Linear Soca Groove - Drum Central

Hi guys, welcome back here to the Drum Essential YouTube channel. Today we've got a bit of an unusual lesson so I'd recommend you grab the pdf which as always is in the description below and we'll get started. So we're going to deal with an odd grouping, slightly linear soca groove. Now if you don't know what a soca is it's one of the coolest grooves and the most fun to play because it's so simple but sounds amazing. The traditional soca has four on the hi-hat, you lift on the and so that sounds like this and then you add the ah of one and the and of two which gives you this. Be fast or slow. Now it's starting to come back into prevalence with some Justin Bieber-y kind of tunes. Despacito is a classic example of a soca but played on electronic drums and slowed way down so you'll have heard it if you've been anywhere near a radio in the last six months. Now what we're going to do today is we're going to follow on from that concept of using Jost Nichols fill book and turning it into a groove. We're going to reorder a group of three and four and then change some accents to create a soca groove. It's a bit convoluted but follow the pdf and it'll make sense. So if we have let's say for instance a group of three, a group of four, a group of three and a group of four that would give us 14 notes. So usually what we do in a fill would be we round it off with two beats at the end. So you'd have like one, two, three, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, one, two, three, four, one, two, smash on the one. Now again like we talked about before why can't we reorder those? We still get the same amount of notes so it's definitely going to work but we end up with an unusual group. So what we're going to do is take the two at the start so we're just going to go two, three, four, four, three. Now our three today is right, left, kick again and our four is right, left, left, kick. Our two is going to be right, left. Now if we did that in normal position the fill and the sticking is going to be right, left, right, left, kick, right, left, left, kick, right, left, left, kick, right, left, kick. Now what we'll do is we'll put it into groove position which if any student I've told no matter how long they've been playing when they say play a groove they always go like this. It's always a good start. We could play grooves anywhere we want but this is kind of where we're going to spend most of our time. So we did the same pattern, no dynamics or really anything going on. Sounds like this but the right hand's now playing the hi-hat, left hand on the snare drum. Sounds like this. Now we have to manipulate very slightly. Notice that there's no one on the bass drum so let's add that in. That gives us this. You get that boom boom at the end and what we do is the way we created this soca is we accent the ah of one and the ah of three which rather conveniently is on a left hand. Now the first bit, the first one, the ah of one, it's really easy because it's right, left, right, left. Then we're going into our kick, right, left, left, kick, right, left and the ah of three is actually the second left of that second group of four so right, left, left, kick. A lot easier to explain by looking at it. So follow the PDF while I play this and here's it with the accents and the extra kick drums. Now it doesn't sound much when we play it at that slow speed but if we sort of kick it up a little bit to maybe about 65 it might even start to sound quite good at this slow tempo and because we've added a backbeat it creates a groove we've got four on the floor it sounds like something we'd normally play but with something a little bit unusual in it so check it out at 65. Now if we push it slightly into 85 we're getting into that despacito tempo so it's kind of a slow soca so here it is at 85 and now finally up at 105 which is kind of a fast soca tempo that left left is going to be a bit challenging so make sure you sort of isolate that and practice that that soft left into an accented left but here it is at 105. So there's a way of applying something that's quite maybe esoteric or something that's quite I don't know easily put into the bin of stuff that sounds cool but isn't useful into making it something that could potentially be quite useful. Now check next week's lesson because we're going to manipulate this one step more and I'll catch you next week.