Hello and welcome to the fifth instalment of the odd groupings series.  In this lesson we will be looking at a slightly less obvious grouping of either 5 and 4 or 3 depending on how you feel or count it.  When it comes to applying these patterns I have used a jazz approach but please do experiment and have some fun!

1. In the first exercise we have a bar of straight 8th notes through 9/4, the notes are grouped into 5, 4, 5, 4.  When you play through this, instead of using a standard count.  I’d like you to count the groups (1,2,3,4,5,1,2,3,4). Once you have the pattern slowly, play along with a click making sure you play smoothy, dynamically and accurately.  Then add in the left foot on a 1/4 note pulse.
2. Number two would sound the same as number one if played out of context/without a click/not counting.  Please do not just play it once and move on.  It is really important to make sure you COUNT this bar accurately.  It is in a different time signature and we are playing a different subdivision.  When you play along with a click and incorporate the left foot you will feel the difference.
3. Okay, so this is where this lesson gets a little more difficult to explain so bear with me.  In this exercise we are playing the same accent pattern as in the previous exercise but we have removed the middle note from every triplet leaving us with swung 8th notes (still written as triplets).  If we play this hand to hand, it resolves in 3/4 so it’s a little easier to count.
4. Now to add to the confusion.  The following exercises are written as 8th notes, please note that these should be played as SWUNG 8th notes (it’s a little more obvious when you look at 5 and 6 due to the jazz ride pattern).  Please note that the accents are now in groups of three 8th notes.  However, due to them being swung we can also think of them still in groups of 5 and 4.  As you play this, keep your count as swung 8ths and as before add the left foot and practice this along to a click.  As it’s a grouping of 3, it takes 3 bars to fully resolve.
5. Application time.  Here we have a really simple jazz time pattern for two bars and then the first two bars of our pattern.  Obviously it doesn’t fully resolve in just two bars but that can make it quite a nice pattern.  Please note that we are keeping the standard, 2 and 4, jazz left foot going through the pattern.  At higher tempos, you might want to drop the last ride note from bar two to make the transition to the snare a little easier.  Once you can comfortably play this, you should think about; adding bass drum feathering, orchestrating the pattern around the kit, taking the second and third or third and first bars from the previous exercise or even extending the pattern to 4 or more bars and finally adding other subdivisions such as 1/4 notes and full triplets.  When you do this final stage, for now, keep the accents in the same place until you have fully assimilated this into your playing.  You can spend MANY hours on number 5 as there is a lot of millage in this simple concept.
6. With this final exercise, we have taken our accent pattern and used that rhythm as our left hand comping phrase.  Personally, I find this popping up in my playing all the time as it sounds very musical and seems to flow nicely in many situations.  As in the previous exercise please experiment with playing a different selection of bars from exercise 4.  I really like using bars 2 and 3 as it sounds nice coming in on the up beat of one.

I hope you all got something out of that and find it useful for getting your hands warmed up.  To start with it can be a little challenging, but once you have mastered it, you will be left with a quick and effective warm up. 

I recently played drums with Mechanical Monkey for a couple of live session videos.  I am planning on doing a couple of lessons over on the Istanbul Mehmet Blog soon to go over a few of the grooves and ideas behind the songs.  In the meantime, here is the first of the videos. 

Hello and welcome, today I will be sharing with you a really useful hand warm up exercise that I not only teach but also use myself for loosening up my wrists and getting warmed up. Before we actually get into it (are you sitting down?) it’s not another iteration of the standard singles, doubles and paradiddles exercise that everyone knows a version of, although that is a great exercise there are loads of versions already out there.  Not sure what I mean, then just watch Joe Morello’s killer exercise here for a great display of the basic idea.
Ok so what are we actually going to look at today? Its a simple enough idea, treat the hands evenly.  Almost everyone has a dominant hand and therefore a weaker hand.  As drummers, we strive to lessen the gap between our hands as much as possible to allow us to fully express our ideas musically.  As always, I have written this with a right handed player in mind, if you’re a lefty, just flip the sticking and enjoy.

