Fish anyone? It’s time for a couple of buckets of fish.

Fill of the week 17th features a 16th note triplet lick often known as “Bucket Of Fish.” The 16th note triplet rhythm between the snare, toms & bass drum is often referred to as “bucket of fish” because that’s how it sounds. Let’s go fishing.

Learn The Fill

As always with complex fills, it’s good to get a rhythmic understanding of it first. The easiest way to do this is play the rhythm of the fill on the snare drum and count along with it. Play along to a metronome set to count 8th notes and count out loud.

The next step for this fill is to add in the bass drum on beats 2, the “&” of 3 and the “& of 4 – replacing some of the snare drum notes from above.

The final step will be to orchestrate the hands around the kit and add in the flat flams between the snare and floor tom.

Here it is with the bucket of fish counting.

Taking It Further

Two simple ways to change this fill up are to play flams on the snare drum instead of flat flams between snare & floor tom or to play the crash cymbal instead of the floor tom.

If you’d like more buckets of fish you can add one more on the & of 4.

Note that with this variation you’ll have to hit the crash on beat one of the bar after the fill with your Left hand.

If you really like your fish, then you can try this 2 bar fill:

I hope you’ve had your fill of fish for now. If you’re in Singapore and you’d like drum lessons, send us a message on our contact us page.