Drum Fill #77: Revenge of the 5 note group… Watch at your peril!

Watch drum fill #77 on instagram

This week’s drum fill uses our old friend, the 5 note grouping. We’ve done several fills with this pattern already, hopefully you’re getting good at it now! The last time we tried 5 note groups was drum fill of the week #62. Check that one out too.

Learn The Fill

This drum fill is based on a 5 sixteenth note pattern, here it is:

Now lets put those 5 sixteenth notes into a bar of 4/4.

The 5 note pattern repeats 3 times within a bar of 4/4. This leaves a 16th note spare at the end. To smooth out the transition back to the groove I added in the final 16th note. That’s what this looks like:

The final step is to orchestrate the drum fill around the kit. Here’s what that looks like:

As always, when working on this drum fill, go slow and make sure you keep a nice 16th note flow going throughout the drum fill. Make sure all the notes are evenly spaced. Start at 4opm and work up.

Taking It Further

When orchestrating this fill around the kit, I came up with a lot of ways to orchestrate it. Here’s three that I liked. Try these and then come up with your own.

The first drum fill variation has us going ‘backwards’ around the kit from floor tom to high tom.

The second drum fill keeps the right hand on the floor tom while the left hand moves around the kit.

The final fill plays a common pattern between the snare, high tom and floor tom – albeit broken up by the bass drum.

Now create some of your own.

Hopefully you’ve enjoyed drum fill of the week #77. If you’re in Singapore and you’d like a free trial drum lesson, send us a message on the contact us page.