Beginner Opening-Closing Hi-Hats

The opening and closing of the hi-hat is a very cool way of enriching drum beats, drum fills, and most important of all, music. These techniques add a whole new world of possibilities and textures to your drumming, while improving your four-way independence at the same time. In this free drum lesson, Jared Falk teaches three beginner drum beats that include the opening and closing of the hi-hat, and explains how to notate these techniques on sheet music. Jared also delves a bit into a couple of approaches for getting different sounds from the opening of the hi-hat.

Before going through this free drum lesson, be sure to check the free drum lesson “How To Count Eighth Notes“. This is the note value used with the drum beats in this free drum lesson. So having a good understanding of 8th notes will help you go through it with greater ease.

Once you’re done with this free drum lesson, you can use these exercises as the foundation for further developing four-way independence and some original material of your own. You can do so by keeping the hand pattern for each drum beat exactly like notated, while using bass drum patterns from the different exercises found on this website.

If you’d like to explore new ideas on how to use the opening and closing of the hi-hat for creating cool sounding patterns, we encourage you to check the free drum lesson “Intermediate Opening-Closing Hi-Hats“.