In this fourth episode, I introduce a new drum fill I developed. The drum fill is based on sextuplets, starting with two notes on the bass drum and moving with an alternate sticking between the floor tom and rack tom. We start off playing the drum fill slowly to memorize the orchestration. Once comfortable, we can apply it in a musical context (playing three bars of groove and one of drum fill) at different tempos and incorporate it into different styles of music to develop our drumming skills.
Here’s a variation that incorporates the snare drum. Feel free to play your ideas creatively, moving your hands around the drumset. In the following video, I demonstrate the drum fill, the variation, and an additional improvised variation.
We can use the same idea to create linear grooves between the bass drum, hi-hat, and snare. In the first example, we orchestrate the hand part on the hi-hat, “falling” on the snare drum on the upbeat of 2 and 4. The second example introduces snare ghost notes, so we play the right hand on the hi-hat and the left hand on the snare. As we can see in the notation below, the first one is an open-handed linear groove, while the second one is a closed linear groove.
Similarly, we can incorporate the ride cymbal into the groove. In this case, we alternate the hand part between the ride and the hi-hat. The last idea introduces snare ghost notes in the left-hand part, keeping the same backbeat and playing the left foot hi-hat on quarter notes. At the end of this lesson, experiment by playing with your ideas. Keep on drumming!
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