Alternate Back Beats - Drum Central

What's happening guys? Welcome back into the Drum Central YouTube channel. My name is Dave Major and we're going to try something a little bit different for the liquor week this week. I'm going to show you some of the things I use when I'm actually on a gig and I have to take less gear if I want to be creative with my backbeats. Now a backbeat by the way is the strong snare drum sound, we'll get to that in a minute, that you would associate with being on two and four. So if we're playing any style of music you can actually play a whole song with just two and four and hopefully the audience will clap on two and four. Sometimes they don't but if I just do this you instantly know that that's two and four not one and three or the e of one and the e of three. So that's the core thing and I try to keep that in all of my playing especially when I'm playing a gig where I'm required to play songs. But sometimes you want to be creative maybe you're playing different styles of music in the same gig not different sources. So that's what we're going to do today. Firstly let's do something really light. If I'm playing a softer song or the intro to a song I'll actually maybe do a slight lift on beat two and four just to give that pulse so that the band doesn't get lost and the audience has something to clap along to. But on two and four I'm going to lift the hi-hat very slightly so it might sound like this. This is quite subtle, something nice and chilled, something that doesn't have to get too much in the way of the music but great for like a breakdown or the intro to a song. Now I actually do like to play with usually my usual setup would be ride cymbal, crash, hats, two toms and two snares because I like to have the different sounds. I've been playing around with having a lower snare drum versus having the standard higher pitch second snare. So yes we can do this we can have our second snare drum and put one of these on it which there are products available. I've just made that out of an old head and cut a CD hole in the middle but if I put that on my snare drum it instantly lowers the pitch makes it go doof which is really nice sounds like this. It's cool but I actually quite like to sometimes have two snare drums at the same time so play them on beat two at the exact same time. Maybe I'll do that only on two and just do the low one on four that sounds like this it just thickens it up if you know the song shut up and dance by some band that I can't remember on beat four every second bar they actually have a lower pitch snare drum so it's great if you want to recreate that you can have something like this just getting a little bit of melody a little bit different it's kind of cool. I also like to put one of the second snares after the backbeat so something like this so we'll have it straight after almost like a little delay that little idea you could also make it three or four it's just a great way of having just mixing things up a little bit if I want to go a little bit less obvious maybe more to the percaro toto kind of vibe floor tom beat number four sounds like this which I think sounds really cool again it's a great way of augmenting I also sometimes do floor tom and full on metal and we'll hit the stacker as our backbeat instead again there's no strong snare drum but because you've got the two and four it's going to work out so there's some alternate backbeat sources there are other things I do put a splash cymbal on the snare drum maybe sometimes do a flam between the rim flick and the stick on stick but those are some different ideas you can use to build a song without accidental change of parts because the fundamental reason why we play drums is to make people dance and chops and fills don't necessarily do that so hope you guys dug this lesson please hit subscribe share it around and I'll see you next time