Help with fills !!!

SharkyBait911

Senior Member
Hey,

I've played drums for about 5 years and im happy at the level of my playing but at the moment im playing the same couple of fills over and over and it's boring! Im not able to make up some good different fills, HELP, I want to play rudiment based fills but i can't seem to get it

Help please

Thanks (P.S i play funky rock so no hard core thrash fills please lol)
 
Hey,

I've played drums for about 5 years and im happy at the level of my playing but at the moment im playing the same couple of fills over and over and it's boring! Im not able to make up some good different fills, HELP, I want to play rudiment based fills but i can't seem to get it

Help please

Thanks (P.S i play funky rock so no hard core thrash fills please lol)

Which is exactly why Youtube videos are so useful. There are billions of fills on Youtube.
 
Re: Help with fills!!!!

I also notice that I have periods in wich I play alot of fills wich are much alike. then after a while I got another couple of fills wich I play then.
I think it's just try some new things, maybe watch some videos or buy a book/dvd.
 
Here's what I've been doing - I'm pretty much a drumming newbie so take this with a grain of salt.

I take it completely away from the kit. I have my kit drawn on a piece of paper. What I like to do is look at the image and try to hear a cool drum fill in my head. I'll try to image things like "What if I do 2 swiss army triplets on my snare, 2 swiss army triplets on my floor tom and then do accented triplets around the kit" and I try to picture it. I try to piece together cool little fills by using all the different rudiments that I know. I try to figure out what might sound cool, then if I get something in my mind i'll notate it, go down on the kit and practice the new fill. I like having a picture of my kit in front of me because it helps get my imagination going.

Sounds kinda weird, but that's what I've been doing.
 
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Here's what I've been doing - I'm pretty much a drumming newbie so take this with a grain of salt.

I take it completely away from the kit. I have my kit drawn on a piece of paper. What I like to do is look at the image and try to hear a cool drum fill in my head. I'll try to image things like "What if I do 2 swiss army triplets on my snare, 2 swiss army triplets on my floor tom and then do accented triplets around the kit" and I try to hear it in my head. I try to piece together cool little fills by hearing them in my head using all the different rudiments that I know. I try to figure out what might sound cool, then if I get something in my mind i'll notate it, go down on the kit and practice the new fill. I like having a picture of my kit in front of me because it helps get my imagination going.

Sounds kinda weird, but that's what I've been doing.

wow that sounds like a good idea! Im gonna go do that now, Thanks!
 
wow that sounds like a good idea! Im gonna go do that now, Thanks!

Thanks,

Yeah it all started when I was at work one day and suddenly out of nowhere I thought of a cool drum fill. I notated exactly what I thought it would be based on what I imagined and when I got home I was surprised how it sounded exactly like I pictured it. It's pretty fun to do when you're away from the kit, then you can take your ideas home and try to apply them.
 
A book that helped me a lot with fills was Linear Time Playing by Gary Chaffee. It is isn't specifically about fills, but it does get you playing linearly which sounds great in fills.
 
Here's what I've been doing - I'm pretty much a drumming newbie so take this with a grain of salt.

I take it completely away from the kit. I have my kit drawn on a piece of paper. What I like to do is look at the image and try to hear a cool drum fill in my head. I'll try to image things like "What if I do 2 swiss army triplets on my snare, 2 swiss army triplets on my floor tom and then do accented triplets around the kit" and I try to picture it. I try to piece together cool little fills by using all the different rudiments that I know. I try to figure out what might sound cool, then if I get something in my mind i'll notate it, go down on the kit and practice the new fill. I like having a picture of my kit in front of me because it helps get my imagination going.

Sounds kinda weird, but that's what I've been doing.

wow that IS a really good idea.
what i would also try to do is try to copy some fills from some bands you like. It will help you build a better fill "vocabulary."
 
Don't try to make up fills. Listen to music and imitate! That's the easiest and the best way to learn new styles and vocabulary.
 
