Drum fills are the type of pattern that’s most easy to get creative with. From the more simple to the more complex, there are tons of different concepts you can use to take standard drum fills and make them sound unique and fresh. In this free drum lesson Dave Atkinson shares a simple one: playing drum fills on different counts. More »
In this video, Dave Atkinson walks you through the drums, cymbals, hardware, and drumsticks he uses while gigging and recording free drum lessons for DrumLessons.com. He discusses some of the aspects he likes the most about his gear and why he chose to use it in the first place. More »
In this video, Dave Atkinson jams along to “Anthem”, a song from his own band YUCA. This rock drum play-along is a great place for you to practice all kinds of rock drum beats and drum fills, especially 8th note triplet- and 16th note triplet-based. 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 »
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 »
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 »
In this free drum lesson, Dave Atkinson teaches three brand new 5/4 odd-time signature drum fills. As expected from an intermediate lesson, the patterns you’ll find here are a little bit more demanding. You’ll learn how to play 5/4 hand-to-feet combinations, and how to incorporate ghost notes and the single and double paradiddles into 5/4 drum fills. More »
In this free drum lesson, Dave Atkinson teaches you how to play three 5/4 drum fills. These 5/4 drum fills are 8th note- and 16th note-based. They’re a great way of introducing you to 5/4 drum fills, and of instructing you on how to add the bass drum to your drum fills. These 5/4 drum fills are played at two different tempos. This will allow you to have an idea of how they sound when played at slow and fast tempos. More »
