Heavy-metal is a sub-genre of rock. However, because of the many variations heavy-metal has given birth to and due to its very unique identity and flavor, it has become a style on its own right whose study has to go beyond the scope of what rock music has to offer. With that in mind, Sean Lang put together this free heavy-metal drum lesson to get your heavy-metal drumming studies started in the right direction. Sean Lang shares some tips on what you can do to make your playing sound more “metal-ish” and takes you through six beginner single pedal heavy-metal drum beats that you can take to your kit to get those heavy-metal chops going.
The first thing you’ll notice while going through these heavy-metal drum beats is that the hands play very basic parts. This is so because these exercises were designed to help you develop the basic hand-to-feet coordination needed to play this style of music in its most simplistic form and at high tempos. If you’re struggling to get these heavy-metal beats going because of your bass drum foot, be sure to add exercises from the free drum lesson “Beginner Single Pedal Speed” to your daily practice routine. With consistent and persistent work those exercises will take your foot technique to a whole new level, helping you master the heavy-metal drum beats from this free heavy-metal drum lesson a lot quicker.
Speed is a big one when it comes to heavy-metal drumming. It’s important to learn how to play these heavy-metal drum beats at higher tempos. Practicing speed along to a metronome can get old pretty soon. To help you work on speed in a more fun and effective way, we’ve come up with a cool system that gives use to your favorite songs. The system is also applicable for studying drum rudiments and every type of exercise you can think of.
Take your favorite songs and store them in folders in your computer or MP3 player. Do so by separating the songs by tempo range (70 BPM to 79 BPMs, 80 BPM to 89 BPMs, etc.). For an accurate idea of the tempo at what a song was recorded use “tap tempo” software that’s available for free on the Internet. Tap quarter notes with the “tap tempo” software as you listen to the track and jot down the tempo you’re getting from the software, one minute into the song. Then, add the tempo to the song’s file-name. This will only work for songs with a constant pulse and that have been recorded to a metronome. This means that its different sections never speed up or slow down.
Once you’re done with this free heavy-metal drum lesson, you can keep furthering your heavy-metal drumming ability with DrumLessons.com. For working on some heavy-metal drum fills watch the free drum lesson “Beginner Heavy-Metal Drum Fills.” For new heavy-metal drum beats, watching the video “Beginner Broken Heavy-Metal Double Bass Drum Beats” is the next best thing for you.
You can keep practicing the exercises from this free drum lesson even if you decide to move along to one of those two free heavy-metal drum lessons we spoke of. You can play them like notated or use them to further your heavy-metal independence. The only thing you have to do is combine the foot patterns from this lesson with the snare patterns from “Heavy-Metal Snare Drum Comping.”