With one of the greatest intro drum fills ever, Aaron Comess blasts his way into the classic song Two Princes by The Spin Doctors. Aaron Comess is now a successful record producer and session drummer and you can see why when you listen to his super tight snare and bass drum technique.
With ghost notes, double strokes, accents and syncopated bass drum patterns, this really is an adventure in drumming!
Lets take a look at the Intro Drum Fill first.
“Two Princes” – Intro Drum Fill Video
View the video on YouTube HERE – Learn How To Play Drums Two Pricnes Video Drum Lesson (Spin Doctors & Aaron Comess)
“Two Princes” – Intro Drum Fill Notation
Aaron comes in on the ‘+’ of beat 4, of the previous bar, with a thirty second note five stroke roll, played RRLLR. The last single Right hand stroke is actually beat 1 of the next bar.
Aaron then plays a series of accents (loud notes indicated with little arrows above each note) and ghost notes (quiet notes indicated with brackets).
The bass drum follows the majority of the accents notes and Aaron Comess throws in another five stroke roll starting on beat 2.
Note that nothing is played on beat 3 and the hands come back in with the Left hand. The fill ends with the hands going around the drums, snare, high tom and two floor tom notes on beat 4.
Lets now look at the main drum groove…
“Two Princes” – Verse Drum Beat
The main drum beat for Two Princes is surely one of the greatest grooves of all time, I mean just look at it! Behind the complicated notation is actually a smooth and dreamy groove that effortlessly flows though the song.
The snare drum notes on beats 2 and 4 of each bar are played loudly, whilst all other snare drum notes are played quietly as ghost notes.
There is no bass drum note on the ‘+’ of beat 2 in the second bar, this is the only difference in bass drum between the two bars. Look out for the open hi-hat on beat 1 of bar 1. It closes again on the ‘+’ of beat 1.
This is probably a bit too advanced for the majority of drummers out there so lets now take a look at a simplified version of this drum beat.
“Two Princes” – Simplified Verse Drum Beat 1
So in this first simplified version I decided to take out all of the snare drum ghost notes. The bass drum and open hi-hat part remains the same and still sounds very much like the original drum beat.
If the bass drum part is still too hard then we can simply it even further like this…
“Two Princes” – Simplified Verse Drum Beat 2
In this version, only the minimum number of bass drum are played and the open hi-hat part has been taken out. Note that all bass drum notes now fall with the hi-hat.
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