You know enough rhythms already in your heart. You now know paradiddles, three-stroke patterns, double strokes, single stokes, you can practice all of these in your fills as you move around the drum set and you don’t have to move around the drum set. You can play everything on the snare.
An example of a very short and easy fill might be something like this. If I’m playing a drum beat and Ill play the drum beat for three measures. And then within the fourth measure, I’ll do a short little fill [Demonstration] and so forth.
You see, just that little thing I did different, it could be considered a very small fill and it just marked the time. It maybe led us into another section.
Another type of fill could be like this [Demonstration]. It’s a very easy one which you’ve heard a million times in rock and roll music. I’ve played sixteenth notes alternating my hands on the snare. You could do the same thing and move it around the drum kit.
[Demonstration]
You don’t have to crash the cymbal every time. But you do have to practice getting away from your beat and back to your beat. I’ll demonstrate the last fill like that.
[Demonstration]
You should be able to count to four all the way through that with everything you’re doing and if all of a sudden you said five or if you didn’t quite get to four, then something went wrong and you better go back and analyze it. I would have counted that, one-two-three-four, one e and the two e and the three e and the four e and one-two-three-four.
Notice that one was hit over here but I still had to be on two back with the snare. The snare in popular music is most often played on beats two and four. Experiment, you know quarter notes, eighth notes, sixteenth notes, you can mix them up, you can try your paradiddles, three-stroke patterns, double strokes, single strokes, and most importantly, silence. Don’t forget to let some silence in. Silence or rest is very important to let music breathe and that’s where we get our rhythms.
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