- Lesson progress
- Overview
- Exercise 1 – The first four bars, simplified
- Exercise 2 – Bar 5
- Exercise 3 – Bar 6 (the fill)
- Exercise 4 – Simplified 1-6
- Exercise 5 – Adding detail
- Exercise 6 – Bars 1 and 2
- Exercise 7 – Bars 1 to 3
- Exercise 8 – Bar 4… and 1-6!
- Exercise 9 – the second half
Lesson progress
Overview
This lesson is going to cover the midsection of Nocturne, where the beat changes from the hi-hat to a dotted-quarter note count on the ride. We’ll cover these twelve bars step-by-step, breaking the patterns down into easy-to-follow exercises.
Exercise 1 – The first four bars, simplified
Loop exercise
Exercise 2 – Bar 5
Loop exercise
Exercise 3 – Bar 6 (the fill)
Loop exercise
Exercise 4 – Simplified 1-6
Loop exercise
Exercise 5 – Adding detail
Now we’re going to add detail into the groove we’ve just practiced, starting with the ghost notes in the first bar.
Loop exercise
Exercise 6 – Bars 1 and 2
Now we’re going to play bar 1 into bar 2, with all the detail. Let me show you first how to deal with the hand movements needed to play this groove.
Loop exercise
Exercise 7 – Bars 1 to 3
Next, we’re going to add in the third bar and work it into a looped exercise.
Loop exercise
Exercise 8 – Bar 4… and 1-6!
Bar 4 is relatively straightforward, compared to the others in this section. First, I’ll show you exactly how to play it in this video and then I’d like us to pull together bars 1 to 6 as a looped exercise.
Loop exercise
Exercise 9 – the second half
Let’s work on the second half of this groove. Fortunately, the first three bars of the second half are exactly the same as the first, so go ahead and copy and paste those in your brain. Bars 4 and 5 are slightly different, and I explain those differences in this video. Bar 6 – the fill – there are a couple of versions of this fill that I play live and I’ll show you both in this video. As an exercise for this part of the lesson, I’d like us to improvise some drum fills that could work in place of bar 6. My examples are uploaded in the usual loop player so that you can slow them down to see exactly what I’m doing.
