Here’s this week’s drum fill:

This week’s drum fill is fairly straight forward. We’re playing 16th notes on the snare and throwing in the occasional open hi-hat. It’s a very simple yet effective drum fill. Let’s get to learning!

Learn The Fill

There’s not a great deal to this fill, we’re playing 16th notes on the snare drum and then adding in some open hi-hats. I decided to go with 6-6-4 phrasing for this fill. We’ve used 6-6-4 phrasing before, it always sounds musical. Check fill of the week #27 for another example.

Here’s this week’s drum fill:

6-6-4 phrasing means that we’re playing 2 groups of 6 notes and 1 group of 4 notes. Our 6 note group is 1 note on the open hi-hat / bass drum followed by 5 on the snare. Our 4 note group is 1 on the open hi-hat / bass drum followed by 3 on the snare. It’s really that simple!

The main thing to focus on with this fill is getting the open hi-hats to all sound the same. Note that I close the hi-hat together with the right hand when it plays the next snare note. I’m not closing the hi-hat on the next note immediately after I open it. I prefer to let the open hi-hat breathe a little before closing. However you can try closing it together with the left hand on the next note to create a different sound. Alternatively you could not close it at all and let it ring throughout the fill. Whatever you do, try to make it sound consistent.

Taking It Further

We have a lot of notes being played on the snare with this fill. The first thing to do to take this further is to orchestrate those snare notes around the kit. Here’s a couple of ideas:

Once you’ve explored all the permutations you can think of with that fill, then you can try and do the same with these two variations. We’re still playing the fill RLRLRL and all the open hi-hats are played with the right hand and then closed with the next right hand stroke. Try them out, and then orchestrate them around the kit.

I hope you’ve enjoyed fill of the week #46. If you’re in Singapore and you’d like a free trial drum lesson, send us a message on the contact us page.