In this video, Dave Atkinson jams along to “It’s About Something” from YUCA‘s 2007 self-titled debut album. This rock drum play-along is a great place for you to practice all kinds of rock drum beats and drum fills. This free drum play-along comes with two MP3s that you can download and use to play along or study with – one with the drum tracks removed and an alternate version with a metronome added in. More »
With Christmas 2011 just around the corner, Jared Falk, Dave Atkinson, and the rest of the crew at DrumLessons.com decided to wish you all the best for this holiday season with a very special and unique version of the Christmas song “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town”. Who knew Santa could play the drums? He does have a lot of free time on his hands. More »
The single stroke roll is the most basic and essential drum rudiment out there. It’s the most used as well, so it’s essential to have good dynamic control and ability to play it at various tempos. Increasing the speed at what you’re able to play the single stroke roll can be quite troublesome and frustrating, especially if you don’t have the right collection of exercises to help you achieve that. Hence, in this free drum lesson, Jared Falk teaches ten different exercises that you can use to improve your single stroke roll speed, no matter the level at what you are right now. More »
Understanding and playing polyrhythms can be a real challenge if you don’t have the best set of tools to do so. You can use traditional music notation to help you out, but that can actually make your learning process that much harder. So, with this free drum lesson, Dave Atkinson teaches you how to use and decipher the notation from the Time Unit Box System (TUBS), a great system for simplifying the relationships between complex rhythms, and how to expand on the polyrhythms he’ll be teaching you about in this series of free drum lessons on polyrhythms. More »
A polyrhythm is a combination of two or more rhythms played simultaneously while moving at the same linear tempo. So generally speaking, two rhythms are considered a polyrhythm if the number one is their only common divisor. In this free drum lesson, Dave Atkinson explains what’s a polyrhythm and shows you how a polyrhythm sounds on the drum set. More »
This free drum lesson was designed by Dave Atkinson to take your 5/4 drum fills to a whole new dimension. These are hard patterns that incorporate the hybrid drum rudiment herta and a mix of 32nd notes with 16th note triplets, and exposes you to the use of quintuplets – a very unusual note value. You’ll have a blast with this free drum lesson. Ready to dig in? More »
The secret for any successful endeavor is in keeping everything as balanced as possible. Resting and having fun outside of drumming are as important as practicing as much as you can. You’ll keep yourself motivated and enjoying your life a lot more. So if you’ve been practicing like a mad man, stop! Get your favorite drink; sit back and just relax while you watch this fun behind the scenes video from the recording process of the free drum lesson “Cymbal Choking“. More »
Cymbal choking is a dynamic drumming technique used to abruptly silence the sound of a cymbal. Cymbal Choking is often overlooked by most free drum lessons-based websites and educational products for drummers. With this free drum lesson, Jared Falk fills this void by teaching you how to choke cymbals, and how to use them within drum beats and as song enders. More »
The intermediate lesson on 5/4 odd-time time signature drum beats showed you how to come up with 5/4 patterns in different styles of music. With the advanced 5/4 drum beats from this lesson, Dave Atkinson keeps expanding on this concept by introducing you to 5/4 linear drum beats, 5/4 shuffle and songo drum beats. This is a great way of learning how to apply 5/4 to a lot of different styles of music. More »
In this video, Dave Atkinson jams along to “Calling” a song from Dying Hearts Desire, a modern Christian rock group that he was a member of. This rock drum play-along is a great place for you to practice all kinds of double bass patterns, tom-tom drum beats, hand-to-feet combos, and rock drum beats and fills. This free drum play-along comes with two MP3s that you can download and use to play along or study with – one with the drum tracks removed and an alternate version with a metronome added in. More »
