Drums Lesson 02: the basic rock beat

Watch Drumeo's walkthrough in the video above, then read the breakdown.

In Lesson 01 you found the kit and a loose grip. Today those hands and that foot play together for the first time. This is the beat you have heard ten thousand times without naming it. Learn it slowly and you own the ground floor of rock, pop, and most of what plays on the radio.

The groove is three voices stacked up. Do not try them all at once. Build it one layer at a time.

1. Hi-hat, steady eighths. With your right hand, tap the closed hi-hat eight even times per bar. Count out loud as you go: one and two and three and four and. Eight taps, all the same volume. This steady tick is the pulse everything else hangs on.
2. Add the kick on 1 and 3. Keep the hi-hat going. Now drop your right foot on the pedal on beat one and again on beat three. Kick and hi-hat land together on those counts.
3. Add the snare on 2 and 4. Bring in your left hand on the snare on beats two and four. This is the backbeat, the crack that makes people nod their heads.

Here is the whole beat on one grid. Each column is one eighth note, read left to right, and the counts sit on top.

|Count    1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &
|Hi-hat   x x x x x x x x
|Snare    - - o - - - o -
|Kick     o - - - o - - -

Your two hands cross to play this. Your right hand reaches over to the hi-hat, your left hand sits under it on the snare. That crossover feels strange for a day, then it disappears. Keep the hi-hat hand relaxed and even, and let the kick and snare drop into the gaps.

You need a stick that helps you find steady time, not fight it. The Vic Firth American Classic 5A is the standard first pair, balanced and rebound-friendly, which is exactly what a new beat wants. There is a full breakdown at the 5A review.

Practice this

Take five minutes and build the beat in layers, slow. One minute of hi-hat alone, counting out loud. One minute adding just the kick on 1 and 3. One minute adding just the snare on 2 and 4. Then two minutes with all three together, as slow as you need to keep the hi-hat perfectly even. Speed is not the goal today. An even, unhurried groove is.

Where you are

Lesson 01: parts of the kit and holding the sticks got you seated with a loose grip, and now you can play the beat behind most songs. Ringo Starr built a legend on a rock-solid version of exactly this groove, feel over flash. Next, Lesson 03: counting and the metronome, where you lock that beat to a click and make your time bulletproof.