13 Levels of Drumming: Easy to Complex

My name is Larnell Lewis, drummer, composer, educator.

And today I've been challenged

to go through the levels of complexity at the drum kit.

[drum music]

This instrument has existed for over 100 years.

There have been tons of interpretations on it.

Just for today though, we're gonna hang out in my world.

And we're gonna go through

my interpretation of complexity on the drums.

So level one is the bass drum.

As a little bit of a precursor,

we're dealing in four, four time.

What that really explains is the value of the note,

and how many of those quarter notes exist in the bar.

I like to put the bass drum on one and three.

That's how we're gonna start.

[bass drum music]

Level two, we're gonna add the snare drum.

I like to consider the snare drum, the back beat.

That's a very common phrase that you'll hear in drumming.

It's similar to clapping.

We're gonna put the snare drum, or you're clapping,

on beat two and beats four, and that sounds like this.

[drum music]

Let's take it up a notch.

Level three, the hi-hat.

This is a really interesting kit piece,

meaning one of the parts of the drum kit.

And for the hi-hat,

it's something that you can do consistently.

We're gonna actually play the hi-hat

on all four quarter notes.

Now, let's put it all together.

[drum music]

Altogether, you call it a groove.

Another term for that is a drum pattern.

I'm gonna play two grooves.

One is a funk groove. I will evolve into that.

And the next one's a rock groove,

which I will also evolve into.

[drum music]

You may have noticed, with the hi-hat,

you were hearing a really sloshy, extended sound.

That was actually being achieved

by me raising my left foot just a little bit,

which allows the cymbals to spread apart,

[cymbal music]

and gives them that shimmering, sizzling sound.

So when I say open hi-hat. [cymbal music]

When I say closed hi-hat, [cymbal music] all right.

Beats that we've been hearing are these quarter notes.

And I'm playing what are called additional eighth notes,

but I'm accenting those as well.

In funk, you'll probably hear more of

a tighter hi-hat sound.

With rock, however, you will hear more open hi-hat

throughout the groove as your constant pattern.

When you're dealing with funk,

there's a term called on the one,

which means you're putting the emphasis on that downbeat,

which is with the bass drum.

Rock also shares that,

but it's a little more evenly spaced in terms of the energy

that you're putting on all of those beats.

So one emphasizes the downbeat, one smooths it out,

and you have clear sailing from top to bottom.

It might feel like it's a completely different style,

but they're neighboring styles.

And the complexity might just be

in the way that you play them.

But the patterns themselves aren't always

more complex in one way than another.

To help us lock in this groove a little bit more,

we should add some music.

This is a song of mine called Change Your Mind.

It's a little bit faster.

Get Ready. Let's Go for a Ride.

[funk music]

Let's move on. Level five, rudiments.

Rudiments are a grouping of notes or rhythms

that are also defined by what we like to call stickings.

Mentions of when you play your right hand,

versus your left hand.

The single stroke is a consistent set of notes

alternating between your right hand and your left hand.

Now, double strokes are two hits per hand.

Paraddile is a grouping of notes

which is a right, left, right, right.

[drum music]

These four notes can also be played the opposite way,

left, right, left, left.

Now a little bit faster for the right-handed,

and left-handed paraddile, alternating back and forth.

[dramatic music]

You can actually create a little more of an expression

with what you're playing by adding accents.

Accents are when you are playing

one note louder than another.

I'm gonna put the two paradiddles together now.

I'm gonna be accenting the first note

of each group of four notes.

Then the second time around,

I'm going to accent the second note

of each grouping of four notes.

[drum music]

I just wanna talk a little bit about the hi-hat bark.

Where we are, lifting our foot up, hitting the hi-hat,

and then closing our foot right back down again.

This takes a level of coordination,

because you need to time when you're opening your hi-hat,

or when you're lifting your foot

up against when you hit the hi-hat.

I could do it the other way around where I hit the hi-hat,

and then lift my foot, but it won't be the same effect.

So you lift your foot, strike the hi-hat,

and then bring your foot back down.

You can also do that in a variety of times.

So you can make it longer or extremely short.

But you can make it a little more complex

by adding another counter rhythm or syncopation,

let's say on your hi-hat, or on your bass drum,

or even on your snare drum.

Now, a syncopation is when you accent

something that's other than the strong beats,

or the average beats that you'd play in a bar.

[cymbal music]

Now, let's put it all together.

Next level, more complex grooves.

[drum music]

Now, the groove that you just heard

was similar to the pattern that we've learned already.

But I've actually added a couple of elements.

And I'm gonna break it down. Let's see what we get.

[drum music]

So for the most part,

I was playing one and three on the bass drum.

I've played an open hi-hat on the downbeat.

There was another skip note, or added 16th note,

that I was playing just before I played the downbeat.

I've also played some other rhythms,

or syncopations, on the bass drum.

Using syncopation you can create elaborate rhythms,

or even very simple rhythms that compliment

any drum groove that you're playing.

[drum music]

I actually snuck a paradiddle in there.

Right hand on the hi-hat, left hand on the snare.

[drum music]

Next level, polyrhythms.

Now, polyrhythms is next in the level of complexity,

really because it takes just a little bit more

than a level of our understanding of coordination.

A polyrhythm is actually

two rhythms layered on top of each other.

It makes a really interesting pattern that you hear overall.

The most standard version of a polyrhythm you'll hear

is the three over two.

[drum music]

Another one is the four over three.

So I'm gonna go from two over three,

and then I'm going to go to four over three.

[drum music]

Little more complex.

This one is going to be five over four.

