3+3+2

I'm really not happy with the quality of the available beginner/younger student drum set materials. For the most part they're terribly designed. They're either extremely dull, or they demand too much, or they're just dumb— see Drumeo's materials, where they think being a beginner means your eyesight is failing, so they spread a single measure of a rock beat across a full page. My hemiola funk series is beating the hell out of everything else I have encountered and used, in terms of being engaging, and easy and fun to play, while teaching students basic drumming coordination... and learning a rhythmic conception that is actually quite sophisticated.

I wrote this for several younger students who are working on that series. These are some easy ways of playing a very common rock figure, that happens to the same as the familiar tresillo rhythm. These are meant for playing and filling that rhythm as an ensemble figure, rather than as a repeating groove. Here I've written as an “additive rhythm”— as 3+3+2/8, rather than as it is normally notated, as a syncopated rhythm.

The rhythm here is regular 8th notes and 16th notes— there are no triplets. Don't be confused by the beaming. With students I count this 123-123-12. I don't have them count the 16th notes, or count while they play.

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