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No thrash fills? Darn! Those are all I know!
*sarcasm*

As previously stated, you can only really learn and pick up on ideas by listening to drummers of the style you are playing. If you want to play funky rock, then listen to some FUNKY ROCK! Look up your favorite funk rock band on iTunes and see what other bands people who liked them are also buying, and look into their stuff. Expand your horizons. Listen to as many drummers of a particular genre as possible. See how they construct their parts and come up with fills.
 
Don't try to make up fills. Listen to music an imitate! That's the easiest and the best way to learn new styles and vocabulary.

This doesn't make any sense. Of course you should try to make up your own fills using the vocabulary of rudiments. Yeah, listen to other fills and immitate, but make your own up as well, it's a creative process - not a "i'm a drone" process. Some of my favorite fills are the ones i've made up by stringing together interesting rudiments. I can't believe the idea of not trying to make your own fills was suggested! Use your imagination, not someone elses. That's like an artist saying to an aspiring artist "Don't paint your own pictures! trace someone elses"

I think listening to other drummers fills is good to get some ideas, but using that as your only source for learning drum fills is boring.
 
This doesn't make any sense. Of course you should try to make up your own fills using the vocabulary of rudiments. Yeah, listen to other fills and immitate, but make your own up as well, it's a creative process - not a "i'm a drone" process. Some of my favorite fills are the ones i've made up by stringing together interesting rudiments. I can't believe the idea of not trying to make your own fills was suggested! Use your imagination, not someone elses. That's like an artist saying to an aspiring artist "Don't paint your own pictures! trace someone elses"

I think listening to other drummers fills is good to get some ideas, but using that as your only source for learning drum fills is boring.

Correct. The way you make up your own fills is not by merely throwing notes out and hoping they come together. You have to derive that fill from somewhere. Listen to drummers play and first try to copy their fills. Then, once you can play those fills regularly in a musical setting, derive from those fills the general idea behind them. Once you understand the general idea behind a fill, you can switch up the phrasing and the way you play it. You should try to play any given fill idea as many ways as possible. The key is to listen, copy, and generalize.
 
Correct. The way you make up your own fills is not by merely throwing notes out and hoping they come together. You have to derive that fill from somewhere. Listen to drummers play and first try to copy their fills. Then, once you can play those fills regularly in a musical setting, derive from those fills the general idea behind them. Once you understand the general idea behind a fill, you can switch up the phrasing and the way you play it. You should try to play any given fill idea as many ways as possible. The key is to listen, copy, and generalize.

I'm not saying there is not benefit to listening to other drum fills and learning, but the real meat is understanding where those fills came from in the first place. Simply copying fills and making small tweaks gains very little compared to understanding the building blocks behind that drum fill.

There's a difference between understanding the vocabulary of rudiments and using that understanding to build your own drum fills and "throwing notes out and hoping they come together". You derive that fill from your understanding of rudiments and how the can work together. The key is to understand rudiments, be creative and apply - not listening without really understanding and hoping you do, copying like some lazy high school student that can't write their own essay and changing that paper slightly to make it "their own".

I think there is benefit to learning other drum fills, but to say "don't create your own" is nothing short of ridiculous.

I guess what I'm saying is if you have enough of an understanding to take a fill, generalize it and understand it's individual components, then you have enough of an understanding to take individual components (rudiments) and build your own.
 
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This doesn't make any sense. Of course you should try to make up your own fills using the vocabulary of rudiments. Yeah, listen to other fills and immitate, but make your own up as well, it's a creative process - not a "i'm a drone" process. Some of my favorite fills are the ones i've made up by stringing together interesting rudiments. I can't believe the idea of not trying to make your own fills was suggested! Use your imagination, not someone elses. That's like an artist saying to an aspiring artist "Don't paint your own pictures! trace someone elses"

I think listening to other drummers fills is good to get some ideas, but using that as your only source for learning drum fills is boring.

I'm not saying there is not benefit to listening to other drum fills and learning, but the real meat is understanding where those fills came from in the first place. Simply copying fills and making small tweaks gains very little compared to understanding the building blocks behind that drum fill.

There's a difference between understanding the vocabulary of rudiments and using that understanding to build your own drum fills and "throwing notes out and hoping they come together". You derive that fill from your understanding of rudiments and how the can work together. The key is to understand rudiments, be creative and apply - not listening without really understanding and hoping you do, copying like some lazy high school student that can't write their own essay and changing that paper slightly to make it "their own".

