In spite of this, some of these possibilities tend to be rare. Here are a couple of common examples, with typical bass drum patterns:īoth of these rock drum beats were quite common, particularly in the rock and roll of the sixties, and remain commonly used (with many variations possible, of course) whenever a driving or ‘stomping’ kind of feel is desired- Think of the intro to Roy Orbison’s ‘Pretty Woman’, or the tag at the end of the chorus of the Rolling Stones’ ‘Get off of my Cloud’.īut of course within our current framework, we have given ourselves eight different points in our measure to work with (the most basic of ‘basic rock drum beats’!). I’ll begin with one of the simplest and most common ways this is done, which is to simply strike the snare on all four beats. What we have left to play with then is to vary the pattern of the snare drum. So let’s remain for the time being within the eighth note framework, with the ride pattern (high hat or ride cymbal most commonly) unchanged from before. In this part, we’re going to look at some of the ways this can be further varied, and a bit about what seems to work and what doesn’t. In my previous post, I discussed the basic approaches to the construction of rock drum beats, focused primarily on a straight eighth note division of the bar, 4/4 time, and with an unchanging back beat (two and four on the snare).