It’s World Drummer’s Day!

Grab your sticks and find your groove! 

4 April is World Drummer’s Day – why is it celebrated on 4/4? It’s a symbolic date to mark the metre that drummers learn first 🥁

In this post I’ll share two composing tasks for students to try in the classroom or at home and some fun drummer facts!

Composing Tasks

1. Found Sound Groove

Task: Compose a 4-bar rhythm using only household / everyday items.

• Find three distinct sounds: a ‘bass’ (e.g. a lunchbox), a ‘snare’ (e.g, a pizza box), and a ‘hi-hat’ (e.g. something metallic like a bunch of keys).
• Try out some rhythmic patterns using a pencil as a drum stick.
• Write out a rhythm in 4/4 time either using a grid or staff notation.

2. Drum Code Grid

Task: Compose a 2-bar ‘drum machine’ pattern using a visual grid rather than traditional notation. You may wish to try it out on a free online programme (see suggestions below).

To give some structure to the task, try using these rules:

1. The snare must always hit on 2 and 4.
2. The kick can never play at the same time as the open hi-hat.
3. At least one column must be left completely silent for a ‘ghost’ beat.

You can write out your rhythm in a grid like the one below. If you prefer, you could subdivide the columns further to include semiquavers / sixteenth notes (so there would be 16 columns):

	1	+	2	+	3	+	4	+
Hi-hat
Snare
Bass

There are a number of free online drum machines but why not try the Roland iO-808 Rhythm Composer or Lloyd’s Online TR-808 Drum Machine? No log-in required.