Drum Rhythm

Each drum rhythm shown below is designed to teach you how to create and modify beats. This skill is essential to building solos and fills.

I’m going to start with one simple exercise and then show you how to modify it to create a new beat.



The rhythm above is taken from a snare drum exercise found in another lesson. It is notated and intended for snare drum only. But, by assigning new parts of the kit to the notation, you can create a wide range of beats from one single rhythm.

This is a common practice that is essential to creating new beats. You’ll see this a lot with drum rudiments. Drum fills use a lot of paradiddles and other rudiments to create unique sound patterns across the drum set.



The most basic way to modify a rhythm is by adding the bass drum into the pattern. You’ll create a new sounding beat using the same basic idea.



Drum solos and fills are often built around repeating patterns and rhythms. By combining toms, bass and snare into the same rhythm, you can create a feeling of consistency throughout unique and varying beats.

All three patterns shown above use the same rhythm, but different pieces of the kit. Doing this creates more and more patterns that are limited only by your imagination.

Below are a few different rhythms that you can play around with and use to create your own beats, fills, and solos.









If you are having trouble reading the notation, check out my drum lesson covering how to read drum sheet music.





Learn More About Creating Drum Beats.