Most drum set playing involves some form of improvisation. This is true even in musical styles where drummers are required to play specific grooves or beats basically the same way every time. In those styles of drumming, drummers usually keep the same basic beat but improvise their fills. So improvising is a skill that most drummers need to develop, at least to some degree.
Most of the drum books on the market don’t address the subject of improvisation very well. Most contain very specific patterns or exercises for you to play exactly as written. This is great for developing your technique and reading, but it does’t really do much for your improvisational skills on the drum set. So today we’re going to talk about some specific ways to develop your ability to improvise on the drums.
Techniques For Learning To Improvise On The Drums
Most improvising musicians start with an idea or structure of some type. This gives them parameters in which to create. It gives their improvisations a direction.
A. As an example we will start with a basic rock beat and use that as our beginning structure.
Play this beat a few times until it’s memorized. As you learn to improvise on the drums you should learn to play grooves and ideas without having to read them.
B. Next we will remove beat 4 from the second measure and replace it with a slash mark. On that beat we will play a fill. Start with something basic like two 8th notes on the snare drum. Then think of other things you could play on beat 4. You could play two 8th notes on a tom. You could play four 16th notes, or 16th triplets. At first you may want to write all your ideas down.
You should practice all those ideas individually until you can play 5-10 smoothly at all different tempos.
Next play through the beat over and over, playing through all the different fills you’ve created. At first you can do this while reading the ideas you’ve written out. Eventually you should turn the sheet over and play from memory. If you have lots of ideas you may not be able to recall them all from memory but that’s fine. The idea is to have several things to play when it’s time to play a one count fill.
C. Now we’ll remove beats 3 and 4 from the second measure and replace them with slash marks. We’ll play a 2 count fill on beats 2 and 4.
Follow the same process. Start with basic ideas and expand. For instance, you might play 8th notes for your fill. Then 16th notes. Follow this with a combination of 8th and 16th notes. Depending on your current skill level, you might write a bunch of ideas down again and practice each individually. Eventually you want to be able to play lots of different ideas every time you get to the 2 count fill.
D. Next we’ll replace the whole second measure with a one measure fill. 
Follow the same process as in the previous steps. Start with something simple again, maybe 8th notes. Then expand. Note that the longer fills are, the more possibilities there are for various combinations.
The process we’ve just gone through with this basic rock beat can be used to develop your ability to improvise with any given groove. You can take a shuffle, a funk groove, Bossa Nova, etc., and start replacing beats of the groove with fills. In this way, you develop more mastery of a given beat or groove. You really haven’t gained proficiency with a groove until you have learned to improvise with it. This is what you will be required to do when you play a Samba groove or jazz beat in 7/4 time with a band.
E. Lets expand our improvisation exercise further by making it 4 measures. In this example we added 2 measures to the end of our rock beat. We’re going to play 2 measure fills or solos for these 2 measures.
We now have 8 counts to fill. This makes it more difficult from a creative stand point. The important thing is that the fills or solos you play sound good. At this point you;re becoming a composer at the drums. Music improvisation is really just music composition sped up. You’re trying to create melodies on the drum set that good and make sense to the listener. What sounds good or doesn’t sound good is really a matter of opinion. This comes down to musical taste, and a person’s individual style. You do need to understand though that the notes you choose to play for 8 counts aren’t just random. It’s no different than if I sat down at the piano and just hit random notes all over the piano. It wouldn’t sound like music. It would sound like noise. It’s only when those notes have some type of an understandable order to the listener that they start to sound like music.
F. Let’s expand some more and play 4 measure solos after our rock beat. We call this “trading fours.” It’s very common in jazz.
We build 4 measure solos the same way as one measure fills. We use musical elements, including 8th notes, 16th’s, 16th triplets, rolls, or what ever ideas we have. We put ideas together in a logical way so they make musical sense for 4 measures.
G. Extend your soloing endeavors further by playing 8 measure solos. Alternate 8 measures of rock beat with 8 measures of drum soloing.
A good way to develop 8 measure solos to to think of them as two sets of four measure solos. But remember that the two sets of four have to fit together in a way that sounds musical.
Soloing Over Song Forms
Another idea is to solo over song forms. Two of the most common song forms in jazz are 12 measure blues and the 32 measure AABA form.
Note: I’m using the jazz song forms as my examples as this type of drum soloing doesn’t usually apply to other genres of music.
