What is new
Since 7 October the drum section of our Noten-Player has grown a lot: 40 pieces instead of 16. Three things were added.
Eight grooves with fills. Rock ’n’ roll, twist, funk, funk with a sixteenth-note hi-hat, hip-hop, half-time, soul and a soul ballad in triplets. Each groove is eight bars long and contains two different fills. So you practise what actually happens in a song: groove, fill, back into the groove.
Seven fills on their own. From the first fill in quarter notes through eighths, sixteenths and triplets to a fill with the kick drum and a fill with rests. Always one bar of groove, one bar of fill.
Nine exercises in the new group “Rhythm & accents”: note values, counting rests, sixteenth-note figures, moving accents, kick drum, open hi-hat, hand and foot, around the kit.
Most pieces come in several levels: kids, beginner and intermediate. A grid runs below the notation. Written-out triplets now appear as three boxes per beat.
Who this is not for
If you already play sixteenth-note grooves with confidence and build your own fills, there is little new here: the levels stop at intermediate. And the player does not replace a drum kit. A practice pad or an electronic kit is enough, though.
A task for this week
Open the “Short fill” in the “Fills” group. The groove keeps going and the fill only comes at the end of the bar, as in most songs. Set the loop to two bars, lower the tempo and count out loud. The goal is not the fill. The goal is beat 1 after it: it should land exactly where it would have landed without the fill.