Building Facility With Groups Of 5

• By Terence Higgins
• Originally Published In DRUM! Magazine's February 2011

Adding odd note groupings to your practice routine is a great tool that will add balance to your facility on the drum set. Here I have a series of exercises with various sticking patterns using hand and foot combinations that will help you to get a feel for playing groups of five. I also have orchestrated the double bass drum pedal in this lesson just to add a little more dimension. The bass drum pattern is (FFFlr)=(LRRlr) this pattern creates an ostinato like feel so be sure to focus on that when it comes around. This lesson can be worked into a great warm-up routine to get the kinks out before practice or a show.