Hat, Click, Kick, Repeat – Fill Of The Week #42:

This week’s drum fill takes a common three note pattern – Right, Left, Kick – orchestrates it around the kit and adds some 32nd notes to spice it up. Let’s check it out.

Learn The Fill

Let’s start by looking at the 16th note pattern that’s at the heart of this fill.

We’re playing Right-Left-Kick four times over 16th notes and then we have 2 8th note right hands to finish off the fill.

Right-Left-Kick is a very common element in linear grooves and fills. Make sure you can execute the pattern above smoothly with a metronome before attempting to orchestrate it around the kit.

Our next step is to orchestrate the pattern around the kit. The right hand will play the hi-hat and the left hand will play the rim click. On beat 4 we’ll add an open hi-hat and then we’ll close it on the “&” of 4 when we hit the bass drum and floor tom together.

Beginner students might want to stop here, that’s already a great sounding fill. However, if you want to play the full fill, then you need to play double strokes with the right hand on the first 4 hi-hats notes.

Take It Further

Right, Left, Kick is one of the most common 3 note linear patterns, let’s look at two of the others using the same orchestration – we’ll also keep the 32nd notes on the Right Hand, but you can play these fills without them also,

Our first variation uses Kick, Right, Left as the basis for the fill. You may want to play the pattern just between the snare and bass drum at first before you try orchestrating it.

The second variation uses Left, Right, Kick as the basis for the fill. There are other variations you can try:

• Right, Kick, Left
• Kick, Left, Right
• Left, Kick, Right

Note that I always stop the 3 note pattern on beat 4 and then play the floor tom and bass drum together on the “&” of 4.

I hope you’ve enjoyed drum fill of the week #42. If you’re in Singapore and you’d like a free trial lesson, send us a message via the Contact Us Page.