Grooves Using Odd Groupings - Drum Central

What's happening guys, welcome back in to the Drum Central YouTube channel. Today we're going to be discussing odd groupings, so go and grab the PDF which is in the description below and we'll get started. So I've been really digging Jost Nichols' brand new fill book, it's just as good as his groove book, go buy both, they're awesome. But just because it's a fill book doesn't mean I can't create interesting new grooves using his concepts. So one of the key concepts that I've been exploring is this groupings of 3's and 4's. Now that's quite common to use, usually what we do is we play 4 groups of 3, and then one group of 4 to make it 16th notes. So we'd have 1 e and a 2 e and a 3 e and a 4 e and a. But, what's to stop us potentially putting the 4 not at the end as it always is, but somewhere in the middle, and that's what I've done today. Now what we're going to do is we're going to take the group of 3 and instead of 3 3 3 3 4, we're going to go 3 4 3 3 3. And because maths, that still adds up to 16 so it's going to work. Now our group of 3 today is right left kick, and our group of 4 is right left kick kick. Super simple, super common. What we're going to do to turn it into a groove is the only thing missing is a backbeat. Now we have a couple of choices here. The first choice is to play this in half time. So there's 8 notes between 1 and the backbeat on 3. So the 8 notes are kick right left kick right left kick kick. Now the next bit is right left kick. So we're going to have to come down with our right hand onto the snare drum. That goes as this. 3 e and a 4 e and a 3 e and a 4 e and a. So the whole thing sounds like this. And I like starting with a kick drum because it means we've got a 1 in the groove and that's always nice and anchored. Even though this is a weird groove to play, an odd and unusual and potentially an advanced groove, it still sounds kind of like something we play. So let me try the half time version with the backbeat on 3 at 70 beats a minute. In this particular combos of 3's and 4's, I don't think that sounds as good as when we play the backbeat on 2 and 4. There's just something about that 2 and 4 in this particular example that I think sounds even better. So that sounds like this. Now just because of where it falls, the first, the 2 has to be on the right hand, just kind of like what we did before. But beat 4 is already a left, so instead of playing it as a ghost note, we just pop it. And we've got a groove that's, we're not really changing too much, but we've got a really easy, easy inverted commas, or simple groove to play that flows really nicely in the hands. Now let's try this a little bit faster at 90 beats a minute and see how it sounds. And now let's take it up to 110, which is what I played at the intro. But instead we'll sort of re-orchestrate it a little bit. I'll play the right hand all on the bell of the right cymbal, or the bow of the right cymbal, depends how I feel. But instead of coming down, I'm going to add a left hand, which is something I really like to do. I'm going to keep this odd grouping and I'm going to add something to make a backbeat on the left hand. So beat 2 is going to be like that. Let's try that at 110. So that's, there we have it. Can a fill become a groove, and can a groove become a fill. It's always a nice way, those are the only two things we play on the drums, so why not make the stuff you already know in one, fit in the other. If you dug this lesson, please hit subscribe. I'll catch you next week.