Nocturne – Lesson 7: Ride mid-section Copy Copy

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.


Loop exercise

Loop exercise #2

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