roll. We will go into more interesting applications soon.  

Okay so this time we are going to take some of the sticking patterns from the last two odd groupings exercises and combine them. If we take a grouping of 5 and 7, we get 12 notes. So, if we are playing 16th note triplets we get a half bar of 4/4. 1) Before we get too into combinations, lets just take a second to make sure we are happy playing the odd groupings through 16th note triplets. Here we are just playing hand to hand with a quarter note pulse. We have 24 notes to play with so we get four repetitions of the grouping of five and then just RLRL at the end. For now, lets focus on patterns that we can resolve in one bar. 2) We now have the groupings of seven. We can get 3 repetitions in with a remainder of 3 notes. Just as before, make sure you keep the left foot strong so you can clearly feel how the both the subdivisions and the accents relate to the pulse. 3) Here we take the basic patterns and combine them in the really simple application of two groups of 5 and two groups of 7. This lets the patterns perfect resolve within the one bar of 4/4. Take your time internalising how the accents feel against the left foot and then mix up the order once you feel more comfortable. At this point, as long as you play two 5s and two 7s, the order doesn’t matter that much. 4) This is the same as the previous example except we have changed the sticking so that all the accents fall in the right hand and the left play a double at the end of both the 5s and 7s. 5) In the final exercise of this first part of “5+7=12” we are going to alternate between the 5s and 7s. I have also orchestrated the right had onto the hi-hat along with the bass drum. This is to help you hear the pattern in a different way. We will start moving these groupings around more in future lessons so really make sure that you have internalised them and can really feel how the accents land against the 1/4 note pulse.