Drum Secrets 2 PDF

Drum Secrets 2
iPhone and iPad App
by Sam Brown
VIDEO 1
SIXTEENTHS 101
WELCOME!
Or perhaps I should say Welcome back if we have already met in Drum Secrets One.
Whichever way it is, I am delighted to be chatting to you here via these PDFs.
Thank you SO much for spending your hard-earned gig-money on my humble app. However,
I humbly believe that if you work through some of the material within these videos, MP3s
and PDFs your money will have been well spent. The apps value for money is largely dependant upon the amount of time you invest in exploring the topics here-in. Feel free to
just watch the videos and laugh uncontrollably at my bald-patch (for that alone is worth the
tiny amount of money that you have spent). However, If you do invest some time working
through the material Im presenting to you, that tiny investment will become the equivalent
of having bought some Apple shares twenty years ago! Yes, there is HUGE value here if you
dive in with an open, enthusiastic mind and ambition in your heart.
The language of 16th notes

Yes, I know it sounds a bit corny, but it really is true: music is a language. Language is a form
of communication, and music certainly communicates a great deal - more than can be said
with words sometimes. For our language of sixteenth-notes, the alphabet would be the basic sounds: bass drum, hi-hat, unaccented snare and accented snare. Our vocabulary is made
up from the following combinations of four sixteenth notes:
Sam Brown Music 2012 www.drumsecrets.com Twitter: @sambrownmusic
of this vocabulary, in other words. Once you know what each one sounds like youll be
reading rhythms that are way beyond Grade Eight standard.
As a general rule, the more rests you eliminate, the easier the music will be to read. Here is
a mind-numbingly simple example:
The copyist/computer/whoever who wrote the example on the left presumed that the
stems for the hi-hat and snare drum should go up, and that the bass drum notes stems
should go down. This is understandable because they are probably used to writing music for
piano, guitar, harp and other polyphonic instruments. Sadly, this approach is not very helpful
for the reading drummer. Youll notice those horrible quarter-note rests on beats two and
four. If the writer had understood that the tune we are playing here is the bass drum/snare
drum pattern and that the hi-hat part is a much less important part of the musical pattern,
he would be more likely to write it as per the example on the right.
This becomes even more obvious when you consider our old friend the sixteenth-note
groove. If I religiously follow the rule I have just told you about youd get this:
which looks horrible because of the 16th note rests. So why not write it like this:
Answer: Because now weve got quarter-note rests on beats two and four and we cant see
the tune because its split between stems-up and stems-down. So we have to compromise
and run the risk of upsetting some music theorists out there. I believe the easiest way to
write this bar is like this:
Now we can see the tune (because the melody notes are all stem-down) yet we also understand that there is no hi-hat at the same time as the snare drum. The fact that the stem
goes up and down for the snare notes is the compromise we make for the sake of being
able to read this groove quickly and easily.
Another important way to eliminate rests was hinted at in the video: A long note on a
drum is the same as short note followed by a bunch of rests. In other words these two examples are to all intents and purposes the same:
As are these two:
By applying this rule, we can make certain phrases much easier to read.
Look at this horror:
Lets apply the rule and see how much clearer it is:
Yes, ditch the rests and the picture becomes a whole lot easier to read.
Sometimes I see really great drum tutor books rendered almost incomprehensible by the
way the music is typeset or copied. Such a shame. Sometimes, if a student is struggling with
a new piece they have picked up from the music shop, all I have to do is re-write it. I make
sure to get the stems going in the most logical direction and eliminating as many rests as I
can. Miraculously, the pupil gets up and running with the new piece in half the time.
Why Read?
Well, two huge reasons:
1) Your Education
2) Your Drumming Career
Firstly, when you can read, you are able to learn a ton of stuff that you would be very hard
pushed to learn without reading. I think the following videos and pages in this app will convince you of this. You might, for example, go through all possible combinations of sixteenth
notes whilst playing a displaced paradiddle between your left hand and left foot without using
the reading material here... but I doubt it! This is a way of leaving no stone unturned, as
they say.
There may have already been times when you have wanted to play one rhythmic pattern in
one limb whilst playing another pattern somewhere else on the kit, but the mental agility
required would be somewhat super-human. Writing a musical challenge like that down is
write
it too which is extremely useful as youll see in the next paragraph.
Secondly, whilst it is totally possible to enjoy a glittering career as a drummer without being able to read, I believe that this inability is in inverse proportion to how lucky you are. In
other words, instead of relying on luck to get your career off the ground, stack the odds in
sight-reading my way through a gig at Londons famous 100 Club with a fabulous band called
Blue Harlem featuring the wonderful singer Imelda May. I had been called as a last-minute
dep but suitably impressed the guys and was asked to join the band permanently shortly
afterwards. I would never have got that gig without being a good reader. From the connections I have made through that band, I have gone around the world and played for Royalty
and Film Stars. It is worth being able to read.
What Next?
In this app I have only got time to present one area of reading to you - ie sixteenth notes.
Youll need to know all about things like compound time-signatures, second endings, codas,
triplets, clefs, articulations...Yes theres more stuff to learn, but I hope to show you in this
app that learning to read music is not unlike learning a language and is, in many respects,
easier.
ing tracks work rather like a teacher, in that you get immediate feedback when you play
something wrong. To expand your reading skills to include other styles and formats youll
Secrets 3, of course) but at least you can become blisteringly brilliant at reading sixteenth
notes with a little help from me.
I should also mention that there is a really useful reading section in my Musicians Hypnosis iPhone app. The fact that you can read these words means that your brain already has
a mechanism to turn squiggles of ink on paper into sounds in your minds ear. This is the
same way we read music - its just different squiggles. The hypnosis helps to strengthen this
link and it also helps to undo the very unhelpful belief that you might have learnt through
a few bitter experiences that I am crap at reading music. Once you ditch the belief that
really quickly.
Drum Secrets 2
iPhone and iPad App
by Sam Brown
VIDEO 2
BASS DRUM FUN!
READING IS EASY - I PROMISE!

