Heavy-metal drumming is heavily (no pun intended) based on powerful, fast and energetic patterns. It can be tricky to add groove and dynamics amidst the wall of sound generated by machine-like drumming. Breaking up the ride patterns you play with the leading hand is a great way to spice up and compliment the music you’re playing along to. In this free heavy-metal drum lesson, Sean Lang teaches five ride patterns that you can apply to your heavy-metal drum beats to make them groove a lot more. More »

Practicing drums is the single biggest issue almost every drummer faces since the invention of the drum set in the early 1900s. The growth of population density in cities around the world has only aggravated it since most citizens have to live in apartments. This makes it almost impossible to practice in an apartment with an acoustic drum set. Let’s face it, drums are loud and obnoxious. Unless you’re trying to get evicted from the building you’re living in, you won’t want to bust out your acoustic drum set for a long, loud practice session. In order to solve this age-old issue, over the years many companies have developed products that allow drummers to practice at home by keeping noise levels to a minimum. More »

The Roots are an American hip-hop band that formed in 1987. The song Aaron Edgar covers in this video is called “Boom!” and is taken from The Roots’ 2004 release The Tipping Point. Before pressing play get your favorite drink, sit back and relax while you watch Aaron Edgar groove and play a little drum solo at the end of the tune. More »

A metric modulation increases or decreases the tempo at what you’re playing, in relation to the note value setting the pulse. You can think of a metric modulation as a rhythmic illusion. This concept is quite common in classical music but has made its way to drum-set playing through guys like Tony Williams and Vinnie Colaiuta. Applying this concept to the drum set can seem quite daunting if not explained correctly. However, through simple methods, Aaron Edgar shows you exactly how to do a metric modulation in this video. If you’re not sure about how to use a metric modulation, you will be after watching this free drum lesson. More »

Latin drumming is an umbrella term used to describe the rhythmic vocabulary developed for the drum set and hand percussion in various Latin American and Caribbean cultures. The melding of jazz with Afro-Cuban music in the 1940s–through guys like jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and percussionists/ vocalists Chano Pozo and Machito–and with the bossa nova in the early 1960s–through jazz musicians Charlie Byrd, Stan Getz and Brazilian composers João Gilberto, António Carlos Jobim and Vinícius de Moraes–introduced a whole new pallet of sounds and rhythms that were, for the most part, foreign (no pun intended) to mass North American and European audiences. More »

A rhythm section provides rhythmic texture and pulse to the music. They serve as a reference for the rest of the band and can be found in virtually every style of music. The instruments used in a rhythm section vary with style of music and era. Drum set, bass guitar, piano and guitar are the more frequent ones. However, no matter the style, the drum set and bass guitar are the core instruments of any rhythm session. More »

On the heels of a very successful Kickstarter project launch, the one and only Cobus Potgieter pays a visit to the DrumLessons.com studio to talk about The Cobus Method, his YouTube Band Project and to play some intense and creative drum solos and duets with Jared Falk. More »

In this free live drum lesson, Sean Lang–drummer for melodic death-metal band First Reign and an instructor at DrumLessons.com–teaches you to play the traditional blast beat and the hammer blast beat. He also goes about a couple variations on those blast beats and exercises for increasing your blast-beat speed and endurance. More »

Not every gig requires a full drum-set. Weddings, restaurant and corporate gigs are a couple of the venues where a drum set might be overkill. Whether it’s the space the gig is being held on or sound and space limitations, there are various reasons to dismiss bands who have a drum set player as their only percussionist. This is where knowing to play hand drums can come quite in handy. You see, hand drums take almost no space at all and are way quieter when compared to a drum set. Knowing to play hand drums will get you all kinds of different gigs you wouldn’t get otherwise. Due to its usefulness to drum set players, Mike Michalkow put together this free live drum lesson to teach the basics of djembe and cajon and how to use them to reproduce drum set patterns. More »

Almost every style of music has been influenced by the shuffle in one form or another. There are rock, jazz and blues shuffles; funk has them and even Jamaican music has been highly influenced by them. Learning how to play shuffles properly is tricky. Shuffles can be technically challenging and hard to play with the right amount of feel. That’s why we put this free live drum lesson together for you. In it, Jerry Adolphe teaches you what he believes to be the essential shuffle patterns and shares a wealth of information on how to play great sounding shuffles. More »