Difficulty LevelIn this free drum lesson I’ll be showing you another extract from my eBook teaching the classic intro drum beat from the song “Chuck E’s In Love” by Rickie Lee Jones.

 

Chuck E’s In Love” Drum Beat Demo


View the video on YouTube HERE – Learn How To Play Drums Song Chuck E’s In Love Video Drum Beat Lesson (Steve Gadd)

 

The sweet eight bar drum beat intro (demonstrated above), the verse drum groove variations and THAT drum fill halfway through makes by  this quite a drum performance Steve Gadd. The man has a groove to die for! Lets take a look at some of Gadd’s drumming gems right now now.

 

Chuck E’s In Love Drum Beat Intro

Chuck E's In Love Drum Beat Groove Steve Gadd

Steve Gadd plays a very loose and laid back half time shuffle pattern with the snare drum back beat on beat 3 of the bar. Gadd also accents the hi-hat on beats 2 and 4 of the bar creating a really cool sounding secondary back beat.

The hi-hat notes on the triplet upbeats tend to be ghosted, or played very quietly, and Gadd throws in some open hi-hat notes to move the drum groove along.

Check out the really cool Gadd-ism in the fourth bar where he plays some inverted sixteenth note doubles between the hi-hat and snare. The shift from eighth note triplets to sixteenth notes really grabs the listeners ears and creates a sublime counter rhythm to the rest of the band. A little touch of class!

 

Main Verse Drum Groove

Chuck E's In Love Drum Beat Groove Steve Gadd

The great thing about this track is that Gadd improvises throughout the entire song. You get to hear lots of little ideas that Gadd throws into the mix to spice up his drum part. Lots of improvisation also makes it quite hard to claim one drum beat as the definitive verse groove. This however, is the one bar verse drum beat that Gadd plays the most.

The bass drum on the ‘+’ of beat 2 pushes into the half time snare back beat nicely. The ghosted snare drum note on the ‘+’ of beat 1 of the second bar is occasionally accented but isn’t always ghosted. This really is a great sounding and super laid back drum beat!

 

Main Verse Drum Groove Variation 1

Chuck E's In Love Drum Beat Groove Steve Gadd

I’ve included a couple more of the variations Gadd plays during the verse’s of the song, including the one above, from the eBook. Steve Gadd plays this idea a few times where the shuffled bass drum continues into beat 2 of the second bar. The open hi-hat note on beat 2 isn’t always included however.

 

Main Verse Drum Groove Variation 2

Chuck E's In Love Drum Beat Groove Steve Gadd

This other variation demonstrates what I mentioned earlier, the snare drum note on the ‘+’ of beat 1 in the second bar isn’t always ghosted. And in this example the snare drum note comes down with a short hi-hat opening, it closes again on beat 2.

 

The BIG Drum Fill

Chuck E's In Love Drum Beat Groove Steve Gadd

Although this technically isn’t a drum beat it’s such a cool Steve Gadd linear/gospel style drum pattern that I had to include it. It’s caused many a head to be scratched amongst drummers but when broken down reveals a simple and adaptable drum pattern that can be used in many ways in your playing.

It’s simply inverted doubles again, played between the hi-hat and snare drum. The snare drum notes are ghosted and the right hand comes down from the hi-hat to strike the snare on beat 3 of the bar. What helps to make this fill sound so quirky and unique is the fact that it’s played using straight sixteenth notes whilst the rest of the song had been played in swung triplets. This really throws the listeners ears and makes this rather simple pattern even more striking.

Have fun with these drum groove and drum fill ideas. You can’t do better than learning from the master Steve Gadd himself!

 

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