Playing drums looks cool but we all know that it is just not a child's play. Don't worry because there is help at hand, and with this video, you will learn how to play drum fills. The video is very simple to follow and will teach you the intricate details about drum fills.
Drum fills, you will be using drum fills when you want to announce a new section. Obviously, the drummers would spend most of the time playing groove but going from the verse to the chorus for instance or from the chorus to the bridge, the role of the drummer is to tell the rest of the band- okay, new section is coming now and that's most of the time why and when you would be playing drum fills. The fill I am going to demonstrate first is based on the hand to hand sticking, so right, left, right, left, right, left, sticking and the subdivision I am going to use is 16 notes.
So, basically, 4 strokes per beat. What I would recommend is just to, first of all, get really comfortable with playing that on the snare and make it sound relaxed and even as much as possible. Then, with that in mind, exploring different options around the kit, for instance, moving clockwise.
So, I am going to go from the snare to the rack tom to the floor tom back to the snare. All the ideas will be to move hands not necessarily in the same way but just replace some of the sounds, so for instance, from playing the snare, I can move on the different elements in a more sort of random way. The flow is still 16 notes but you can make the phrases probably little bit more interesting in the sense that it's not always the same pattern, you use the different elements of the kit to bring an element of melody basically, that's the idea.
A little trick to make you feel sound as effective as possible is to look at the dynamic contrast between the notes that will sound loud and the notes you will keep quiet on the kit. So, basically, what I am doing most of the time is when I am playing the snare, I sort of play the non-accent notes piano solo like ghost notes, really, something like that, and then I am going to displace around the kit, the accents. So, I am going to start playing a phrase on the snare and then I will play the same phrase around the kit, basically using the same rhythm but will sound a little bit different because of the different elements of the kit.
So here it is. 1, 2, 3, 4. So that's a little trick that can be really helpful when you really want to bring clarity to your fills to avoid that sort of one dimensional sound where everything is played at the same level, just bringing some dynamic contrast.
Obviously, it requires a little bit more technique probably, so little bit more challenging, but again it's definitely worth practicing those things to get a little bit more clarity when you are approaching fills. And that's how to play a simple drum fill. .
