Tempo

Now we need to talk about tempo. This is how fast or slow the music should be played. To determine the tempo of music there will be an indicator at the beginning of the music notation. This will usually have a quarter note equalling a number, like the example to the right. What this means is that there should be 120 quarter notes played in one minute or two quarter notes a second.

Try and figure out how fast this would be. Find a clock that has a second hand on it and start tapping your hand once every second. After you get the feel for this, double the taps and you are now playing at 120 tempo. Isn't that easy?! Just remember that a quarter note is used for the tempo and that you would have double the taps again to be playing eighth notes and so on for sixteenth notes.

All the drum patterns in the lessons to follow come in several different tempos, ranging from 60-180 beats per minute. This will help you hear how some drum patterns actually sound completely different when they are played faster or slower.

If you want to try and figure out the tempo of a song on the radio (hint, hint!) then this is how you could do it. First make sure that you have a clock or watch with a second hand and then while the song is playing, start counting the quarter notes or downbeats of the song (usually when the snare and bass drum are played) and count how many quarter notes there are in a 15 second time period. Then you can take this number and times it by 4, this should give you the tempo of the song, or pretty close to it. Simple!