The Fundamentals
Of Jazz Drumming

Once you have become comfortable with playing jazz in 4/4, you will need to work on playing in 3/4, a jazz waltz. You will start to find that there are some popular tunes played in 3/4 - a good exam is “All Blues” from the Miles Davis album “Kind of Blue” - and that on a gig a couple of the tunes are likely to be in 3/4.

Once your main jazz cymbal pattern is flowing and comfortable, it is time to think about adding comping figures with the snare drum and bass drum.

Once you understand which note on the stave stands for which part of the drum you, you then have to understand the rhythmic values of each note. In this post I will briefly explain and show you the sub-divisions of the beat.

With the aim of trying to get maximum results from a minimum starting point, there are only really two drumming books you need to work get started with, and they are probably the most famous.