Hip Hop Grooves in In-Between Feel

The drummers Jan ‘Stix’ Pfennig and Jacob Prezmus have written a book that introduces the young generation to the mysteries of SWAG-Drumming.

The swag drumming has been a source of inspiration for countless drummers and originated from New Orleans from the traditional way of playing swing feel and has been adapted to the in-between feel of today’s hip hop and pop grooves. The swag drumming is defined as a rhythm that is between a binary and ternary rhythm and because the quintuplets are the closest to this feel, the authors have found a tangible way to explain these complex rhythms in a playful way to the drummer.

The chapters of this book lead the drummer through the different ways to learn the in-between groove, always based on an 8th-groove, which is then raised to a 16th-groove. These include: In-between-grooves with and without ghost notes, HiHat figures, accent and reading exercises, flam beats. The chapter on layered sounds is entirely dedicated to learning and training additional sounds and noises that can be played together with the backbeat on the snare. The included MP3 CD provides many useful exercises in different tempos.

With its numberless exercises this textbook is recommended for anyone who is dealing with modern musical styles or wants to deepen their knowledge of flam beats, loop sounds or simply to learn to “swag”.