I feel the need, the need for speed.

This week’s drum fill flies by at 12obpm, which doesn’t sound all that fast, but because we’re playing 16th note triplets, it just zooms by. If you like 16th note triplet drum fills, check out fill of the week #38 for more 16th note triplet ideas.

Learn The Fill

Let’s start out by taking a look at the basic rhythm of this drum fill.

Play this rhythm carefully with a metronome. Count out loud as you do so. Aim for a even spaced single strokes.

Now let’s add in the bass drum and crash cymbal.

Having the crash on beat 2 and the “&” of 3 is very common rock drumming phrasing. Listen to bands such as the Foo Fighters, Blink 182, My Chemical Romance and you’ll hear drum fills with crashes in these positions.

The final step is to orchestrate the hands around the kit. For each group of six 16th note triplets, I went with three notes on the snare, one on the high tom and 2 on the floor tom. You can come up with your own orchestration – you don’t have to keep it the same for each group of 6 notes also. Here’s mine:

To get the speed up on this, practice the orchestration slowly and repeat it many times. Eventually your hands will be able to move between the drums without thinking.

Taking it Further

As mentioned above, you can easily re-orchestrate the sticking to create your own fills. So, instead of doing that, let’s look at keeping the phrasing the same but changing the subdivision. Orchestrate these ideas around the kit.

The first of our drum fills just uses 8th notes and may seem a little pedestrian. Try playing it at 180-220bpm. You’ll find it’s a good fill to have when playing at faster tempos.

The second drum fill is the most advanced. We’re using 8th note triplets, but to keep the phrasing the same; the second block of triplets starts on the “&” of 2 and goes over beat 3 – we don’t count beat 3 because we’re not playing on it. I suggest counting this rhythm out against an 8th note metronome before trying to play it.

The final drum fill is probably the most common version of this fill, sixteenth notes. This one shouldn’t cause you any problems and is the most common version of this fill.

I hope you’ve enjoyed fill of the week #64. If you’re in Singapore and you’d like a free trial drum lesson, send us a message via the contact us page.