- Hey everyone, it's Jared from Drumeo
and author of The Best Beginner Drum Book.
And today I'm here to give you an exclusive lesson
from our new book.
Now if you do have it, you can go ahead
and turn to page 136, because today we're going to talk
about some lead hand independence.
Now this is from the section in the book
called the Limb Independence Builder.
Now as you know, we have four limbs,
at least most of us do, I've seen some incredible drummers
play with less, some of them much better than I can play
with all four, so I'm always very impressed.
But we do have four limbs, most of us, like I said.
And we need to learn how to do what we want with this hand,
with this hand, with this foot, and this foot.
You know, when we create beats, when we create fills,
we maybe want to put the bass drum at a certain place,
and we need to have the independence to allow us to do that.
So in this lesson, we're just going to talk about
our lead hand independence so,
in this case it's my right hand, right?
Now many of you are left-handed, so in that case your
lead hand independence could be your left hand over here.
So what we're going to do, we're going to go through
a few different exercises that are within the book.
Now, it's not only about just learning exercises,
it's about learning where to actually
apply these within music.
And so one thing that really got me interested
in learning some lead hand independence was listening
to Carter Beauford from the Dave Matthews Band.
And within the book we provide musical examples,
kind of a little like at the end of each chapter
we give you some musical examples of where to find ideas
that are similar to this.
So it's not only about learning exercises,
but it's about applying them to real music.
And we're gonna work through different examples
to get your lead hand going
and doing whatever you want it to do.
So the bass drum and the snare drum
are simply going to be doing this.
And on exercise one, the lead hand is going to be playing
on all the upbeats, or the offbeats,
which is on all the ands, so if you're counting,
it's one-and, two-and, three-and, four-and.
So I'm gonna play it nice and slowly for you
at 60 beats per minute.
So to develop that, just start nice and slow,
maybe even just isolate the lead hand.
Just count along with the metronome, one-and, two-and,
three-and, four-and, until you get that really comfortable.
And then start maybe putting in just the snare drum,
and then put in just the bass drum
and slowly build the groove.
You know, if you're a new drummer,
I remember what it was like to start out.
I remember developing these first levels of independence,
especially getting away from your right hand
always wanting to do exactly what your right foot's doing.
Or your lead hand always wanting to do
exactly what your bass drum foot's doing.
You know, my beginning journey sounded like this.
(drumming)
Right, so everything wanted to go together,
and I could not seem to separate those and so
these exercises are really good for that.
So the next one we're gonna do is gonna utilize
and eighth note and two sixteenth notes.
And we're gonna be playing
one-and-a, two-and-a, three-and-a, four-e-and-a,
one-e-and-a, two-e-and-a, three-e-and-a, four-e-and-a,
one-e-and-a, two.
So just really get comfortable with that
when you first start.
One-e-and-a, two-e-and-a, three-e-and-a, four-e-and-a,
one-e-and-a, two-e-and-a, three-e-and-a, four-e-and-a, one.
And this is my favorite one of all these,
to be honest with you.
So let's try it at 60 beats per minute
and I'll show you how it sounds.
So the next exercise is gonna kinda build
on these sixteenth notes, but we're just gonna
kinda shift around where they're located.
So instead of going one-and-a, two,
we're gonna do the first three sixteenth notes
of each count, and we're gonna shave off the a
of every sixteenth note count.
So instead of going one-and-a, two,
we're gonna go one-e-and, two-e-and, three-e-and,
one-e-and, two-e-and, three-e-and, four-e-and,
one-e-and, two-e-and, three-e-and, four-e-and.
Let's try it at 60 beats per minute.
Now number four is one I still struggle with myself,
it's again, just moving these sixteenth notes around,
so we're hitting the first two sixteenth notes
of each count, and then the last sixteenth note.
So we're dropping the and of each beat.
So it would go
one-e-and-a, two-e-and-a, three-e-and-a, four-e-and-a,
one-e-and-a, two-e-a,
three-e-and-a, four-e-and-a,
one-e-and-a, two-e-a,
three-e-and-a, four-e-and-a, one.
Let's see how it sounds at 60 beats per minute
And number five drops the downbeat of each count,
so we're taking off the one, the two,
the three, and the four.
And we're simply going
one-e-and-a, two-e-and-a, three-e-and-a, four-e-and-a,
one-e-and-a, two-e-and-a, three-e-and-a, four-e-and-a.
And you can see how I'm counting out loud when I do this,
it makes it so much easier to learn.
So if you've got this book and you're working through it,
go slowly and count out loud
when you're first learning new exercises.
So here it is at 60 beats per minute.
So if you're looking for a clear path
to gaining momentum behind the drum set,
really falling in love with this amazing instrument,
I hope you order your copy of The Best Beginner Drum Book.
Now to end this session off, what I wanna do
is take some of these exercises we've learned
and just start exploring the drum set with them.
'Cause right now, they are simply exercises,
they're not really anything musical,
they're in their most basic form
and you simply just kind of put it together,
but now it's time to do something with it, and to create.
So this is unrehearsed, but I'm simply just taking
the exact same exercises and moving them
as different orchestrations randomly around the drums
to see what I come up with.