SEVEN-FIVE-SIX – those are the magic numbers you need play fill of the week #22. Let’s see those numbers in action.

Fill of the week #22 starts with a group of seven 16th notes then cuts a couple of notes off to make a group of five 16th notes and then repeats the first six notes as 16th note triplets. I think this formula creates quite a musical fill. Let’s learn the fill and then look at how we can apply the formula to create further fills.

Learn The Fill

The main ingredient in this fill is the initial seven note group. We’ve previously looked at applying seven note groupings of 16th notes. Check out fill of the week #19 to get more ideas on what you can do with seven note groupings.

Here’s our 7 note grouping for this fill:

This is a simple group of 7 notes, practice it until you can play it smoothly.

For our 5 note grouping we’re going to cut off the first two notes of the 7 note grouping.

So now let’s put those two groups together.

Again, practice playing these 12 notes nice and smoothly. Count out loud as you do it. Take it slow to start with. Make the transition between the two groups seamless.

For the last beat in the bar we’re going to repeat the first six notes of the 7-note group. However, we need to shift in to the 16th note triplet subdivision to fit them in. Here’s the full fill:

If you are not comfortable moving from 16th notes to 16th note triplets, then check out fill of the week #13 where I give some tips for moving between the two subdivisions.

Taking It Further

Now we have the formula for the fill, we can take any group of the 7 notes and create a new fill. Try these 3 variations.

All these variations use the same basic sticking as our original fill. I find these fill works best with the bass drum as the last note of the group, but you can experiment with different with different bass drum placements.

I hope you’ve enjoyed fill of the week #22. If you’re in Singapore and you’d like drum lessons, send us a message on the contact us page.