[drum music]

Now, for the purpose of making sure that we

understand what this sounds like in a musical context,

we're gonna add the music again.

[funk music]

Next level, orchestration.

Which by the way, is just me taking a rhythm,

and putting one of my hands on a different

part of the drum set, but playing the same rhythm.

Sidebar, four-way independence, four-way coordination.

All of your limbs are playing different rhythms.

It's multiple rhythms happening

on multiple kit pieces at the same time.

[drum music]

We've built up solid bass through the rhythm,

through rudiments,

polyrhythms.

You can take all of those levels,

and you could reorchestrate anything that we've done so far.

If you remember our paradiddle from earlier,

I'm going to play it on the snare drum.

I'm going to take my right hand,

and I'm going to continue with that concept,

moving my right hand around

to different parts of the drum kit.

First tom, second tom, this other drum that I have here,

which is a snare drum, my floor tom.

And of course we can't forget the rest of the kit.

Crash cymbals.

I have another one that's a similar crash cymbal,

has a bunch of holes in it.

So if I play it very lightly, I get a really nice sizzle.

This is called a splash.

This is a trashformer, on top.

And I have another splash underneath it as well.

Here's another stack over here, the cymbal sandwich.

Three cymbals here.

The one on top is a 16 inch cymbal.

The one all the way on the bottom is a 14 inch China.

And in the middle is a really interesting looking cymbal

that has a lot of little holes in it.

Has a really nice trashy, rattly sound, like this.

[cymbal music]

And you can't forget the ride cymbal.

Now let's put this drum kit to good use.

Paradiddle reorchestrating,

right hand moving around to the different kit pieces.

[drum music]

And now, gotta have some music.

Moving the paradiddle around, adding a little more spice.

[funk music]

The beauty of orchestration,

is that it gives you a ton of options without needing

to change too much, rhythmically,

or with the rudiments that you're actually playing.

It actually moves you right into

the next level, which is drum fills.

[drum music]

A drum fill happens somewhere on the drum kit,

that takes you into another section of a song,

or helps to elevate the energy.

Sometimes it helps to bring the energy a little bit lower.

Any of the things that we've discussed before,

you can actually make those happen as drum fills.

I'm gonna play a drum groove,

and near the end of the drum groove, before I stop,

I'm going to play a drum fill.

[drum music]

Here's another example of that.

[drum music]

And a third option because, why not?

[drum music]

That's the power of drum fills.

The first one was probably a little more complex,

in terms of it had more rhythms going on.

The second one didn't have as many rhythms,

and it stayed on a couple of kit pieces.

[drum music]

And of course the last fill that I did was really sparse.

[drum music]

Meaning there wasn't a lot of information,

a lot of drumming happening.

And it gave that sense of going down a gear,

or we are about to get a little bit slower.

Now for something a little more advanced

a 30 second note drum fill.

[drum music]

Here's another option, a little more wild,

some crashes, sprinkle some stuff around.

[drum music]

Moving on from drum fills, we have embellishments.

[drum music]

Some people might think embellishments belong

just a little bit earlier.

But I actually like to add embellishments,

or ornamentation, after understanding drum fills.

When you know how to play a drum fill,

you can always push the envelope,

and embellish a certain part of the drum fill.

It's really just that added expression to the moment,

to take it up under the notch.

I'm actually going to level up a drum pattern

into a drum fill, with more embellishments as I go along.

[drum music]

There was a lot of improvised information,

and playing happening.

I started out with a main pattern,

and the type of things that I did were to

break up the monotonous flow.

[drum music]

So now I'm adding a really interesting element,

maybe on the hi-hat.

There was some activity that happened on the bass drum.

[drum music]

From there, I started adding some toms.

At this point, you're getting more energy, more excitement.

And I'm adding bits and pieces, adding cymbals, adding toms.

It's getting even bigger, to the point where

you may not even recognize the original pattern.

But now we are adding to the story.

We're adding to the excitement,

and take you even higher, and higher and higher,

until you get lost inside of all of it.

[drum music]

I'm gonna try it again.

But this time I'm gonna put a little more emphasis

on some of the lower drums.

I'm going to do what's called grounding the pattern

in a different way, by accenting rhythms

that feel like they're connected to the

stronger beats that we've been hearing,

whether it's beat one, two, three, or four.

Here we go.

[drum music]

I was grounding the overall pattern

by playing eighth notes on the floor toms,

so that you felt this really big [mimics drum beats].

[drum music]

Having lower tones at that part of the beat

was a really cool embellishment,

and helped to ground what you were hearing.

Then anything I added, whether it was toms or hi-hat,

these were all rhythms that took me

towards these bigger embellishments.

Eventually I changed the bass drum pattern,

so now the core drum pattern felt a little bit different.

But it had the same spirit.

Let's pull it all together.

You got grooves, polyrhythms,

four-way coordination,

embellishments,

orchestration.

So many of these things

are going to come together in a drum solo.

What you're about to hear is the last and final vamp section

of Change Your Mind going into the drum solo.

[funk music]

That's definitely one way to level up your heart rate.

My goodness.

Pro tip.

Make sure you're breathing when you're playing the drums.

One thing I've come to appreciate about

the levels of complexity of the drums, is that

once I understood from drumming how to find my voice,

I realized that I didn't have to always be complex.

I didn't have to always play really fast.

Because the purpose, for me,

is to drive home a story or drive home a feeling.

The art is in the way that you can hang left, right,

or go straight through all of these levels of complexity.

I hope you learned something.

And if you didn't, you better hit rewind.

And make sure you go out and learn how to express yourself.

It's levels to this thing.

[drum music]