In this video I show you how you can discover the sound of each of the words in our
vocabulary by putting them on the bass drum within a sixteenth note groove. I also
introduce you to the concept of the Release Bar - something I hope you will use forevermore with everything you learn. Possibly you have already been practising this way anyway,
which is brilliant.
Some lucky people stumble upon excellent learning strategies and become brilliant almost
to continue where the talented drummers reached an impasse. More on this in my

podcasts and forthcoming iBook....
will help you to mentally divide up a bar into four chunks (provided the music is in 4/4
four chunks of four sixteenths is much easier to de-code than one huge chunk of sixteen
sixteenth-notes.
Youcanprobablyread thissentenceeventhough therearenospaces betweenthewords

gaps after every four words which is the equivalent of the bar lines in a line of music. Your
You can do the same with music (once you can recognise the words).
If for any reason you cant recognise the words, youre in trouble:
Yes, its a challenge in Czech (unless you speak Czech, of course). In that example it is little
more than guesswork as to where each word begins and ends. With a line of music your
brain has to do the same thing ie recognise the chunks. My humble method in this app will
help your brain to do this quite elegantly while you have some musical fun at the same time.
)
You may remember that this could have been written as a sixteenth followed
by a dotted eighth. Its quite common to see it this way, which is why I included it in the test.)
careful with those two).
and doing something on autopilot (see the Four Levels Of

Learning bit in Drum Secrets to understand more about this. ) What we need is instant
recognition, and the way to speed that up is to take a page of sixteenth-notey music and talk
it through.
When you do a talk-through of a line of music this is how you would describe what you
of the bar. ie:
The second sixteenth note of beat four or
The third sixteenth note of beat one
page or two before playing anything. It makes progress faster and more fun in the long run.
1) Sixteenth-note one of beat three

2) Sixteenth-note one of beat four
3) Sixteenth-note four of beat four
4) Sixteenth-note three of beat two
5) Sixteenth-note two of beat one
6) Sixteenth-note four of beat one
7) Sixteenth-note two of beat three
8) Sixteenth-note four of beat three
9) Sixteenth-note one of beat two
10) Sixteenth-note two of beat two
given time.
rules and trust your eyes more than your minds ear.
-------RELEASE--------
Drum Secrets 2
iPhone and iPad App
by Sam Brown
VIDEO 3
THE BACKBEATS OF DOOM!
THE FUN PATH TO AWESOMENESS:

