A first system to obliterate your right foot

🔖 Drumming

Guitar Pro

It all started with…

This thing 👇. I remember hearing it for the first time and thinking no way he’s doing those 3-hits run with his right foot only. Maybe he is, maybe he’s not. I’d like to think he is, and that’s what this system is all about.

A first try at writing systems

With that inspiration in mind, I developed a system to break down and practice this. If you haven’t read Drumming with a set of constraints. Do that. If you have, I’m proud to show you the first system. The way I notate this is surely going to evolve, but for now, let’s start simple:

In plain text

Here are the conditions of this system:

1. Right hand gives a constant beat: 8th or quarter notes on a sizzling hi-hat or a ride cymbal.
2. Left hand and right foot combined make a continuous flow of 16th notes.
3. But they are never played together.
4. The continuous flow must alternate between A/B/C and D/E.
5. A bar must contain at least C and E once. Those are essential to the feeling in Big.
6. Left foot is not necessary, but if you want to increase CPU usage, always play quarter or eight notes

Files

Thinking about those 6 points while playing sounds more complicated than necessary. In the end, I want to lock into the feel itself, even if I sometimes deviate a little from what the systems asks for. I’ll talk more on those deviations or violations later btw 😱. In order to practice the system, here’s a long list of “valid” sequences for your left hand and right foot 👇. Since ternary is like leg day for workout people, I also added a ternary version. Never skip leg day ternary.