How to develop great drum fills

11/4/08 | Posted By Rob Gordon

Here are some of my ideas on how to create fills

1) Just play some time yourself and then just make stuff up, relax, don't think, just play, but importantly record yourself . I am lucky as I have a Roland TDK6 kit and can play and record myself direct into Cubase on my computer.

2) Listen to your fav drummers and copy them. I do this with Chad Smith all the time

3) I have study Guildhall School of Music Drums exams which require learning rudiments. All the rudiments can be adapted to become a fill e.g Check out Andy Bolds articles in Drummer mag. In this months (I think) He explains how to take a double flamacue and turn it into a groove but also a one bar fill. He has done this with lots of rudiments eg single, double and triple Parradiddles. It also make them much more fun to learn!!!

4) Double your 1/2 bar to full bar fills, change accents, sub in a bass or hi hat instead of a right or left hand. e.g if you play a triplet fill RLRLRR go R L Right Foot L R Right Foot instead to give a different feel PS Triplets with a foot is very John Bonham, I am working on this myself at the moment

5) Use words to give you a fill phrase ie "Bucket of fish" translates into R L R Foot, but play it as R L R L the RLR becomes a triplet and the last L an 16th note

6) Buy the regular drum mags for information. They have lots of transcriptions of fills etc from different drummenrs. I now have over 5 year worth and I am starting to go back and re read articles and now I have moved on as a drummer I see things from a different level which gives me a differenct insight to stuff

7) Check out my latest article about keeping time in fills and listening to yourself, not exactly what about how to develop fill but sort of related

8) Lastly remember to keep it musicial at all times becuase a lot of great drummers always go on about less is more and respect the space eg Steve White, Billy Ward, Greg Bissonnette.

Charlie Watts (Rolling Stones) drummer is renowned for playing flowing fills and just making small changes to his groove to make a fill eg just adding a hi hat open and close on beat 4 for example

Look at this link from modern drummer magazine for Billy Ward's views herehttp://www.moderndrummer.com/playing.asp

As always if you have any comments pls email me rob@learn-to-play-drums.com but please put the text "Not spam:" in your subject line first to help me sort the spam from your mail

Take Care and happy drumming

Regards

Rob