I think there is benefit to learning other drum fills, but to say "don't create your own" is nothing short of ridiculous.

I guess what I'm saying is if you have enough of an understanding to take a fill, generalize it and understand it's individual components, then you have enough of an understanding to take individual components (rudiments) and build your own.

Before you can start creating something, you need to have some knowledge and building blocks to work with. The thread starter knows two fills and doesn't know how to create new ones, so the most logical step is to learn some vocabulary from real and tangible sources -- stuff that you can use and stuff that has been used successfully. I'm not against devising your own vocabulary, since that's what makes us all unique, but there's no point in trying to re-invent the wheel when people have been driving cars for a couple of hundred years...

I share Joe P's notion of listening, copying and generalising. Learn a few dozen fills, and figure out how they work, and you'll soon realise how they relate to one another. Drumming isn't about combining rudiments -- it's about making music.
 
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I very much agree! "Hands, Grooves, and Fills" by Pat Petrillo is really a great book for learning how to fill successfully and creatively.

Check it out!
 
Before you can start creating something, you need to have some knowledge and building blocks to work with. The thread starter knows two fills and doesn't know how to create new ones, so the most logical step is to learn some vocabulary from real and tangible sources -- stuff that you can use and stuff that has been used successfully. I'm not against devising your own vocabulary, since that's what makes us all unique, but there's no point in trying to re-invent the wheel when people have been driving cars for a couple of hundred years...

I share Joe P's notion of listening, copying and generalising. Learn a few dozen fills, and figure out how they work, and you'll soon realise how they relate to one another. Drumming isn't about combining rudiments -- it's about making music.

Well, different strokes for different folks I suppose.

Rudiments are the foundation of drumming. Of course drumming is about making music not just focusing on rudiments, but everything you play on the drums is a rudiment of some sort. This is like saying "Playing guitar isn't about playing chords, it's about playing music." While that's true, you have to understand how chords work together and how to apply them to create that music in the first place.

I have pages and pages of notation for different drum fills that I've created using my approach. I use rudiments as my basis for creating these fills, but once applied on the kit they don't sound like an exercise in rudiment practice - I try to apply creativity, know when to rest, know when to roll.

I think the artist analogy is pretty sound. You can learn how the Mona Lisa was constructed by looking at all the different primitve shapes in the painting, looking at shading, colors...etc. You can learn a lot from this, but to simply paint another Mona Lisa is boring and expresses nothing about yourself. Take what you've learned and create a brand new work of art that expresses you.

I think listening to other drum fills is a good source for inspiration and learning. Deconstructing is beneficial, what I'm arguing about is the idea one poster said when he said "do not create your own fills, imitate everyone else". I suppose I would rather spend my time expressing myself then disecting and copying someone elses expression.

I don't understand your "don't reinvent the wheel" comment. Creating your own fills and music in general has no boundries, all it takes is creativity. If anything, copying someone elses work is reinventing the wheel.
 
Hey,

I've played drums for about 5 years and im happy at the level of my playing but at the moment im playing the same couple of fills over and over and it's boring! Im not able to make up some good different fills, HELP, I want to play rudiment based fills but i can't seem to get it

Help please

Thanks (P.S i play funky rock so no hard core thrash fills please lol)

A lot of this may have been covered already...but I'll comment on what has worked for me so far.

1. Rudiments - practice them until they're not just familiar but *internalized* and "show up" in your playing.

2. Time - constantly work on your time...fills will come easier with good timekeeping.

3. Patterns - Create your own. I do this on the kit every single night. Sit down, turn on the click, and *play* your drums. I'm not just talking about grooves...but really play *all* of the voices set up on your kit. Get your left foot pumping a pulse and just move around the kit and create patterns that sound good to you. Transcribe those patterns and then try to fit them into grooves.

I noticed that after doing #3 for a few months...my fills became increasingly complex and interesting. As my kit becomes more "familiar" to me and I learn more patterns, I'm finding that they're just popping out of me during band practice.
 
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