It’s time for fill of the week #25. Let’s hit it.

This fill features flams, bass drums and one of my favourite stickings – RLLRLLRL. Often when I use the RLLRLLRL sticking in a 16th note fill, I put it at the start or end of fill – RLLRLLRLRLRLRLRL or RLRLRLRLRLLRLLRL. This week I decided to experiment and see what would happen if I stuck it in the middle of the fill. Let’s see how it turned out.

Learn The Fill

Let’s build this fill up chunk by chunk. The first chunk will be beat one. On beat one we have a pattern I use a lot – Flam, Bass, Right, Left. I use this in a lot of fills, I like the sound of it and how easily it can be moved around the kit.

The next chunk will be the RLLRLLRL sticking pattern. You may want to practice this sticking pattern separately at first. Focus on getting it smooth and being able to accent the Right hand.

Let’s add the next chunk to our fill.

When playing the second chunk, focus on accenting the right hand on Tom 1, Tom 2 and the Snare drum. They need to stand out to make the fill work.

The final chunk is Right, Bass, Flam. Accent the right hand on the floor tom to add the fill melody. Let’s add it in.

As with any fill, take it slowly at first until you get used to the pattern and then speed it up.

Taking It Further

The benefit of learning fill chunk by chunk is that you can simply replace a chunk and change the fill. Let’s start by replacing the last chunk.

The first two of our variations give a smoother ending to the fill. The third ending is similar to our original fill, but the additional bass drum again makes the transition back to the groove a little smoother. The final variation just adds extra energy with 16th note triplets.

Now lets look at replacting the first chunk of our fill – the first four 16th notes.

Our first variation has the first beat mirroring the fourth beat, this lends a nice symmetry to the fill. The second and the third variations are just simple 16th note variations. The final variation is 8th note flat flams between snare and floor tom – I also altered the last chunk to copy the flat flams from the first chunk.

I’m not going to vary the middle chunk of this fill as it’s the main feature of the fill. However, I will suggest that you play with re-orchestrating the RLLRLLRL around the kit yourself.

I hope you’ve enjoyed fill of the week #25. If you’re in Singapore and you’d like a free trial drum lesson, send us a message via our contact us page.