1. In the first exercise, we are just playing constant 16ths on the hats with the right hand and 8th notes with left on the snare.
2. Now we are just flipping it so that our left hand has to play the constant 16ths.  This can be surprisingly tough to keep sounding smooth and consistent so stick with it.
3. This is the main exercise.  We are playing the first two patterns back to back, effectively switching between right hand and left hand biassed grooves, we have also added an 8th note bass drum pattern to help hold it all together.  Take your time to make this feel and sound smooth and then slowly increase the tempo.
4. This is can be a little tougher depending on your comfort level with a samba bass drum pattern.  It is essentially the same as 3 just with the different foot pattern.
5. As a bonus, I have put number 5 in as I often like to play this straight after 4.  It is just a pataflafla with the samba foot pattern underneath.  It’s a great pattern as the flams lock in with the right foot.  This really gets my hands loose and ready to play.

Welcome to a slightly different series of lessons.  In this lesson I will be showing you a really good exercise for increasing your accuracy with 16th note bass drums. 
1a) Ok, so I know when you see this you might dismiss it and not even bother playing it, but please do.  Put a click on, something slow like 60 and play through it, focusing on playing perfectly in time and counting as you go.
1b) Now we add the backbeat on “2” and “4”.  Try and continue to count and really focus on nailing the click.
2a) Now on to the 16th notes.  Keep the click going and make sure you are counting.  As you play this, also take care to make sure the bass drum is exactly in the gap and you are not swinging the bass drum.  If you are counting the full 16ths this should happen naturally.
2b) As with 1, we add the backbeat in the second part of 2.  Make sure you focus on keeping the hihat smooth and uninterrupted.  Many students want to put the hihat on the “e” of 2 and 4 because your brain is used to following a snare with a hihat.
3) In this example we switch between 1b and 2b.  Try and focus on the hands part as this is the same for both bars.  We are simply shifting the bass drum along a 16th.  Also take car when looping the two bars as you get two 16th note bass drums back to back.
4) This is a shortened version of 3.  Instead of switching every bar, we change it up every 1/4 note.  Not only is this a good exercise, it’s a cool sounding groove as well.
Hope you had some fun with those and it makes some of the recent bass drum heavy exercises a little easier. Out of all of them, number 3 is the one to focus on.  It will really help you to increase the tempo and accuracy of your bass drums.

Hello.  I feel a bit cheeky calling this part 4 of the series because it is clearly the second half of part 3.  This lesson is an extension of what we looked at last time so if you missed that one, go and check it out.  This time, we are still going to be focused on a three note grouping but instead of snare, bass, bass we flip it for bass, snare, snare.  This is really going to loosen up your left hand for ghost notes.  I have found a lot of students becoming more creative with their grooves after mastering this as it really helps build an independence between the hands.  The steps involved are almost identical to the previous lesson.  Stay focused and have some fun 

1. This is the basic snare/bass pattern that we are going to work with.  As always, take your time and really try to internalise this pattern until it flows smoothly.
2. In this exercise we are “simply” going to add an 8th note hi-hat pulse over the top.  Please be aware that the phrase now flows in and out of sync with your right hand.  Also, when you loop the bar, you get a double bass drum.  Really focus on keeping this clean and relaxed.
3. Now we just put it into context.  As you go between the simple groove and the pattern, really focus on keeping the hihat as smooth and consistent as you can.
4. I have given you a simple example here of moving the pattern around the kit to give more of a fill feel.  Have some fun and move this around to create your own versions.
5. As in the previous lesson, we now have the same three note grouping as before but we are playing it over a 1/4 note pulse in 3/4 so that it resolves each bar.  As you increase the tempo, try and ensure that the hihat pulse is kept smooth and relaxed.
6. I have chucked this in as a bonus exercise.  We have the two main phrases from lesson 3 and 4 back to back.  If you have worked through the previous exercises, this shouldn’t be too tricky but works really well as a warm up as we work on both the left hand and right foot whilst keeping a consistent pulse with the right.

Welcome to part 3 of the series.  In this lesson we are going to look at one way to play a three note grouping.  Not only is this really going to help you strengthen your bass drum speed and independence, but it also sounds cool!  It’s a short but focused lesson that should hopefully prepare you for some of the more intricate patterns to come.

1. This is the basic snare/bass pattern that we are going to work with.  As always, take your time and really try to internalise this pattern until it flows smoothly.
2. In this exercise we are “simply” going to add an 8th note hi-hat pulse over the top.  Please be aware that the phrase now flows in and out of sync with your right hand.  Also, when you loop the bar, it really helps to work on strengthening your left hand for ghost notes.  Once you can comfortably play this try accenting the 1/4 note downbeat.
3. Now we just put it into context.  As you go between the simple groove and the pattern, really focus on keeping the hihat as smooth and consistent as you can.  As in the previous example, once you have the loop down, try to accent the downbeat as you play.
4. So, if you were able to play the previous exercises with the downbeat accent then you should find this a little bit easier.  If, you skipped that step, I recommend, going back and doing that first.  What we have is the same three note grouping as before but we are now playing it over a 1/4 note pulse in 3/4 so that it resolves each bar.  As you increase the tempo, try and ensure that the hihat pulse is kept smooth and relaxed.

