40 Beats and Fills Exercises Drum Book 1 – 2nd Edition

for drum teachers, students and self taught drummers
printable pdf ebook

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This download includes 2 versions of the book.

2nd Edition Released 11th July 2025
1st Edition Released in 2019


There are other books in this series too, just visit the store’s homepage to view the other 40 Beats and Fills Books.

Book 1 | Book 2 | Book 3

Summary

I have created this drum book for students that have started Grade 1 or above, that need some extra exercises to work on. The ability level goes up to about Grade 3, but most of the content is Grade 1-2. I’ve kept most of the exercises in order of how I wrote the content, so please do jump around in the book if there are some exercises you feel like working on first. The styles of music featured in the drum exercises include Pop, Rock, Blues, Soul, Funk, Swing and Reggae.

Why 40 Drum Beats and Drum Fills Exercises?

When writing the books, I felt that this was a good length for a book and I have enjoyed teaching with the ‘40 Beats and Fills Exercises’ for this reason too. My students feel good about completing the book and whilst it takes a while to get through it, the finish line is never too far away so it is not overwhelming. The drum book is designed to help drummers improve their ability to play and transition between drum beats and fills, so the content usually includes several bars of beats and 1 bar of a drum fill.

What this book is for

The exercises in this book are designed to be fun and engaging while helping drummers build a solid foundation in basic drumming techniques. There are no warm ups, practice pad exercises, or songs in this book, so it’s really only something to use for part of a music lesson or for your own study.

The exercises in this book are intended for use alongside learning graded material or songs of your choice. It’s very useful to learn a variety of material and even though some of the grade books say that everything you need is in them, I think what they really mean is that everything is in them to take that specific grade. I use grade books with several exam boards but you can miss out a lot of fundamental stuff if that’s all you learn. Same if you are only learning to play songs you like, you’ll be missing out on learning to play different styles of music and perhaps the fundamentals of those styles too.

Preview of the ebook

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40 Beats and Fills Exercises Drum Book 3

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This ebook was released on 22nd June 2025.

17 Page PDF

Printable pdf ebook

For teachers and students

Ability level is similar to grades 3-6

Introduction to 40 Beats and Fills Exercises Drum Book 3

Summary

I have created this drum book for students that have started Grade 3 or above, that need some harder exercises to work on. The ability level goes up to about Grade 6, so it should be relevant to any drummer studying Grades 3, 4, 5 or 6. The content isn’t particularly in order of ability. I’ve kept most of the exercises in order of how I wrote the content, so please do jump around in the book if there are some exercises you feel like working on first. The styles of music featured in the drum exercises include rock, soul, blues, funk, funk rock, jazz, reggae, nu metal and latin.

Why 40 Drum Beats and Drum Fills Exercises?

When writing the books, I felt that this was a good length for a book and I have enjoyed teaching with the ‘40 Beats and Fills Exercises’ for this reason too. My students feel good about completing the book and whilst it takes a while to get through it, the finish line is never too far away so it is not overwhelming. The drum book is designed to help drummers improve their ability to play and transition between drum beats and fills, so the content usually includes several bars of beats and 1 bar of a drum fill.

What this book is for and it’s limitations

The exercises in this book are designed to be fun and engaging while helping drummers build a solid foundation in basic drumming techniques. There are no warm ups, practice pad exercises, or songs in this book, so it’s really only something to use for part of a music lesson or for your own study.

The exercises in this book are intended for use alongside learning graded material or songs of your choice. It’s very useful to learn a variety of material and even though some of the grade books say that everything you need is in them, I think what they really mean is that everything is in them to take that specific grade. I use grade books with several exam boards but you can miss out a lot of fundamental stuff if that’s all you learn. Same if you are only learning to play songs you like, you’ll be missing out on learning to play different styles of music and perhaps the fundamentals of those styles too.

Drum Ebook Store: https://payhip.com/tlmusiclessonsdrums

TL Music Books Website: https://tlmusicbooks.com/

TL Music Lessons Website: https://tlmusiclessons.com/

Made in Wales. Released 22nd June 2025. Written by Theo Lawrence / TL Music Lessons.

Preview: A selection of pages from the book

40 Beats and Fills Exercises Drum Book 3 – Buy Now →

Intermediate Beats, Fills and Exercises – Drum Book

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  • 24 Page PDF
  • Printable pdf ebook
  • For teachers and students
  • Grades 4-8.

Introduction to Intermediate Beats, Fills and Exercises

I have intentionally called this an Intermediate book even though it covers grade 8 content, because I believe advanced playing should include harder material than what is found in Grade 8 drum books.

This book has been 2 years in the making. I wrote down the first exercise in my notebook on 14th March 2022. On the rare occasion that I get an evening to myself I would sit down at the drums for part of it and try to either revisit and develop things I’ve learned in the past, or try to push the boundaries of what I would normally play. This was half for enjoyment and professional development and half for wanting to get it down on paper. Some of the time I wanted to make the content accessible too and not too hard. For almost all of this material I could have purposefully tried even harder to reach that advanced level, but that’s not what I wanted to do with this book, so maybe another time.

I have kept the styles in the book close to my own and so there are many styles such as Latin styles that haven’t got a look in here but I might visit things like this another time. One of my strongest styles is metal and double pedal work and I have included one bonus sheet on this, but I could dedicate another 2 years just to this!

A teacher could perhaps use pages from this book for lessons and not necessarily go through it in chronological order. It’s not really written or displayed the exercises in any order, I’ve numbered the worksheets in the same order that I wrote them up in. These “sheets” sometimes have 2 or 3 pages worth of content. I have also included some bonus sheets that weren’t part of the writing process for the book but could be useful in a similar way and are of a similar ability level.

Pages 3-19 Intermediate Worksheets 1-11

Pages 20-24 Bonus Content

Thanks for purchasing or for using this book.

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Made in Wales. Released 1st March 2024. Written by Theo Lawrence.


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