It’s time for a flamtastic drum fill!

Watch drum fill of the week #75 on instagram

The week’s drum fill features only two ingredients – Flams on the snare and the bass drum. Sounds simple enough, but the bass drum gets itself stuck in some tricky places. This one might cause more trouble than you’d think.

Learn The Fill

Lets start by analyzing the rhythm of this groove. If we played it all on snare drum, without any flams, this would be our rhythm:

Play this pattern slowly with a metronome (50bpm) and count out loud. Use any sticking that you find comfortable. If your metronome can count 8th or 16th sixteenth notes, then I suggest you use one of those settings to help improve your accuracy. I like to set mine to 8th notes and then I try to get my 16th notes right in the middle of the 8th note count.

Once you can play the pattern we can substitute in the bass drum.

Again, go slow and count out loud. Play all of the snare drums with just one hand for now. Play it with your metronome and record yourself. Are all your bass drum notes falling accurately?

The final step is to add in the flams. Here’s the full drum fill.

Take It Further

You hear this kind of drum fill often when everything else stops and the drummer gets the spotlight. It’s more suited to rock music and I consider it a power fill. Played at a loud volume and with intensity, it can really stand out. Here’s 3 more fills in this vein. Be sure to count!

Working on these fills will also hopefully improve your bass drum accuracy as well and get you used to playing it with out the hi-hat over top acting as a guide.

I hope you’ve enjoyed drum fill of the week #75. If you’re in Singapore and you’d like a free trial drum lesson, send us a message via the contact us page.