Think of the 12 bar blues as 3 sets of four measures. Trying playing through these 12 measures over and over, playing a different solo every time.
To really learn to hear the blues form, I recommend that you listen to some of Charlie Parker’s tunes. Many of his most memorable tunes were 12 bar blues. Two of these include “Billie’s Bounce,” and “Now’s The Time.”
This 32 measure song form consists of four 8 measure phrases. The A sections are all the same basic melody. The B section is basically a bridge section, a departure from the A sections. One possible way to structure your drum solos over this framework would be to do the same. Play similar phrases or ideas for the A sections. Then make the B section noticeably different.
A good example of a song with an AABA form is “It Don’t Mean A thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing,” by Duke Ellington.
Soloing Over Melodies
Another way of creating structure for your soloing is to solo while singing a melody. In the classic jazz combo format the standard practice is to start the song with the lead player playing the melody of the tune once or twice. The band then takes turns improvising over the melody and chords. This can sometimes include a solo by the drummer.
To develop the ability to solo over melodies, I recommend starting with a very simple tune, like “Mary Had A Little Lamb.” Play your solo on the snare drum only while you sing the melody. You can follow the rhythm of the tune exactly the first time through. When you sing it again change the rhythm. Gradually ad toms, cymbals, etc.
One of the best examples of this type of soloing is Joe Morello soloing on “Shortening Bread,” with the Dave Brubeck Quartet.
Soloing Over Abstract Concepts
You could also try creating a solo based on a song name or maybe a color. Some of the great jazz drummers like Tony Williams didn’t always solo over a form or a melody. Instead, if a song was called “Kind Of Blue,” they’d play a solo that sounded “kind of blue” to them. To me this is a rather abstract concept. But you may want to explore it.
Improvising With CD’s and MP3’s
One of the most important and practical ways of practicing improvising is while playing along to your favorite tunes. This is a great way of practicing improvisation, because most of the time when you’re playing the drums, you’re playing along with other musicians. Therefore it’s important to learn how what you’re playing fits into what they’re playing.
One of the best things my instructor Dave Divis told me was, “Imagine you have to play a gig with the band on the recording tomorrow night or next week.” If that were the case, there wouldn’t be time to transcribe or copy the playing of the drummer on the recording. So for this exercise, try listening to what the drummer on the recording is playing for inspiration and ideas. But instead of trying to play all the fills he’s playing, or the exact groove, just try playing things that you think will fit the song. This forces you to learn to improvise in a very musical way.
Free Form Soloing
You should also be aware of the idea of free form soloing. Most rock drum solos fall into this category. In this form of extended soloing, they usually aren’t playing over a song form or melody. They usually create whatever structure they want to. Some of these types of solos are composed and planned in advance and others are mostly improvised.
They may start the solo on the snare drum and play some ideas for awhile. Then they may add toms and cymbals and play other ideas. I recommend listening and watching drummers soloing in this style. Watch how they play one idea for awhile and then move to another idea. This way the solo still has a structure, but it’s one they are creating themselves. Watch Peter Criss from Kiss for examples of simple but very effective soloing in this style. Watch Neil Peart from Rush for an example of really technical and really exciting sol0ing in this style.
Some Final Thoughts On Improvising
1. The more ideas you have the more they will come out in your playing. Improvising is primarily about stringing existing ideas together in new ways to create something new. Music is a language and the ideas you learn are the words. Before you have something really interesting to say, you have to learn the words.
2. I have always found that writing ideas down is very beneficial, especially since the process of writing(composing) and improvising are so closely linked. Writing down your improvisation and solo ideas gives you a chance to really think of all the possibilities. When we improvise we tend to play a lot of the same ideas all the time. This is as true for professional players as for beginners. But when you sit down and write, you think of all kinds of things to play that you normally wouldn’t. You can then practice these ideas until they’re comfortable and use them in your improvisations. This is primarily the way Max Roach practiced later in his career from what I understand.
3. I have found that learning from other drummer’s ideas is a continual and lifelong project. Even after you’ve been playing for a long time, you can learn new things by studying and listening to other players. In the beginning this just give you lots of ideas to draw from as needed. As a professional drummer, I still learn other ways of approaching solos or grooves that I may not of thought of by listening to other drummers and studying their solos and transcriptions. This is what keeps the drum set exciting to me and why I’m still so fascinated with it after all these years.
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