Product Description

Written in two volumes, these books include 2- and 4-bar rock and jazz-rock beats designed for the modern drummer. Both books are designed to develop the drummer's skill in coordinating their hands and feet. The books also offer the drummer a repertoire of exciting rhythmic patterns.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #484024 in Books
• Published on: 1969-06-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 40 pages

Customer Reviews

A Note on 1 Star rating....
I'm a teacher and I've started using this book to teach "advanced 8th note rock" beats -- what I mean are drum beats in 4/4 where the bass drum also hits in-between the 8th note hi-hat hits. At first, all students are timid about how to read the beats on this page, but students quickly grew confidence and drastically advanced in their drum-beat vocabulary. I now only use this book for students having a hard time improving their drum beats, which is a good majority of the students I get the opportunity to teach!

If you're a beginner looking to DRASTICALLY improve on your drum beats, this book is extremely valuable. But just like every other book, what is most important is that you know HOW to practice the book. This book develops very well, and it now makes sense to me why so many GREAT drumming instructors teach from it. My advice for people looking to improve on their drum beats, is to go find a drum teacher that uses this book and learn how to practice with it. :)

Sub-standard
There's better books on the subject out there then this one. I was disappointed when this book arrived, primarily because the notation is so poorly presented in the book that it is completely distracting. That is my first and biggest complaint about this book. The notation and presentation of beats is written for complete beginners and is very distracting and annoying for someone who can actually read drum notation (how hard is it anyway to read drum notation?). For instance, there are two beats on each page where there could be twenty.

Secondly, the meat of the book isnt quite there. Once you go through this book, sure, it will make you a little stronger, but you will be thinking, thats it?

My opinion is, skip this book and pick up a copy of Colin Bailey's bass drum book. Or if you must pick this up, dont expect it to be extremely through on the subject, rather a starting point.

Good stuff
This is a good book, no doubt, but I did find it to be almost like a subset of "Drummer's Cookbook". It has lots of variations of the basic 4/4 beat. It waits until the second half of the book to move the snare off of 2/4, where Drummer's Cookbook does that almost right away. For someone just starting, this book may be less intimidating, but besides that, I'd recommend going straight to DC and bypassing this one.