If your not playing the ghost notes on the snare, your missing the groove. IMO. Tommy

My biggest problem that I have ,Right now is the triples on the hi hats .I just can't get them right .My wrist just want let me do it . Blues music and blues rock is totally different .See what I am trying to get at here.

Ghost notes with each triplet? Porcarro played roseanna like that but, I think Bonhams is leaving space, you know how he was?

Yes, I've played both for years, they different time signatures. Bonham is just hard, lord help me if I try "Poor Tom!" lol

Yes, a half-time groove is based on triplets, but it's a misidentification. What you're playing on the hats is a shuffle! By ghosting the in-between notes, you create the half-time 'feel'. The addition of the ghost notes completes the triplet, but what you're doing on the hats is a straight up shuffle.

(On closed hats) RR RR RR RR. Add the ghost note and viola! (Left hand notes on the snare) RRl RRl RRL> and repeat. Accent that last Left hand note on the snare.

Listen to the original groove that Bonham and Porcaro based their own half-time grooves on. Purdie perfected it. Always refer back to the original! Then you'll not only understand what Bonham was going for, how he altered it and made it heavier, but you'll know what the groove was that he based it on.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ldtieSEyQM[/ame]

Remember... it's a shuffle feel on the hats.

John

Couldnt of explained it better! Ghost notes just make a groove a GROOVE!

What I find interesting in that clip John is this....

I can hear the ghost notes fairly clearly, but he is cross sticking 2 and 4.

I dont see him raising his left hand stick to play the ghost notes then moving back down to cross stick. Is Ringo off camera playing those ghost notes ;)

Jinx - LOL... I love sharing 'little tricks' that make you a better, more tasty player, with other drummers... Purdie is tapping out the ghost notes with the fingers of his left hand!

When you cross-stick/stick-click, your hand/fingers rest on the drum head. All Purdie is doing is tapping out the ghost notes with his meat-hooks and stick-clicking the accents.

Brilliant stuff. I only picked it up some years ago because I watch Purdies hands like a hawk when I see him play. That man has more drumming experience than any 50 of us put together. I learn a lot by just being a good observer. I recommend it to all. When you're watching a video of one of your heros... focus all your attention on their hands! They reveal all their tricks as they play.

... and with my screen-name, you -know- I'm going to know all the little ins & outs of the Purdie shuffle! BTW, the thing that really makes that groove such a gem is the bass drum rhythm! He's creating tension with the 'off-beat' ghost notes that gets resolved back to the downbeat on the accents. But the runway that that airplane takes off from, the foundation of the groove, is in that -killer- bass drum ostinato. Shut everything else out when you listen, just catch the bass drum. It's literally setting up the rest of the groove. Without that bass drum rhythm, it's just an off-the-shelf shuffle.

John

The way my brain works, this is how I would try to describe it to a "feel" drummer. If you count a regular shuffle in 4/4, it would be: 1 a2, a3, a4 a, etc. The "a" being a 16th note before the full quarter note of 1,2,3,4. In regular time the bass would be on 1 and 3, the snare on 2 and 4, making 4 quarter notes in one measure. In half time, the bass drum is on 1 and the snare on 3 while the hi hat shuffle remains 1, a2, a3,a4 a. The two quarter notes in the half time shuffle (1 and 3) are half of the regular shuffle (1,2,3,4) and give the shuffle a sort of a drag to it. May not be musically correct but that's the way I see it.