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Lesson 1 of 4
  • Year 7

The feel of the kick and snare in an RnB groove

I can use the kick and snare drum when creating a typical groove used in R'n'B music.

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Lesson 1 of 4
New
New
  • Year 7

The feel of the kick and snare in an RnB groove

I can use the kick and snare drum when creating a typical groove used in R'n'B music.

Copyrighted materials: to view and download resources from this lesson, you’ll need to be in the UK and

Copyrights help

These resources will be removed by end of Summer Term 2025.

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Lesson details

Key learning points

  1. R‘n’B (rhythm and blues) grooves in the late 20th century are built around the interaction of the kick and snare.
  2. Two features of these grooves are the snare playing a backbeat and quaver and semiquaver upbeats on the kick

Keywords

  • R'n'B - R'n'B stands for rhythm and blues; it covers a range of music made mostly by Black Americans in the last 70 years

  • Semiquaver - a note lasting for a quarter of a beat

  • Metronome - a device that clicks/ticks a beat to keep a player in time

  • Playhead - a vertical line that shows which part of the track is being played

  • Upbeat - a note that precedes a strong beat

Common misconception

Any note that precedes a strong beat is an upbeat.

An upbeat sounds like it musically belongs to the strong beat. Find a good non-example in a melody or drum groove to show how an upbeat both precedes the strong beat and also creates emphasis, often due to following a rest.


To help you plan your year 7 music lesson on: The feel of the kick and snare in an RnB groove, download all teaching resources for free and adapt to suit your pupils' needs...

Files needed for this lesson

  • RnB drum track 791.91 KB (MP3)
  • RnB template 11.71 MB (ZIP)
  • RnB backing track 820.94 KB (MP3)

Download these files to use in the lesson.

Pupils need to feel the semiquaver subdivision so make this explicit by playing semiquavers out loud before they try to hear them internally.
Teacher tip

Equipment

A DAW or other suitable compositional tool or instrument

Licence

This content is © Oak National Academy Limited (2025), licensed on Open Government Licence version 3.0 except where otherwise stated. See Oak's terms & conditions (Collection 2).

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