Are you having trouble playing your bass drums splits?
When you look at the music does your run look like this? Does it sound like this?
Don’t fret. There is a simple method to smoothing out your splits. You’re already capable of playing the rhythms. As a bass drum section, we need to address how we play rhythms together.
How do we do that?
It has everything to do with how you’re listening.
Let’s look at this bass drum split for an 8-on-a-hand exercise.
Two things that jump out at me are the never ending sixteenth notes and the lack of check points. We’re going to change that to make learning and playing this correctly easier.
The first thing I like to do is break down the individual entrance of each player. This turns into an eighth note split.
This is the starting point and of utmost importance to the success of any bass drum split. Practice this slowly until every player is comfortable with their own entrances.
From here we can call out odd and even splits. By that I mean the odd drums(Bass 1, Bass 3, etc.) or even drums(Bass 2, Bass 4, etc.) will add in a second note after their entrance creating sixteenth note rhythms. You will get something like this.
This is the real secret. You’re creating individual rhythms that you can easily listen to and understand when something goes wrong. Not only do we keep the part extremely simple, we are also only one step away from our desired result.
Don’t forget to switch and let the even drums play sixteenth-notes too.
After everyone has become comfortable creating simple rhythms, it is time for everyone to add in their second note and play the desired split.
This kind of break down works for all of the common rhythm splits.
- Sixteenth notes (Twos)
- Sextuplets (Threes)
- Thirty-second notes (Fours)
You can also make the exercise more difficult by calling out ‘Odd 2s and even threes.’ Or ‘Odd 4s and even 2s.’ There are a great number of combinations to get you thinking.
Try applying this to your exercises or show music.
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