This lesson introduces more musical notes, namely eight notes. By the end of the lesson you will be able to not only play, but also read five more rock grooves.

In lesson 3 you'll break things down further with sixteenth notes. By the end of this lesson you'll be playing even more, varied rock grooves. You will also be able to play simple fills around the drum kit.

In your fourth lesson you'll build your library of rock fills whilst you also learn how to read simple, effective fills easily.

After this lesson you'll have improved your time keeping skills. You will begin to vary the patterns you play on the hi-hat whilst playing a steady groove.

This lesson continues straight on from Lesson 5 as you expand the library of grooves you can play.

Playing exciting fills whilst using the whole kit is what drumming is all about. This is the first of a two-part lesson where you'll learn more exciting fills.

In this second part you'll continue learning and playing more exciting and musical fills using the whole kit.

In this last lesson before the end piece you'll learn about how to use the crash cymbal to add structure to different parts of a song.

Learn how to play with a professional band, whilst reading a drum chart. This lesson completes your Level 1 in Essential Drum Skills with GigajamOnline Drum School.

Watch the The First Time being performed by the Gigajam band, made up of the course authors, and learn a little about some of the skills required to work together in a professional situation.

Introducing rests and how they are used in music to create more varied rhythms on and around the modern drum kit.

Using all of the rests studied so far and incorporating them in a series of play-along examples that develop notation reading and performance skills.

Here we begin to combine different note values together to create more complex rhythmic patterns.

We continue our development of combining rhythms providing us with a huge library of essential rhythms.

Builds on Lessons 13 and 14 and provides two challenging drum studies that incorporate the new rhythms you have learned.

In Lesson 16 we learn to play short fills that have very wide use in modern drumming. This lesson also continues to build your performance of the new rhythms you have been learning since Lesson 11.

To be able to play more sophisticated grooves requires understanding of the use of dotted notes in music. This first lesson of two parts provides you with practical snare drum studies to build your understanding of dots in readiness for the new grooves in Lessons 18 and 19.

In this lesson you will learn to be able to recognise and play quarter note and eighth note rests, enabling you to create more interesting rhythmic bass patterns.

Introducing 16 new bass drum grooves challenging and then strengthening your ability to control the drum kit.

The study of the song ‘The Buzz’ develops reading and performance skills and completion means you can attain Gigajam Drum Level 2.

Understanding ties – ties, like dots, create huge problems for drummers, as they primarily deal with the length of a note.

Interpretation of tied notes — pushes.

Using tied notes to develop ‘set-up fills’. Following on from the last lesson, we are now going to expand our ability to read and play tied notes by introducing the concept of setting-up.

Understanding triplets — so far we have learned how to subdivide a beat into quarter notes, eighth notes and sixteenth notes. These subdivisions of the beat are collectively referred to as simple time. We are now going to look at triplets at the beginning of our study of what is called compound time.

Understanding triplets in grooves (introducing 12/8) — we will start by introducing the idea of time signatures without getting too involved in all the permutations.

Understanding shuffle feel. Shuffle describes a rhythmic feel and is well understood by experienced musicians. To develop the feel of shuffle from a learners point of view though requires us to understand the role of triplets in producing a shuffle feel.

Understanding how to phrase triplets. In Level One we introduced the concept of phrasing using sixteenth notes and single stroke rolls. Now we are going to continue developing phrasing, but this time with triplet eighth notes.

Applying triplet phrases as fills. Now that we have introduced the counting and playing of accents with triplets, we now need to apply them to the kit.

Whole notes and half notes are the only notes we have ignored so far. In this lesson we are going to introduce them to you, so that you know what they look like and how they are played.

Applying new skills in a drum chart. This song contains new difficulties from the previous two songs.