How to Play a Fail Safe Fill

Hi, I'm Wes Crawford and we’re going to continue our study of rock jamming. But talking about a fail safe fill system. A lot of times you have a hard time deciding what to play as a fill around the drums for some kind of introduction to a new section of a song or some kind of whole. And I'm going to talk to you about composite fills and it sounds like something more difficult than it is.

If you're playing a drum beat what you want to do is sing the rhythm of that drum beat first. Let’s say my beat is [Demonstration]. Now sing it all in one lead. So see that’s the same rhythm that I was playing but just all in one sound. So that’s your composite rhythm. It’s the same rhythm that was being played amongst the drums you're on the kit.

Then you can play that same rhythm as a fill and re-orchestrated as we say, or place it on any drums or cymbals you want but keep that same rhythm, and because both of these rhythms, the rhythm from the drum beat and the rhythm from the fill, really have the same composite rhythm or have the same nucleus so to speak. It’s going to sound like it fits. So let’s try some examples using that one beat.

So we go [Demonstration] back on the beat it was [Demonstration] and so fort. I just did the same thing many times and I jut kept singing to myself [Demonstration] and then played it different ways around the drum set. So every time I did it, the fill sounded like it fit because whether the audience would realize it or not, it was the same basic rhythm as you are already playing.


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