This week’s fill takes a 5 note pattern for a spin around the kit… starting with…. the LEFT HAND!!!!!!!!!!! Try not to panic!

Five note groupings can sound very musical when applied around the kit. You just need to find the right 5 note pattern and accent it the right way. It’s a matter of trial and error, but with patience you can find something usable.

Learn The Fill

Let’s focus on the five note pattern we’ll be repeating throughout this fill.

Play this pattern repeatedly until it starts to feel good in your hands. Note the accents on the Right hand notes.

Now lets play the pattern as 16th notes in 4/4 time.

We can get 3 groups of 5 into one bar of 16th notes in 4/4. Note that our pattern ends on the “&” of 4. Practice playing pattern this with a metronome at 75bpm and count out loud while doing it. Note where the accents fall: “&” of 1, 2, “ah” of 2, “e” of 3, 4 and the “&” of 4.

We can give the fill a smoother ending by adding one more left hand on the end.

Now all we need to do is move the accents around the kit. There are many ways to do this, here’s the pattern I chose.

I opted to put the second accent in each group of 5 on a tom-tom & I added the left hand on the floor tom for the final note. Try it out.

Taking It Further

Here’s a few other ways of orchestrating this fill around the kit. Play around with these and then create some of your own.

Our first variation just sees all the accents played on the toms, rather than split between the snare and tom.

The second variation sees us accenting a tom and then the snare in each group of 5. This is opposite the original fill where we accented the snare first.

The final variation goes back to the original accent pattern but sees us playing the left hand on the hi-hat between the accents and the final note ends up on the snare.

I hope you’ve enjoyed fill of the week #84. If you’re in Singapore and you’d like a free trial drum lesson, send us a message via the contact us page.