Cool Drum Exercises
Drum patterns to play along with Led Zeppelin songs
For those of you who want to practice drumming skills and haven’t bought a rudimentary exercises book yet, this might be worth your time. Of course, we all know that practicing your handiwork gets really boring. So, I decided to play my boring exercises along to some of my favorite Led Zeppelin songs. Now, you can practice your hand movements with drumsticks while listening to music. It really helps and it’s fun too.
I don’t intend to interpret any of the actual songs or drum patterns of John Bonham here. I am simply using the beat of the song to practice simple exercises. This will work best if you get a practice pad with heavy drumsticks. But you can use any other variant also (tabletop, floor, snare drum, other platform). Also, these songs are listed in their release order, not by level of difficulty. If you’re struggling, try a different song or simply halve the beat. Always keep in mind, these exercises will only be effective if you keep them up for the duration of the song.
Play the following pattern to the beat of this song. These should come out as 16th notes and they will mimic the clicking sound on the beginning of the track. You can also try to vary up the hands and use different exercises, but this should be a good starting point.
Once you get comfortable on that beat, you can move on to this more complex figure:
This rhythm is one of my favorites. For every time Bonham hits the hi-hat, you play a triplet. The pattern turns out to sound like 9/8 because you accent every 9th note. Watch the video below for demonstration. Try to accent every 3rd beat as shown in the image.
This rhythm calls for the same paradiddles we used on “Ramble On,” except these will be slower. This rhythm is really cool cause you’re playing 16th note paraddidles to a funky beat. It’s sometimes harder to play something slow than fast. Here is a good example. If you develop your muscles to play something slow and precise, you will get better at playing the fast rhythms. Anyways, it’s a great song so it’s fun to play anything along to it.
This song is also really fun to play along to. Once again, you’ll be playing a paradiddle or variant of it. It might be hard to keep up the paradiddles since the accents in the beat of the song are not aligned with what you’re playing. This will make it even more tricky to stay on the beat. Try to play with the beat, even if it doesn’t at all sound like what you’re playing. It will help you gain a sense of independence and a steady meter.
That’s it for Led Zeppelin, for now. I’ll introduce some other songs another time.
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