In this video we discover how many combinations of sixteenth-notes we can have on beat
two. If we are playing a groove with a backbeat, there will be a snare walloping away on
The six variations look like this:
Now we have the complete picture: all possible positions for the bass drum within a
position of beat two because thats where the snare backbeat is. I am not saying that you
NEVER put a bass drum down at the same time as the snare backbeat, but for the purposes
of this learning method well leave it out.
I was fortunate enough to be able to study at the prestigious Berklee College of Music
and whilst there I worked through the Patterns books by Gary Chaffee. The Backbeats of
Doom page is my take on what I learned from Gary. I strongly recommend checking his
books out.
When I worked on this material when I was a student the only accompaniment I used was
a metronome. I was living and breathing drums so I just knuckled down and did the work
because thats what you did at music college. I returned home to the UK with my degree
and started teaching what I had learnt back in the USA. However, I was teaching students
who were not in a music college environment and the motivation to practice was very
different. I tried teaching them what I had learnt, but they didnt really get their teeth into it.
It was too dry. Dullsville. Yawn.
Bor-ing!
Thats when I started developing the backing tracks and the whole method was transformed.
Hey, even I started working on the page again because it was so much FUN! My students
thought so too and they improved dramatically. I can quote my erstwhile pupil Leo
Crabtree, now drummer for The Prodigy, as saying that if it werent for the backing tracks he
would never have gone the distance with the backbeats page.
It is, I believe, a fantastically powerful combination: The Backbeats of Doom and the MP3
backing tracks and Ive been using my copy for about twenty years! I have printed the page
supply shop or stationers will be able to do this for you too.
So here it is. Just for you:
FOR USE WITH DRUM SECRETS 2 IPHONE/IPAD APP
Sometimes jumping straight in with the Backbeats Of Doom page is a little over-ambitious.
Ive given you some guidance on how to nurse yourself into a new ride pattern or sticking
up before diving into the page:
That approach works particularly well when practising the left-hand-lead routine coming up.
one line (ie all twelve bars - dont forget that the page is a six-by-twelve table.) Then you
have experienced all the coordination that youll need. From then on its just combinations
and you can have fun making it groove with the backing tracks.
there should be a nice bland release bar! Hey, we are all human and it is tempting to rock
out with this and get carried away. My only caveat here is this: if you arent 100% perfect
than good. Avoid the temptation to over-play unless you can guarantee perfection.
So what follows now is a short selection of approaches that you can try out with the
Backbeats Of Doom. This should get you started, but I really hope that you use your
That way youll become an original player with a distinctive sound - something youll need in
order to stand out amongst the millions of brilliant drummers out there!
Ambition, imagination and bravery are three very good qualities to nurture. Go for it!
Below are some suggested ways to use the Backbeats Of Doom. With the sticking-pattern
examples, see if you can adapt them by reversing the sticking. With the Ride Pattern
approach, work on them left-handed too. This might mean changing your kit setup a little - I
be a lot better at demonstrating your grooves to a left-handed pupil.
TO PUSH, OR NOT TO PUSH...

When you have the last sixteenth-note (ie the fourth one) followed by a rest, it gives you
that funky pushed feeling:
The scat syllables: Scoo-by-do-WAH describe what I mean, in a roughly phonetical way.
However, that push feeling disappears as soon as you place a note directly after it:
Thats more of a: Du-DUM kind of sound.... if you see what I mean.

