Groove is magic, groove makes you move, groove is when you see heads nodding in front of you. There’s nothing like being able to make music and grooving with a band. It’s amazingly fulfilling.
And it’s probably the most essential skill a good drummer should have.
The level of mastery, control, and confidence that are necessary in order to be able to play in the pocket, can be achieved only by spending a long time honing our skills.
Playing even simple beats with great time feel can be much more difficult than it seems.
And it’s also a lot more demanding than it looks like compared to making intricate rhythms full of notes work and feel good.
Now, that’s counterintuitive, and that’s exactly the reason why so few drummers can really groove hard.
That being the case, I wanted to write a method (actually two: click here for ‘Vol.8 Groove Mastery and Formulas‘) that included all the most powerful tools and workouts that can help drummers improve in this area.
I decided to put everything I knew in it, and to focus each chapter on one of the essential topics:
– Fat Back: 8ths, 16ths, Triplets, Shuffle, 6/8 and Linear. Did I forget anything? ;). Check this article to find out more about Fat Back.
– Polyrhythmic Grooves and Left Foot independence: That’s the icing on the cake when it comes to increasing feet coordination in order to play any beat you want.
– Permutations: Permutation refers to the idea of shifting a phrase and assign to it a new downbeat, starting in different spots every time. It gives us many advantages in terms of coordination, improved sense of time, and thorough comprehension and understanding of the rhythmic ideas we are working on.
– Hi-Hat opening and closing: I love the subtle nuances and colors that this kind of solutions can add to what we play. Hi-Hat Openings are a key element in being able to create original and personalized beats that groove.
– Dynamics: Being able to use a wide dynamic range will make our grooves expand in unthinkable ways. Click here for a free lesson about dynamics in drumming.
– Ghost Notes: Ghost Notes are one of the most effective ways to make a beat more interesting, to personalize it and to make it groove hard. Adding grace notes requires a bit of extra control and independence, because of the advanced interplay that happens between the limbs when performing these ideas. That’s exactly what we work on in this juicy section.
It’s cool to have it all organized, so that when you feel like practicing a specific area you can rely on ready-to-use exercises that will help you quickly boost that skill.
In more than 130 pages and 3 hours of videos I’m sure you are going to find all you need to make your groove stand out.
In this free excerpt I’d like to share with you 24 examples that will give you an idea of how much fun can be studying groove this way. And how effective it is!
You can download it here:
The transcription of these exercises, as well as the table of contents of the method, is included in this 12 page PDF.
Each exercise is linked to its video demo, which you can access by clicking on the transcription. If you want to check out the whole 8 minute video demo on YouTube, click HERE.
To find out more and to buy the method you can visit the dedicated page here:
‘Groove Workout & Tools’ – Altitude Drumming – Volume 7
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