Drum and Bass is one of the most fun styles of music to play on the drums. Unfortunately, it’s also one of the hardest.
While some of the grooves seem simple enough, it’s the speed at which you need to play them that often trips people up. That’s why I’ve always been massively impressed by drummers like Jojo Mayer and El Estepario Siberiano who are effortlessly able to play busy drum and bass drum beats.
In this guide, I’m going to show you 12 great drum and bass grooves. I’ll start with a few easier ones, but the grooves will progressively get trickier as we go along. I’ve also included sound files so that you can use those as a reference when you’re learning each beat.
Contents
Groove 1
This first groove is a very standard one that regularly gets played in various styles of music, especially rock, hip hop, and pop. However, it’s also one of the most common DnB drum patterns that everyone learns, as it’s easy to speed up.
To play it, you’re going to keep time by playing consistent 8th notes on the hi-hat. You’ll then play snare drums on beats 2 and 4.
On beat 1, you’re going to play a bass drum. You’ll play the second bass drum on the “and” of beat 3.
The trick to speeding this up and making it sound good is having tight control over your hi-hat notes. It helps to use the push/pull or Moeller techniques.
Groove 2
The next groove is a continuation of the last one. You’re just going to add another bass drum note to make the drum beat sound a bit more dense along with the basic patterns on the hi-hat.
That bass drum note is going to land on the “and” count of beat 2. That means that you’ll play a bass drum straight after the first snare drum.
You’ll then play a second bass drum on the “and” count of beat 3, followed by the final snare drum note on beat 4. Again, this groove sounds really good when you speed it up. I’d also recommend playing those bass drum notes quite hard to get a heavier sound.
A side note about this is that it’s quite easy to play, but I love how basic drum beats start sounding awesome when you speed them up.
Groove 3
Now, we’re going to switch things up a bit. This is actually one of my favorite drum and bass beats, as I love how bouncy it sounds.
You’re going to keep the 8th notes going on the hi-hat, but your snares and bass drums are going to move around.
The first bass drum will come on beat 1. You’ll then play a snare drum on beat 2, followed by a bass drum on the “and” count of 2.
The next snare drum will come on the “and” count of 3, which is what makes this groove sound different from the previous two. You’ll end it off with a bass drum on count 4. Going from a bass drum on the final beat to another bass drum on the first beat when you repeat the bar is another thing that makes this sound really cool.
Groove 4
This next groove is quite a busy one. You’ll start by playing a bass drum on beat 1, followed by a snare drum on the “and” count of 1.
There’ll be a single bass drum note on beat 2, moving to a snare drum on beat 3, and a bass drum on the “and” of beat 3.
Finally, you’ll play another snare drum on the “and” of beat 4. Remember that you’re playing 8th notes on the hi-hat the whole time as well.
Groove 5
For this groove, you’re going to play two consecutive kick drums at the beginning. When you speed the groove up to a standard drum and bass tempo, you may need to use a bass drum technique like the heel-toe or slide to nail this rhythm comfortably.
The rest of the groove is pretty simple. You’ll play a standard snare drum note on beat 2. You’ll play another snare on beat 3, followed by a bass drum on the “and” count of 3.
You’ll end the groove with a snare drum on the “and” of beat 4. The groove sounds quite front-heavy, which is what I really enjoy about it. There are plenty of drum and bass songs where you’ll hear something like this.
Groove 6
To mix things up, we’ll now play a groove that is more back-heavy, meaning there are more notes near the end of the bar. For the first two beats of the bar, you’re just going to play a standard rock beat pattern.
On beat 3, you’re going to play a snare drum, followed by a bass drum on the “and” count. You’ll do the same on beat 4, but you’ll swap the positions of the snare and bass drum notes.
Remember to make the snare drum notes really loud when playing this drum beat to get the full effect of the pattern.
Groove 7
Let’s add ghost notes to the picture. This groove has the same base layer as the first groove we looked at, but we’re going to fit in a few ghost notes to make it sound much busier.
The first ghost note on the snare drum comes on the “a” count of beat 2. The next one will be on the “e” count of beat 3.
When you speed this up, it starts sounding like your classic drum and bass groove. It’s almost the same as the Amen Break drum pattern that has been sampled countless times in modern music, but it doesn’t have as many kick drum notes.
Groove 8
Here’s where things get really tricky. In this groove, you’re going to play a ghost note on the snare drum straight before the accented snare note on beat 3. Apart from reaching high speeds, this is where most drummers start to struggle when learning how to play drum and bass beats.
It’s difficult because you have to play a soft note on the snare and then immediately follow it with a louder stroke in the same position.
The easiest way to do this is by lifting your elbow to play a stroke motion. As you lift your elbow, drop the stick onto the snare head. Then, lift your arm up and whip it to play the louder stroke.
Once you have that movement down, you also need to make sure it aligns with your 8th note hi-hat pattern. Not easy!
Groove 9
This next groove follows the same idea as the last one, but you’re going to do that whipping motion twice in the groove instead of just once.
The first ghost note falls on the “a” count of beat 1, which then gets followed by a loud stroke on beat 2 on the snare. You then do the same thing on the “e” of beat 3 and the “and” of beat 3.
Groove 10
You’re now going to play a ghost note straight after the backbeat instead of just before. There’s a lot more to this groove though, so let’s start at the beginning.
It simply has a bass drum on beat 1, a snare drum on beat 2, and another bass drum on the “and” count of 2.
You’re then going to play a ghost note on the “and” of beat 3, which aligns with a hi-hat stroke.
On beat 4, you’re going to play a snare drum, followed by a quick ghost note on the “e” of beat 4. You’ll play the final ghost note on the “a” count of beat 4.
Groove 11
It’s more of the same here, but all of the ghost notes and accents are put in different places to create another variation of a drum and bass groove.
If you did the work to solidify the movements of the last few grooves, this one should be much easier to learn!
Groove 12
To end the list off, we’re going to play something a bit simpler. The key difference here is that you have a bass drum on one of the offbeat 16th note counts, which is something we haven’t played in any of the previous grooves.
You then have a single ghost note on the “a” count of beat 3 to add a bit of spice.
Conclusion
To be able to play each of these grooves confidently, you’re going to need to have solid control over your drumming technique. It’s very natural for our bodies to tense up when we play faster ideas, so utilizing certain drumming techniques is essential for staying relaxed and keeping control.
I’d recommend starting every groove very slowly with a metronome. Your goal is to get to at least 170 beats per minute with each one, but don’t rush to get there!
It’s better to play slowly and be in control than to play fast and have your grooves sound sloppy.
Once you can play each groove, I’d also recommend finding some popular electronic music songs and playing these beats along with them. You should be in a place where you can easily and confidently switch between different grooves while playing a song.
You should also find creating beats of your own quite easy at this point!