I only mention this because the two types of sixteenth-note number 4 feel very different.
One is funky and syncopated, the other has a much more solid and grounded down-beaty
feel. After working on the material in this app youll recognise the 2 different situations and
read accordingly.
Watch out for bar-lines and particularly those instances where the Du-DUM is split
between two lines.
When working through the Backbeats Of Doom page, you could choose a release bar which
has a bass drum on the downbeat:
Or you could choose a release bar with a rest on the downbeat:
The two ways of playing a release will give a different feel to the groove. Just so as you
know....
Drum Secrets 2
iPhone and iPad App
by Sam Brown
VIDEO 4
TH E NIG H TM A R E BA R !
THE BITTER PILL WORTH SWALLOWING:
and squeeky-clean
Get those bass-drum/left-hand unisons really together

not nearly enough
will
Drum Secrets 2
iPhone and iPad App
by Sam Brown
VIDEO 5
THE DRUM-GODS JUST MADE ME FUNKY!
SOME GROOVY SUGGESTIONS:

Below are some suggested ways to use the Backbeats Of Doom. With the sticking-pattern
examples, see if you can adapt them by reversing the sticking. With the Ride Pattern
approach, work on them left-handed too. This might mean changing your kit setup a little - I
be a lot better at demonstrating your grooves to a left-handed pupil.
With all of these examples, for the sake of clarity, I have not written in the left foot part.
More on that later...
his funky guitar to my backing tracks. Rather than bury his credit in the small-print at the
made such a difference and has added life to what would otherwise be a very sterile bit of
THE LEFT FOOT

When you move your right hand up to the ride cymbal (or cow-bell, x-hat, wood-block etc
for you to try out.
see how the feet interact with each other. Once those three limbs are secure, then add the
The obvious choices are quarter-notes in the left foot, eighth-notes in the left
foot and the up beats in the left foot.
When you get really ambitious it is possible to play much more elaborate rhythms such as
to play cow bells and even cabassas with the left foot - that opens up a whole world of
DYNAMICS MAKE YOU FUNKY

Towards the end of the video I talk about the issue of dynamics. I cannot over-emphasise
the importance of getting as wide a range of dynamics as possible within the groove. The
unaccented snare notes of a sticking pattern need to be whisper-quiet and the backbeat
needs to be a full-in-the-face rimshot accent. By learning to control your drumming to
the extreme ends of the scale, youll then have the control to play anywhere within that
spectrum of sound. It is vital to know, and be able to play, where the ends of the scale are.
Here is a game you can play which teaches you a great deal of dynamic control. Play quarternote unisons between two limbs - lets take right hand and right foot as an example. Play
It is quite tricky to keep the unisons really tight, and is especially challenging when you use
However, it is a very powerful learning tool as well as being a good test of your dynamic
control abilities.
Drum Secrets 2
iPhone and iPad App
by Sam Brown
VIDEO 6
LINEAR DRUMMING MADE EASY
AN INTRO TO LINEAR DRUMMING

I seem to be using the phrase Linear drumming is the funkiest thing you can do with a bar of
sixteenth-notes rather too much in this app. However, I do believe that to be the case.
Using the John Bonham Triplet routine as the opening wedge into this technique is a great
introduction to both Linear Drumming and indeed to Polyrhythms. The idea of playing
groups of three, but phrasing them in groups of four scrambles the listeners brain and
creates a very pleasant state of mild musical confusion. This state of confusion creates
tension, and we resolve the tension by bringing out the backbeat as demonstrated. The
result? Funkiness.
As with previous examples, dynamics are key here. Go for extremes: very quiet and very
loud. Its that contrast in volumes that makes this work so well. Heres what the lick looks
like:
the bass drum notes and the snare backbeat combine which creates the tune. More on this
tune thing in the next video.
That lick is only the start of a huge topic. It is almost overwhelming when
by linking it in with the Backbeats of Doom backing tracks.
As I mentioned on the video, I have created the Linear Backbeats Of Doom page for you.
Print it out, laminate it in plastic if you like, and it will be your friend for many many years.
However, although the framework of bass drum notes and the backbeat are exactly the
You could, if you wanted to, write out your own version of this page by choosing your own
wanted to get creative and produce your own page:
Youll notice that the bass drum and the accented snare backbeat are the same for all four
Now at this point I have a confession to make. When I do the demonstration of the Linear
Backbeats Of Doom I merrily say how easy it is to play a paradiddle as your release bar. I
then proceed to play something different! It seems that the release bar that I was putting in
was, more often than not, this: R L R R L L R L.
Now in a way I am glad I made that mistake because it proves that when I was playing beats
3 and 4 I was truly relaxing my brain and playing on autopilot. This is exactly what you are
supposed to do in a release bar, so in a way I have proved my point. Anyway, I wasnt going
Drum Secrets 2
iPhone and iPad App
by Sam Brown
VIDEO 7
LINEAR DRUMMING GOES BONKERS!

