GrooveFX · The drum course

DrumKlass

Slow it down. Bring it up. Make it stick.

Drum lessons from your first stroke to intermediate, step by step, judged as you play. Practise each exercise slowly, bring it up to tempo, then pass its test on a MIDI kit, your keyboard or a microphone.

Start learning How a lesson goes
MIDI kit · keyboard · microphone

How a lesson goes

Hear it. Practise it slowly. Then pass the test.

Every lesson is a few short exercises, written as drum notation and played on a 3D kit. Each one has a start tempo, where you can play it clean, and a goal tempo the lesson asks for.

  1. 1 Listen DrumKlass plays the exercise for you on its 3D kit, so you know how it should sound before you play it.
  2. 2 Practise It loops while you play, every hit shown as it is judged. The tempo stays where you set it, rung by rung.
  3. 3 Test A set number of passes at one tempo, with nothing shown until the end: played on your own sense of time.
  4. 4 Earn its stars Pass at the goal tempo for two stars, and again on another day for the third. Then the next rung, or the next lesson.

The course

Nine units. 62 lessons.

In the order drum teachers build a player: counting and the hands, then the feet, the rock beat, the rudiments, grooves, fills and feel, and on into styles, the classic records and advanced skills. Every lesson is open from the start; a unit's last lesson is its level check.

  1. Unit 1 · 7 lessons

    First steps

    Hold the sticks, count the pulse, and put hands and feet together in your first rock beat.

  2. Unit 2 · 6 lessons

    Hands

    Sixteenth notes and the rudiments behind every fill: singles, doubles, the paradiddle, accents, and moving around the kit.

  3. Unit 3 · 7 lessons

    Grooves

    The beats behind most pop and rock songs: bass-drum variations, two-bar grooves, ride and open hi-hat, sixteenths, four on the floor and half-time.

  4. Unit 4 · 6 lessons

    Fills and phrasing

    Count in four-bar phrases and play fills of one beat, two beats and a whole bar that land back on the one with a crash.

  5. Unit 5 · 7 lessons

    Feel

    Ghost notes and accents, triplets, the shuffle, 12/8 and flams: what makes the same notes groove.

  6. Unit 6 · 7 lessons

    Intermediate

    Sixteenth-note bass drum, ghost-note funk, linear grooves and fills, paradiddle grooves, the six-stroke roll and odd meters.

  7. Unit 7 · 8 lessons

    Styles

    The grooves of the big styles on the kit: Motown and soul, reggae, bossa nova and samba, Afro-Cuban, jazz time, the country train beat and Middle-Eastern rhythms.

  8. Unit 8 · 7 lessons

    Classic grooves and fills

    The records every drummer learns: rock and pop classics, the funk and hip-hop breaks, the great shuffles, and four famous fills.

  9. Unit 9 · 7 lessons

    Advanced

    Double bass drum, sextuplets and gospel chops, linear fills in fives, polyrhythms, 7/4 and 5/8, and the fast metal beats.

The tempo ladder

Up to tempo, one rung at a time.

The ladder climbs from an exercise's start tempo to its goal in steps of about 5 bpm, and the next test is offered one rung above your fastest pass. What you passed comes back for review after 1, 3, 7, 14, 30 and 60 days, so it stays in your hands.

Ways to play

On your kit, your keyboard or your practice pad.

DrumFX playing a song: the drum score and the kit lighting every hit. Also from GrooveFX DrumFX Learnt a groove? Play it in a real song. Drop an MP3 into DrumFX: it takes the drums out, writes them down and lets you play along with the band. What DrumFX does BeatFX mid-run: notes falling down nine columns onto the drums of a 3D kit. Also from GrooveFX BeatFX Want to play for points? In BeatFX, 274 grooves and 217 fills fall onto a 3D kit, and every hit is judged on the way to a grade. How BeatFX plays

Sticks up. Lesson one.

Free, in your browser. A MIDI kit, a keyboard or a microphone is all it takes.

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