Check out the next lesson for an extension in this idea to help progress your snare independence.
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Hello and welcome to the second lesson on odd groupings. In this lesson we are going to take a look at a few accents and get comfortable with the building blocks that we will need to progress through later lessons.  We are also going to have a quick look at some groupings of 3, and two very simple ways of playing them.

1. This is your baseline.  You want to just loop standard unaccented 16th notes on your hands, with a left foot 1/4 note pulse for a few minutes.  Try and focus on keeping the notes quiet, controlled and (most importantly) even.  We want to relax so that the hands and left foot lock together in a relaxed manner.
2. This exercise is trickier than it looks if you haven’t had much experience with accents.  I want you to take each bar on its own and run it for a couple of minutes (ideally with a click).  The first bar is simply accenting the “1” in the right hand.  Then we displace it one 16th note to the “e”, this will be on your left hand.  Then again, another 16th note back to the right hand of “and” then finally the left hand of “a”.  As you work through these bars, make sure you do not displace the left foot.  That should remain on the 1/4 note pulse.  Once you feel happy with each bar, we can play it as a four bar phrase.  As you increase the tempo, really focus on keeping all the unaccented notes even and at the same dynamic, with the accents clear and consistent.
3. A great way to test your new found comfort with accents is to play a grouping of three notes over 16ths.  This is because in the one bar of 3/4 we have an accent on every possible location.  Also, by keeping it in 3/4 it resolves in just one bar so it is much easier to get into the flow of it.  As before, pay attention to your left foot as it is all too easy to move it to the accents and then you are implying 8th note triplets instead of the straight 16ths.
4. This could easily be labelled 3b!  We have simply carried on the grouping of three through 4/4.  As three times 5 is 15, we have a remainder of one, so this pattern is no longer smooth as it doesn’t properly resolve, “resetting” every bar.  Once you are feeling comfortable with this, start moving the accents around the kit.  Start with right hand to the floor tom and left to the high tom, then try the hats, ride and crash, with and without the bass drum as well.
5. This is a little more of a challenge, especially if you play RLL though triplets a lot.  It should sound identical to exercise 3 but you may find it harder to keep the left foot playing 1/4 notes.  Stick with it.
6. The final exercise is an extension on the previous one again.  It should sound identical to 4 but as with 5, you will probably find it harder to lock in with the left foot.  Take your time to really get it and nail the double accent as you loop it.  You will find when you start moving this around the kit you will end up playing different ideas than 4.  Finally, when it comes to using this pattern as a fill you have a couple of options to help make it flow smoothly.  Firstly, play it as written and just crash with the left hand on the one.  The second option is to replace the very last 16th note accent with a bass drum.  This keeps your right hand relaxed and makes it very easy to hit any cymbal on your kit.

Hello and welcome to the first of my lessons for the Blog.

1. This is the simplest style of groove in 7/8.  It follows the standard “money” beat with a simple 1/8 note removed.  Spend some time getting comfortable with how this feels.  A little piece of advice, when counting only count to “sev” not “seven”.  This is because “seven” has two syllables and your brain will try and normalise your groove and all too easily you can end up playing 4/4.  The way to start counting this would be; one, two, three, four, five, six, sev.
2. Now we add our basic 1/4 note accent on the hi hats.  As we loop this, the jumping/skipping sound is accentuated and it makes the odd time signature feel even more odd.
3. With number 3 we have switched the accent to the off beat.  Take your time with this as it’s easy to get caught out and put an accent on beat one when you loop it.
4. This is the main focus of this lesson.  We are effectively playing example 2 into 3.  We are now playing in 7/4 which allows us to keep the accents rolling.  This gives the groove better flow and “evens out” the odd time signature.
5. In the final example we are just playing the accent pattern.  This gives it a nice chunky sound, but again doesn’t feel too “odd”​

​I am going to end this lesson by saying that although this lesson is a basic introduction to one of the ways that you can make odd time signatures feel less odd and more musical, the core principles will really help your playing in 4/4 as well.  So have some fun.