This week’s drum fill sees us take the inverted paradiddle out for spin around the kit.

Watch Drum Fill Of The Week #83 on Instagram.

The inverted paradiddle is easily one of my favourite rudiments; when accented and combined with other members of the paraddidle family it creates some great sticking patterns that can be used in grooves and fills. For this fill we’re just using the Right hand lead inverted paradiddle (RLLR) to create a simple drum fill.

Learn The Fill

Let’s start by looking at the basic pattern we’ll be using for this fill.

Our fill consists of 3 right hand lead inverted paradiddles played as 16th notes. The first two are followed by an single left hand 8th note to add space to the fill. This phrasing is very common and very musical; you’ve probably seen it in some other fills, including on this website.

Get used to playing this pattern and count out loud as you do. You might want to practice adding a bass drum and crash on beat 1 of the next bar also. Be sure to hit the crash with your left hand.

Now let’s orchestrate the right hand around the kit. There are many ways you could do this. I finally settled on alternating between the high tom and the floor tom. We’ll keep the left on the snare for now.

Finally we’ll move the left hand around a little bit. I decided to play all left hand double strokes on the snare and the single strokes on the high tom.

Take It Further

There are many ways to reorchestrate this drum fill around the kit. I suggest you explore and create some of your own. Here’s a couple of additional things you could do with it:

The first variation for this drum fill has us filling in the gaps with the bass drum. Try this out to create a more powerful sound.

The second variation has us changing the subdivision of the inverted paradiddles to 16th note triplets. This creates more space and gives the drum fill a different feel.

I hope you’ve enjoyed drum fill of the week #83. If you’re in Singapore and you’d like a free trial drum lesson, send us a message via the contact us page.