664 – the number of the drummer

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This week’s drum fill uses our old friend, the 6-6-4 phrasing. We’re playing a 6 note grouping twice and then putting a 4 note group on the end. It’s a simple concept, but one that works well and sounds very musical. We’ve seen it before on drum fill of the week #37 and most recently drum fill of the week #46.

Learn The Fill

Let’s start by looking at the basic rhythm and sticking that the hands are playing.

So here we’re playing two groups of 5 and a group of 4 all separated by a 16th note rest. Our groups start on beat 1, the “&” of 2 and beat 4. Note that I start each group with the Right hand and then alternate. Practice this pattern with a metronome and get comfortable with it.

Now let’s bring in the bass.

The bass drum fills in the space created by the rests in our original pattern to give us the 6-6-4 pattern. Play this pattern slowly at first and focus on keeping all the 16th notes evenly spaced.

The final step is to orchestrate the hands around the kit. Here’s my orchestration.

For the groups of six I’m just playing 3 on the snare and then one note on the high tom and one note on the floor tom. The group of four is just a very common four note fill – snare, tom 1, floor tom, floor tom.

Take It Further

There are loads of drum fills you can generate using the 6-6-4 pattern, here’s a few more using this particular pattern with the bass drum on the end of the 6 note groups.

Our first variation plays each group on a different drum.

The second variation includes every drum in all the groups.

The final variation sees our right hand leaving the snare drum to play a tom tom on the third note of each group.

Experiment with this pattern yourself and see what you can create.

I hope you’ve enjoyed fill of the week #71. If you’re in Singapore and you’d like a free trial drum lesson. Send us a message via the contact us page.