super fast fills

How do these guys do them, does anyone know what techniques they use, im using dave weckles open closed hands for my roles but will this ever get me up to super speed, what these guys can do is amazing.

It's a practice method I call "Left Right Left Right for Twenty Years".

But in all seriousness, these guys have really given their life to drums. They have practiced rudiments and technique for years if not decades. I've found that even if you do a slow fill but do it cleanly, it can have an effect of a fast fill.

It's not an impossibility get to that level...it just takes lots of WORK!

...something I've had problems with accepting...

I'm pretty jealous too of them. But I agree with Drummerist, I suspect that they do a lot of rudiments in their free time, practice the fills...on their free time, and do what ever other secret techniques they have, and take a lot of time with it. My "fast fills" if you want to call them that, are just by luck. But the rudiments have been helping me lately on that kind of stuff.

Try to study and analyze very closely, John Bonham's fills, lightning-fast triplets and his thundering bass foot pedal. Don't crack at first....stand up and practise, practise, practise. Also, fills come from the soul, at the right time and right place.

Cheers,

I think technique is a subjective thing. You could point out 10 different drummers all playing super, insane fast fills and they all have variances in technique. In drumming, I don't think there is a 'right', or 'wrong' way to do something: Only effective or non-effective.

So what you need is to become 'effective' with what you want to do. There are absolutely no magic formulas to this. No 'get rich quick' schemes, no 'play the fastest fills in 10 minutes' crap. It's all about ONE THING: work...practice, rudiments, rudiments, rudiments. Again and again and again. For A LONG TIME.

How much do you want it? There is your answer.

kwolf68 said:

How much do you want it? There is your answer.

Click to expand...

This is absolutely true. You need to practice a LOT to get faster. The way I did it was to work on my accuracy at the highest speed that I could play cleanly. Pretty soon, I found I could push it just a little more, then a little more, then just a little more--while just working on accuracy and control.

If you go for speed without accuracy, then that's exactly what you're going to achieve--some really fast notes that sound like garbage!!

does anyone know any good videos?

Just to offer a little perspective...

When listening to someone play, it sounds faster than it is. Fills, tempos in general, whatever. If you've ever listened to a recording of yourself playing - particularly with a band - you have unbdoubtedly experienced the 'hmm, it didn't seem that fast when I was playing it' syndrome.

So, when hearing Weckl burn around the kit, the first thing you need to understand is that it's not impossibly fast. Chances are, your hands already move at that speed - you just don't realize it - and any practice needs to be devoted more to accuracy and precision while moving around the kit. You may indeed also need to work on speed, but realize that you're playing faster than you think, and don't agonize over it or feel that it's unattainable.

Basically, Weckl is just a guy moving sticks around, just like you and me. The difference is, he does it really well! But with practice, we can do some firweworks too. We just need to dedicate ourselves and practice the way in which we move the sticks.

Bermuda

The gateway to speed is through control. It's a lot easier to learn control than speed, so I try to aim for consistent clean. Only then do I proceed in tempo. It takes the pressure off and breaks it down. My definition of clean translates to an evenness in volume between right and left hands and feet, good dynamic control, perfect subdividing...there's probably a few more... Then there's the whole musicality thing...What a great instrument thing.

bermuda said:

Just to offer a little perspective...

When listening to someone play, it sounds faster than it is.

Click to expand...

Exactly what I was going to say. The important thing is not necessarily "going fast," but coordination. The thing that blows people away about Jojo Mayer, Dave Weckl, etc. is not their sheer speed, but their ability to play the right thing on the right drum at the right time. A simple triplet figure between bass, toms, and snare (something Gadd-esque) sounds absolutely killer at just about any tempo and it's quite easy to count.

But for speed exercises, just find as many rudiments as you can, throw in accents for reference, and crank up the metronome!