How To Play A Drum Solo

The best way to look at a drum solo is by thinking of it as its own song. With a song, it starts out with a bit of an intro, and slowly starts to build. Towards the end, the song will build and build, giving off more energy to keep you the audience intrigued. You would not want a song to start with a heavy bridge and end with a slow, softer feel would you? The same is with a drum solo. A lot of drummers will throw their best chops, rolls, and drum rudiments in right at the beginning, realizing they have nothing left for a solid outro. This being said don’t think this is the only way to do a drum solo. A drum solo should be an expression of the drummer, if you want to do a solo with slow rolls for five minutes that is totally fine. Drum solos should always be unique and personal, but try your best to make them as innovative as possible!

Building A Drum Solo

It is very important to keep a solo in time. That being said, most times you can change the tempo to achieve a certain feel during your drum solo. A good way to keep time is by using a metronome, and playing a solid quarter note beat on your bass drum. An example of this is:

Keep this beat on your bass drum rolling throughout the solo; it will keep you in time, and keep your solo flowing. To get proper sound dynamics, start the solo out soft, and slowly bring up the volume and intensity.

Now its time to fill in the rest. There are many ways in going about doing this, so do not feel limited, this is only a very basic solo idea. Try adding some toms over top of your bass drum pattern. One example would be to add a 16th note roll on your toms. That would look something like this: