Playing disco / techno / house drums sounds simple right? You can even do it with three limbs! but the drum parts of these styles are often built of many different percussion layers on top of the simple four on the floor groove In this lesson I will show you some techniques and coordination exercises How you can play the basic drum beat with three limbs and add extra Percussive elements with your other hand in this video I have this sound triggered on my bass drum and this sound on my snare drum The first technique is when you play the basic beat without your left hand the kick plays quarter notes The snare is on two and four The hi-hat plays the eighth note up beats Depending on your setup you can play it on your normal or your second hi-hat After this you need to start working on the independence of playing any rhythm with your left hand against this ostinato start with quarter notes one two three four Eighth note up beats so one and two and three and four and Then play all eighth notes one and two and three and four and You need to work your way through all the possible variations of quarter notes and eighth notes to establish a solid independence I collected these rhythms in the PDF file you can download it from my Patreon page.
The link is in the description practice them slowly first until you feel very confident with every rhythm now I will play through all the variations slowly If you have for example an acoustic bongo or some other sampler pad like the Roland SPD-1 you can put that on the left side of your kit and play your primary hi-hat with the right hand If you want to play more complex patterns too, you need to work on the independence of sixteenth note based rhythms These are also collected in the PDF file that you can download You might want to start practicing these patterns slower first because these are more difficult for the left hand let me play through all these variations for you now The other technique for this whole concept is when you play the basic techno beat without your right hand the bass drum plays quarter notes The snare is on two and four Play the hi-hat with your foot on the upbeats I think you know what comes next! Work through the exercises with your right hand I will play some of them for you now After you mastered these exercises try the same thing with the hi-hat splashing technique to increase the dynamics of your groove this technique consists of two steps First play one note on the hi-hat with your heels up Then drop your heel on the pedal and let the cymbals ring and repeat these motions Then start playing eighth notes with these two motions Why is it important to work through all these boring exercises? because after that it will be easy to execute any pattern you hear in your head without any difficulties Experiment with different sounds too! Thanks for watching! If you enjoyed this video subscribe to my channel for more! See you next time! 🙂