FOUR HUNDRED MILLION GROOVES! (nearly)
Yes, its true. Take four sixteenth-notes, distribute them between bass drum, hi-hat, accented
snare and unaccented snare and youll get about a hundred and forty usable chunks of
music. (The un-usable ones are the ones with three-in-a-row or more so I disregarded
them). Multiply 140 by 140 four times and you get 3,841,6000. Thats a lot of grooves!
Please excuse my blatant advertising for my Drum Linear iPhone App in this video, but I
think you would have some fun with it and also learn some hot grooves in the process.
The secret to linear drumming is to do lots and lots of grooves, not just learn a dozen or
so patterns and end there. The idea is that you should be able to weave any pattern you
wish around the kit and in order to do that you need to have a large database of linear
experience under your belt. The Drum Linear app helps you to build that linear repertoire
in a fun and musical way.
As explained, you have to extract the tune that is hidden in that bar of sixteenths. After a
while youll get pretty adept at doing this and youll be milking the music from the bars in no
time. When I recorded the demo of me playing with no dynamics and then playing the same
pattern with dynamics, I was amazed at the difference. I have demonstrated that routine to
my students in their lessons, but never actually heard myself doing it! It is a very powerful
demonstration of the importance of dynamics.
Heres the bar that the Drum Linear App came up with for me:
LINEAR LEARNING STRATEGIES:

Here I go a little deeper into the subject of release bars. If they enable you to loop an
exercise and play a continuous stream of music then youll probably be enjoying your
practice session much more. There is nothing worse than trying to play something with
supreme effort and failing! It is much better to play with little effort and to SUCCEED!
Scuse me whilst I tweet those last two sentences..... There. Done!
The law of reversed effort sometimes works wonders. Yes, there are times when you really
have to stretch yourself, but I think the 80-20 principle applies here. In other words: use
stealth learning for 80% of your practice time and really burn for the remaining 20%.
With stealth learning you are making the task as easy as possible by taking very small steps
forward. There should be no sweat when you are practising this way. Using release bars is a
great example of stealth learning, and so is playing an exercise really, really slowly.
In the video I demonstrate a good practice routine using the release-bar method. The
graphic on the screen tells you what my brain is doing as I play. Ive compressed the
practice-session into about 90 seconds for the video - you should take considerably longer
when you use this routine.
The main thing is to notice how calm you can remain when you work this way. If your
degree of calmness is in proportion to the speed at which you are playing, see how much
calmer you feel when you slow down. Often Ill ask a student this question: How relaxed
will you feel when you can play this brilliantly? Then Ill go on to ask them to pretend to
be that relaxed NOW and see how much better they play. (Also, for those of you with any
knowledge of NLP, youll notice the embedded command there: you can play this brilliantly.
Haha! Sneaky stuff!)
Anyway, getting to the top by climbing the cliff face is almost impossible - go round the back
and walk gently up the slope. Metaphors - dont you just love em.
MORE LINEAR FUN:

