Along with rhythm and orchestration, dynamics are the main tools a drummer has for coming up with different ideas on the drum set. Playing accented patterns on the hi-hat is a great way to instill variety and expressiveness to whatever you perform on the kit. It’s also great for complementing parts from other musicians. In this free live drum lesson we’ll be taking a look at 10 drum beats that include different accented hi-hat patterns. Dave Atkinson exemplifies how to break them down between different instruments and how to play them using drum rudiments and with double bass going continuously underneath.
These accented hi-hat patterns can be played as accented drum fills. To do so, drop the snare and bass drum strokes from the sheet music and orchestrate the hi-hat strokes around the drum set. This is a great idea to expand on the accented drum beats Dave Atkinson shares in this free live drum lesson.
For all of you triplet fanatics, you can play every single exercise with triplets. Swing the strokes in the 8th and 16th notes accented hi-hat patterns to give birth to full-time and double-time accented hi-hat shuffle drum beats. If you mix this idea with the one we gave you in the previous paragraph, you can come up with some very cool sounding triplet-based drum fills.
An idea Dave discusses in the video is combining double bass foot patterns with the hand patterns from this free drum lesson. If you’d like to expand on that idea, check the free drum lesson “Double Bass Drum Beats.” Take the bass drum patterns from that free drum lesson and couple them with the exercises form this one. Another cool idea is to play the accents on the open hi-hat.