This excerpt is taken from the complete article that appears in the January 2016 issue, which is available here.

Rock Perspectives

Progressive Drumming Essentials

Part 6: Syncopated Double Bass…the Easy Way

When I began working on double bass, I was inspired by drummers like Gene Hoglan, Raymond Herrera, and Thomas Lang, all of whom seemed to have a never-ending supply of creative parts. I’d spend every waking moment figuring out their ideas and working them into my playing. From this, I stumbled on a simple concept that can be applied to even the most basic 8th-note rock grooves to turn them into heavy, syncopated double bass patterns.

We’re going to use a two-step process. First, we’ll take a basic 8th-note rock groove (Exercise 1) and add “e” and “a” with the left foot (Exercise 2). The bass drum notes from the basic groove will fill the spaces between the hi-hat notes, and the result will be a syncopated double bass groove, as shown in Exercise 3.

Check out a video demo below.

Aaron Edgar

For the complete lesson with transcriptions, check out the January 2016 issue, which is available here.

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