Heres an idea which I simply didnt have time to put on the video. Its seriously cool! Youll
love it.
The idea is to choose a linear groove which doesnt contain too many double strokes and to
but with the embellishments:
The dynamics still apply though, so keep the 32nd note doubles really quiet.
pretend they are eighth-note triplets! Ignore the last four notes (the greyed out ones in the
example below). Now you have some cool jazz patterns. OMG, I have just opened up a can
of very wriggly worms with that idea.... I feel another app design coming on!
Drum Secrets 2
iPhone and iPad App
by Sam Brown
VIDEO 8
DISPLACED STICKINGS
WHEN IS A PARADIDDLE NOT A PARADIDDLE?
The answer is, of course when it is not a paradiddle. In other words, even if we move the
sticking around, it is still that cherished pattern of RLRR LRLL. However, this video should
show you that theres lots to explore in that hallowed rudiment and some hidden gems to
be found too.
This video is all about displacing a sticking pattern and, for familiaritys sake, Ive chosen the
paradiddle as our starting point. The routine I do at the beginning is something like this:
Actually, the very last displacement is slightly different from what I describe in the video. I
actually start the paradiddle on the second sixteenth-note of the bar. This way it makes for
a nice little four bar routine thats worth learning.
I remember seeing a drum clinic on TV (ahh, those were the days when they put interesting
stuff on the telly) featuring the great Billy Cobham and I remember him doing a similar
routine. Very clever I thought. I tried doing it and soon discovered that it was more fun to
However, many many years later, after playing with paradiddles in a far less exercise-y and
much more musical way, I discovered that I could (pretty much) do the routine that Billy had
What had happened? Well, I think I learned that I learnt best when I was having fun. As
journey, I had managed to frame learning paradiddle stickings as being fun. I hope to take
that concept and show you how to make things fun for you too.
So now we dive into the application of some displaced stickings. This will lift them from the
bottom of the stuff I should do but cant be arsed list, to the top of the lemme at it! I HAVE to
learn to do that
Heres some of the fun that I demonstrate on the video. Firstly, one bar of plain vanillanote is hi-hat and bass-drum together in unison. However, the hi-hat in that example
can be left out leaving just the bass drum playing on the very last note. It is a little more
comfortable, I think. Try both ways of playing it.
The next thing to do is to condense the two bar phrase into one bar: half a bar of plain
paradiddle followed by half a bar displaced:
ONLY THE BEGINNING

Well, we have certainly given the humble paradiddle a bit of a shake-up, but do remember
that its the principle of displacing stickings that you are learning here - not just a party-trick
with a paradiddle. I hope youll start exploring paradiddle-diddles and double paradiddles the
If you have seen Drum Secrets 1, youll know that sticking patterns exist for a musical
reason and are simply combinations of single and double strokes. Invent your own stickings
and then have fun displacing them and see what you get. I certainly didnt discover the cool
grooves you have heard in this app until I got pencil and paper out and started moving the
notes about. Engage imagination, and off you go...
Drum Secrets 2
iPhone and iPad App
by Sam Brown
VIDEO 9
LETS GO HORIZONTAL!
SPEAKING THE LANGUAGE
Yes, by now youll have grasped the big picture that Im painting with this app. Some
extremely complex music grows from the roots of some essentially simple things: our
without reference to a grid of hi-hat notes is a slightly different process for our brains to
comes relatively easily.

I often explain to a pupil that when you read vertically you are relating each note to that
- the important information
our minds ear!
read it you can also write it! Now, I can hear you protesting that you have no ambition to
write music, but consider the following scenario:
than the guys in the band! I can say with cast-iron certainty that It is a double chorus after the
sax solo, then the bridge, then the third verse.
What I suggest is that you do is err on the side of caution and get your reading
and theory chops together - just to be on the safe side. My own career took
a dramatic turn thanks to one pivotal gig. I was called for a last-minute dep
job with a great swing/blues band called Blue Harlem featuring the wonderful
singer Imelda May at Londons famous 100 Club in Oxford Street. With no
rehearsal I went in and sight-read my way through two sets of charts. I did a
band. Im still with them now. Had it not been for that evenings sight-reading
challenge the past ten years would have turned out very differently. That band
has taken me around the world and to some amazing places, Buckingham
Palace was a particular highlight, and I have got to play with some fantastic
musicians too.
My point is that although youll probably not need to read on every gig,
occasionally it can come in very useful career-wise! Theres a plethora of good
teachers, study aids, iPhone apps and more out there which make learning this
stuff easy and fun. Go for it - doors open if you are a good reader.
If you can read these words then there is a neural network already in your
brain which can convert squiggles of ink on paper (or screen) into sounds in
your head. You say the words in your minds ear as you read. Reading music
is exactly the same mental process only using a different set of squiggles. It
is also different in that you dont use your vocal chords to produce the sounds
unless you are a singer. No, youll be blowing, scraping, or thumping to get
the sounds out instead.
Anyway, if you were a bit iffy about reading then I hope that has encouraged you to
HORIZONTAL READING FOR DRUMMIES
vocabulary. You can choose to read the melody with any limb, but the way I demonstrate
which ultimately youll be able to play on auto-pilot and Ill suggest some melody/ostinato
HORIZONTAL READING
FOR
DRUMMIES
HORIZONTAL READING
FOR DRUMMIES P2
Drum Secrets 2
iPhone and iPad App
by Sam Brown
VIDEO 10
SAM GOES BONKERS!
JUST THE BEGINNING

