"Aja" Free Video Drum Solo Lesson (Expanding Gadd's Drum Licks)

One of the most iconic drum fill or drum solo sections found in the Top 350 Famous Drum Fills & Solos list is the drum solo in the song "Aja" by Steely Dan and drummed by Steve Gadd. This amazing little piece of drumming history has inspired and excited drummers for decades, myself included!

I've already written a blog drum lesson on this lick before (you can view it here). But in this free video drum lesson I am not only going to show you how to play this great drum fill idea but also how you can take it even further and create brand new drum fill and drum lick ideas from it!

** FREE PDF DOWNLOAD: You can download all the sheet music for this lesson as a pdf document. Simply click the "Attachment" link at the bottom of this page **

"Aja" - Free Video Drum Lesson

View the video on YouTube HERE - Learn How To Play Drums Aja Video Drum Lesson (Steve Gadd & Steely Dan)

"Aja" - Great Drum Fill/Solo (5:19 Album Version)

Here is the classic drum fill idea that occurs at 5:19 into the song Aja by Steely Dan.

In the video, I leave out the hi-hat foot part as I felt this wasn't essential to the idea and drum lick that Steve Gadd was trying to express. The version I play in the video is shown on the downloadable .pdf document available at the bottom of this page.

In the original drum lesson I wrote for this drum lick (available here again) I created three suggestions as to how you might take this drum lick further. In this video drum lesson I suggest two more variations and demonstrate them to you. The first of the two is shown below...

"Aja" - Taking The Drum Fills Further (Suggestion 1)

As you can see, it takes two groups of six and combines them with two groups of three.

The snare drum ends the lick on beat 4 demonstrating how the hands, and not just the bass drum, can end the pattern on a downbeat.

"Aja" - Taking The Drum Fills Further (Suggestion 2)

This is my favourite variation which is constructed from two groups of 9 (one 6 and one 3). This moves across the beats of the bar in a very pleasing manner.

Another suggestion can be found in the downloadable .pdf drum notation below.

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