VirtualDrumming - Online drum lessons - Drum charts - Virtual drums

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Virtual Drumming is an interactive drums method, with free online drum lessons, a drum charts collection, partitures for drums in pdf format, and virtual drums that you can play in real time. The method will be periodically updated with new drum lessons and drum charts.

Drum lessons > Drum charts legend > Tie and dot


Introduction    The first part of this method for drums and percussion instruments deals with the right posture, which is the basic condition to develop speed, endurance and precision with your playing. The style and the role of drumming have evolved with time, but the basic drums and percussion instruments technique hasn't changed much, and all the great drummers still build their own style from the same basis of musical theory.

Method    It's very important, in all the exercises, to keep a relaxed approach with the drum set and the sticks, to control the
breathing and to avoid muscles' tension. You should approach every exercise by playing it slowly at first, then gradually speed up mantaining a relaxed posture, without changing your breathing or stiffening your body. You don't have to hurry, the study of musical instruments demands a lot of practice, and also the study of drums, as any other discipline, demands a long and constant exercise.
Improvisational skills are essential to any drummer to improve his expressive possibilities; that's why it's so important to experiment personal
variations playing the exercises, following his own style and natural inclination.


drum charts legend

drumset elements

notes and rests

tie and dot


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Musical writing - Tie and dot

In drum charts, a tie joins together two notes of the same pitch indicating that they are to be played for the combined duration of their time values. This score contains an example of tied note and an equivalent notation, but using a rest symbol.

drum charts - tie

A dot on the right side of a note or rest shows that the time value is increased by half.
For example, the value of a dotted quarter note becomes 3/8. The following score shows an example of dotted note and equivalent notations, using a tie or a rest symbol.

drum charts - dot

In the Flash version the virtual drums play the drum lessons charts in real time!


Topics in the basic drum lessons and in the online drum lessons' published drum charts are: rudiments & fundamentals,
coordinated independence, drums basic beats, snare drum studies, drums grooves
and songs' drum partitures,
with transcriptions of songs and grooves by
John Bonham, Phil Collins, Stewart Copeland, Steve Gadd, Ian Paice, Jeff Porcaro.


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