Yes, youve probably got the idea now that this app is just the beginning for you. Using the
tools Ive shared with you, youll be able to forge your own path and develop your own style
and identity as a musician.
to think. What would it be like if I played such-and-such left handed or I like this bar - how
can I develop it into something really special?
I can also introduce you to another page of melodies in this lesson: the Horizontal Reading
From Hell page. Here I have included some polyrhythmic reading which is way beyond
Grade Eight reading, yet if you work through the Backbeats of Doom and the Horizontal
Reading For Drummies youll be reading this stuff with ease.
When you set up a new ostinato for use with either of the two Horizontal Reading pages,
its a good idea to work on the required skills list which I mention in the video. Depending
upon the kind of exercise you have designed for yourself, the list will be slightly different.
For instance in the video I leave the feet doing a really strange pattern: the bass drum is on
sixteenth-notes 2 and 4. Therefore both hands are free so my required skills list would be a
bunch of two-limbed patterns. For instance:
Singles, Doubles, Displaced Doubles, Paradiddles, Polyrhythms.
Heres what they look like:
Then the fun really starts. Yes, its time for some Polyrhythms!
We have met a polyrhythm already in video number six. We started our exploration of
linear drumming by playing little chunks of three notes, even though the music was blatantly
constructed in groups of four. The poor listeners brain doesnt know which way to think:
Do I latch onto the 3 phrase or the 4 phrase? and its this confusion which makes it
sound so interesting (read: funky) to us.
The way I approached the 3 polyrhythm in this example is to play a simple R L L sticking
and loop it around. Unfortunately, because the sticking is totally out of phase with the
sixteenth notes in the bar, we have to do THREE WHOLE BARS of this polyrhythm before
we wind up with R L L at the beginning of the bar again. Sorry, thats just the way it works.
resolve etc etc. Heres the 3 polyrhythm written out so you can see whats going on:
It is also very common to phrase the 3 polyrhythm R R L. I didnt include

this in the demo on the video, but you should try it out anyway:
Next we meet the 5 polyrhythm.Yummy, this is really useful - well worth learning! This
minds ear to know where you are in the bar. Very helpful.) A Polyrhythm like this creates
a lot of tension in the music so dont feel that you have
The audience loves polyrhythms, but only when you RESOLVE THE TENSION with a big, fat,
friendly downbeat at the end. The release of musical tension FEELS GREAT!
The next polyrhythm is the group of seven. The sticking Im using in the demo is:
R L R L R L L and it resolves after seven bars. Useful for confusing the dancers on the dance
If you can play these polyrhythms whilst playing the ostinato at the same time then I reckon
you are pretty comfortable with the coordination. I took the liberty of doing a little solo for
you on the video here. Im not fond of self-indulgent chop-fests when I teach, but I thought
you should at least see where this approach has led me. Now you can have some fun and
lot easier having been through the preliminary exercises from the list. You can read with
imagination to create your own approach. After working this way for a while youll have
great fun next time you read a Tower Of Power drum chart or need to play a blistering solo.
Its a great skill to have.
choose an ostinato which leaves only one limb free, then your required skills
list would be a little different. We touched on this way of learning in Drum
Secrets 1 when we explored the Samba groove as part of our bass drum doubles lesson.
We had two basic skills to master: melody notes on the down-beats and melody notes on
the up-beats.
If you understand the metaphor of the guy restoring bike engines by making sure each
component was in perfect condition, youll approach the Horizontal Reading pages in the
you need. In the example on the video there were two fundamental skills: 1) melody notes
in unison with the right hand and 2) melody notes in unison with the bass drum. Therefore,
before trying to read anything at all, I made sure those skills were comfortable. Heres what
those exercises look like:
Finally we need to get to grips with the Polyrhythms. These guys are very simple patterns
really, its just a shame that they look so terrifying when they are written down! Sorry about
that. I hope that when you start playing them youll hear the repetitiveness of the phrase
and play them by ear to start with.
So here are the Horizontal Reading From Hell reading pages. Sometimes I have used ties
to join notes together even though we have no way of sustaining the sound of a single hit
on a percussion instrument. Although it is usually helpful to eliminate rests when writing a
groove (see lesson 1) when reading horizontally it is good to have the same note values as
the rest of the band (or in this case the brass section). When writing drum parts, common
sense should prevail at all times.
A FINAL GOODBYE AND SOME CREDITS WHERE DUE:

