Help! New drummer needs tips for building hihat-kick independence

I am new to drumming. Does anyone have tips for specific patterns I can practice to build independence between my hihat and kick drum specifically when the kick drum pattern has some syncopated 1/16 notes and the hihat is playing straight 1/8 notes?

Here is the background info:

I just started to learn how to play drums. Until I can start taking lessons I am having fun practicing drum kit patterns and playing along with songs with my snare pad and a chair (drum kit coming soon). I've got some basics down and can play along with Meg White (White Stripes).

Now I am to the point where I can actually play along (albeit not perfectly) with Dave Grohl on the Nirvana "In Bloom" song (which I could not do at all last month).

Here is my problem: The Chorus of "In Bloom" has straight 1/8 notes on the hihat, while the kick drum has syncopation on 1/16 notes. I can't seem to separate my right hand's hihat movements from my right foot's kick drum movements in this section of the song. My right hand defaults to playing the 1/16 syncopation, too, mirroring the kick drum instead of playing independently. Even when I've slowed the song down!

P.S. The Chorus of "In Bloom" is the most complicated pattern I've worked up to so far. Please keep in mind that I can do the basic non-syncopated kick-hihat-snare patterns just fine!

I have been having the same exact problem you are having...the only thing I can tell you is to play the song freakishly slow (I know it is hard to do, but to some extent, for example, if you were playing at 10bmp, I am sure you could get it down, not saying you should play 10bmp though) and when you can play it that slow, gradually bring it up, a few beats per minute at a time. A metronome will help a LOT while doing this.

Not sure what the beat for in bloom is, but try the beat for immigrant song, which is fairly straightforward.

play the main groove (heard mainly on guitar) with bass, with 2 snare notes in between the loop like so.
(didn't put down the counting for it, if you listen to the song, the groove is easy to hear)

kick kick kick snare kick snare kick kick kick snare kick snare....
also play straight 8th notes on the hi-hat while playing this groove.
I mainly choose this groove as it is one of the few that minus actually reading it, is just flat out hard to play on drums. But if you practice this beat at a slow tempo and work your way up, you should be able to play just about anything with sixteenth note patterns on bass with eights on hi-hat.(worked for me)

hope I helped some.

The time-honored traditions are the way to go here:

PLAY IT SLOW
and
COUNT IT OUT

Don't play to the song; set a metronome very slow - 40bpm for instance. Count it out, pay very close attention to your hand and foot. Do this for a while until you can do it easily; bump the speed to 60. Same thing; bump to 80.

In the world of limb independence, this is one of the quickest ones to learn. If you go slow you should be able to do it reliably and without hesitation in a few hours.

don't be too freaked out about this. everybody, and i mean everybody, has trouble with right hand/right foot independence (if they're right handed) when they're first learning. those two limbs always want to follow each other and only by practicing can you overcome that.

here's a little file to work work with. It's going to take a little while for your brain to be able to separate the rh/rf. Just take it slow and keep practicing it will all start working independently over time. Have fun.

I don't know what beat are you talking about, but I think you can play some of the paramore songs. You may not like them, but I like doing covers of their songs since they pretty slow. For example, "Hallelujah" includes 16th note syncopation.



I never have any problems on doing 16th note kick drum. I think it's easier to do them with sheet music. And you don't really have to seperate your limbs, you only need to coordinate them. There's only 1 defference between simple 8th note beat and 16th note beat. That is you have to kick the drum in between the hi hat.



Here's an exercise in drum tab....



h |x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-|
s |----o-------o---|
b |o------oo-----o-|

Syncopation by ted reed. if you don't have it, its a worthy purchase for now and for later on as well.

There are 8 pages of reading in it, starting at i think page 37. if you read the snare drum line as bass drum and the bass drum line as your right hand, and go slowly it should help you gain some control over how you place the bass drum in grooves. focus on when your hand and foot land together and when they're separate.

taking it slow is really important and working on each bar until you get it will help you then piece together each page.- once you have the co ordination side down, learning the songs you want to play should be smoother because you're used to so many bass drum variations against the hi-hat.

hope this helps.

Here's a general purpose excersise for seperating the right and left foot.

First play eighths in the right foot and eigth triplets in the left.

Then reverse, triplets in the right and eights in the left.

If this is hard, slow the metronome way down and just think instead of playing quarters in one foot and dotted quarters in the other:

x - x - x -

x - - x - -

Its the same thing.

Yeah, don't worry about it too much, just keep trying. All of the other ideas in this thread are very good advice. Once you get the basic coordination and independence down, a whole world of possibilities opens up and you have no idea how excited you will be to continue playing. I've played for over a decade now and I'm still running off of that adrenaline you get when you first start being able to play something that you think sounds impressive. : )

I remember when I had the same problem. I wanted to play Higher by Creed, but it was just beyond me. What I did, well I played very, very slowly.

Try this, very slowly, hi hat, then bass drum, hi hat and bass drum. Do this very slowly. I kept doing this for a few weeks, and suddenly I could play along to the song.

The key to develop this is to go SLOW.