Continuing a very easy system I'm using with a younger student— I feel kind of cheated that I wasn't taught this myself, and that I haven't been teaching it all these years. This is as elementary to playing drumset as RLRL is to playing snare drum. Everybody should be teaching this. This should be just about the first thing anyone plays on the drum set.
Last time we played a simple rhythm from Syncopation, alternating between RH/RF in unison, and LH on snare. This time we'll alternate between both hands in unison, and bass drum.
Once again we'll be reading from Progressive Steps to Syncopation, pp. 10-11, top line part only. At first play RH on cym / LH on snare, start with the hands and alternate. This is how you would play line 2:
Also do them pseudo-alternating, starting every measure with the hands:
And starting every measure with the bass drum:
Measures that naturally start the same way every measure should be played starting with either thing. For example, play line 5 both of these ways:
When I think of all the frustrating first drum set lessons I've given... I've always tried hard to simplify that first rock beat, to what ever extent an individual student needs, and it's still very difficult for many of them. This is completely natural expression of a rhythm on the full drum set, using normal drum set language, and it takes no independence at all. See the “worst drummer ever” post where the kid does this in the wild with no apparent instruction from anyone, because it's a totally natural thing to do.
We've been doing this a*-backwards, people. We start them with a lot of rock beats, which take a fair amount of independence for a beginner, and save this entire area of easy non-independent stuff— which people use all the time for ordinary things like playing ensemble accents and set ups— for more advanced jazz students. No wonder the drum set is a strange, intimidating instrument to so many students.
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