Playing the drums is easy.

It really is! On the guitar or bass you have to learn the melody of every new song you want to play. The cool thing about the drums is that once you learn the basic rock drumbeat you’ll probably be able to play along to almost all of your favourite songs at a basic level. I have a video of me doing just that at the end of this post. 

And the thing is playing that basic rock beat really isn’t that hard either! After about ten minutes of effort most of my new students can play it relatively well. So do you want to learn how to play this beat? Are you ready to spend 10 minutes learning how to play the drums to almost every song you know? It’s seriously so easy!

(Oh man I feel like such an infomercial right now. But really guys, you’ll get this.)

What Is The Basic Rock Beat?

Ok, here we go. This is the beat. Are you ready? Ok, 1-2-3-4…

If you’ve never read drum notation before this might look a little scary to you. But don’t worry! I’ll explain what you need to know.

The notes at the bottom of the music staff are the kick drum, which you’ll be playing with your right foot on the foot pedal. The next notes up, which are sort of in the middle of the music staff, are the snare drum. You’ll be playing that with your left hand. Lastly, the x’s at the top are closed hi hat strikes. You’ll play those by holding down the hi hat pedal with your left foot, then striking the hi hat with your right hand crossed over your left. 

(If you’re playing a kit that’s set up left handed you’ll play the kick with your left foot, the snare with your right hand, and the hi hat with you left hand.) 

Now, there are 4 beats for every measure of music. Here’s what they look like over the beat:

[that thing pic. Maybe overlay colour rectangles over the music?]

As you can see you hit the kick drum on beats 1, the snare on beat 2, the kick again on beat 3, then the snare again on beat 4. Another way to look at this is kick on beat 1 & 3 and snare on beat 2 & 4.

As for the hi hat, you strike it twice for every beat. Once directly on the beat and once right in between beats

So at this point hopefully I haven’t confused you too much and you have a concept of what we’re doing here. Now how do you make your limbs play it?

How Do I Learn The Beat?

There are two different ways I like to approach learning new things on the drums. We’ll work our way through each of these approaches one at a time, but usually it takes a combination of each. This first one is the one-limb-at-a-time method, and the second is the throw-tempo-out-the-window method. 

One Limb At A Time Method

Let’s start with the one-limb-at-a-time way of doing things. So here’s what we’re going to do. As the name suggests, we’re going to play each individual part one limb at a time, just like how I showed you the hi hat part above. Then we’re going to start combining different limbs together. 

Hi Hat

Here’s the hi hat part:

Like I said, you’re going to want to use your right hand on the hi hat. If you don’t have a drum kit you can just tap your fingers on your desk or something, or you can make your own imagination-powered drumkit. Now, try striking the hi hat twice every beat. Like this:

Kick

Awesome job! That’s the hardest one!

Ok, next thing your going to do is the kick.

Here’s the notation for just the kick part. Those little squiggly things are called rests. They just mean you don’t play for that beat. As you can see we’re just going to play on beat 1 and beat 3:

Great, now try following along to the video.

Snare

You’re doing so great! (Well, um, hopefully.)

Ok, last one. I think you know the drill at this point. I’ll show you the notation and you try playing along to the video. This time you’re going to hit the snare on 2 and 4:

And try following along to the video:

Combining Separate Limbs

Sweet! So now that you have all the different parts in each of your limbs you’re going to try and do what drummers are famous for: Multitasking!

Kick And Snare

So first we’re going to try playing just the kick and the snare parts together. Here’s what that looks like:

Alright, let’s give this a go!

Kick And Hi hat

Ok, next up is kick and hi hat. I bet you’re starting to get what’s going on now.

Let’s do it.

Hi Hat And Snare

Last one. Give this a go!

And finally the video:

Wonderful! 

Bringing It All Together!

Alright guys, here we go! We’re going to do it! This is the last step. You’re going to play the kick, snare, AND hi hat all together at once.

(Yes, this is the same video as I posted above. But learning takes repetition, right? Right.)

Guys. That’s it. You did it. Well, hopefully. I don’t really know. But if you didn’t do it you can redo the parts you had trouble with and you’ll definitely get it!

But if you didn’t quiet get it we’re going to use one other technique:

Throw-Tempo-Out-The-Window Technique

This process has far fewer steps. With this technique you just kinda try ploughing through the beat, going as slow as you want, processing the notation as it comes. Here’s a video of me pretending to do that:

(This is the same notation as before.)

We’re Done!

You guys! You did it! You can play the drums! Now if a friend has a drumset and you wanna impress them you can put on a track and play a rock beat! Congrats!

Also, if you’re jamming with friends just play the beat to the tempo. It’s not anything fancy, there’s not much flair, but hey! You’re playing the drums! Isn’t that cool?

What Are Some Songs I Can Play Now?

The cool thing about drums is that you can play almost any beat to anything and it will usually sound good. And, since this is the most stripped-down drum beat there is, it works with almost anything! 

And just to prove you really can play this beat to anything, here’s a video of me playing only this beat to a bunch of different songs.

You can literally play this beat to thousands, if not millions, of songs and it will sound good.

Once you feel like you’re confident with this drum beat download my pdf of all my favourite beginner beats. The one you just learned is up at the top.

Thanks again for reading guys. Ok, now go join a band. 

Chris.