Time to wrap it up now. Ahhh.
Thank you for purchasing this humble collection of drummy material. I hope you have found
things that will take your drumming forward in whatever direction you wish. Thank you for
baring with me on the slightly heavy reading material - I had to cover all the theory so that
stuff towards the end of the app. I hope youll forgive me if some of the material was stuff
you already knew.
Thank you too for allowing me to be ever so slightly cheeky in asking for you to review the
app in the app store. Im a struggling musician too and the apps help keep my head above
where they count :-)
Big thanks to Jerry Crozier-Cole for his wonderful guitar work on the backing tracks - it has
App-land and to Ted Nash of Venevi.com for his expert support and guidance in the early
session, well done gal!
Special thanks to Lynne for supporting me and my creative urges. Itll all be worthwhile, I
promise!
Please follow me on Twitter @sambrownmusic and Facebook: samthedrums.
Happy drumming!

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Drum Secrets 2

iPhone and iPad App

The language of 16th notes

Sam Brown Music 2012 www.drumsecrets.com Twitter: @sambrownmusic

Sam Brown Music 2012 www.drumsecrets.com Twitter: @sambrownmusic

As are these two:

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BASS DRUM FUN!

READING IS EASY - I PROMISE!

to continue where the talented drummers reached an impasse. More on this in my

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Youcanprobablyread thissentenceeventhough therearenospaces betweenthewords

Sam Brown Music 2012 www.drumsecrets.com Twitter: @sambrownmusic

careful with those two).

and doing something on autopilot (see the Four Levels Of

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1) Sixteenth-note one of beat three

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THE BACKBEATS OF DOOM!

THE FUN PATH TO AWESOMENESS:

The six variations look like this:

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FOR USE WITH DRUM SECRETS 2 IPHONE/IPAD APP

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up before diving into the page:

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TO PUSH, OR NOT TO PUSH...

Thats more of a: Du-DUM kind of sound.... if you see what I mean.

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Or you could choose a release bar with a rest on the downbeat:

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THE BITTER PILL WORTH SWALLOWING:

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Get those bass-drum/left-hand unisons really together

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THE DRUM-GODS JUST MADE ME FUNKY!

SOME GROOVY SUGGESTIONS:

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THE LEFT FOOT

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DYNAMICS MAKE YOU FUNKY

LINEAR DRUMMING MADE EASY

AN INTRO TO LINEAR DRUMMING

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wanted to get creative and produce your own page:

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FOR USE WITH DRUM SECRETS 2 IPHONE/IPAD APP

Sam Brown Music 2012 www.drumsecrets.com Twitter: @sambrownmusic

LINEAR DRUMMING GOES BONKERS!

Sam Brown Music 2012 www.drumsecrets.com Twitter: @sambrownmusic

LINEAR LEARNING STRATEGIES:

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MORE LINEAR FUN:

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Sam Brown Music 2012 www.drumsecrets.com Twitter: @sambrownmusic

Sam Brown Music 2012 www.drumsecrets.com Twitter: @sambrownmusic

ONLY THE BEGINNING

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comes relatively easily.

- the important information

our minds ear!