Hand to Foot Rate Changes

This is a hand-foot coordination and rhythm exercise, to help develop more fluency and control between the snare drum and bass drum.

Play single strokes between the snare drum and the bass drum, moving up and down the rate changes from 8th notes to 16th note triplets.

Play a basic ostinato with the ride cymbal on the quarter notes and the hi-hat on 2 & 4. Make sure the rate changes of the snare drum and bass drum don’t sway your time.

You must play this slowly with a metronome. Strive for accuracy and smooth transitions first of all. Be patient, the speed will come.

You can voice the snare drum part around the kit.

A the bottom you see three other obvious patterns for the snare drum and bass drum. Singles starting on the bass drum, and doubles starting from the snare drum and bass drum.

That’s enough to get you started, but you can expand the exercise with the patterns in Ideas #29 and #42.

This exercise involves only the four basic rate changes because I think this will give you the most reward for the effort. However, you can extend the ideas up to 32nd notes, and also fill in the gaps with quintuplets and septuplets, if you feel so inclined.

You can use this exercise to develop your technique. Next, you will have to think about how to apply some of it musically.

Have fun. Make music.