Drum Fills

Now that I’m settled in SF, I’ve had some time to practice drumming. For my neighbors’ sake, I have an electronic kit.

I re-realized something about drum fills and wanted to share it with the internet. FYI: Fills are the part where instead of keeping the beat, you hear a whole bunch of notes played all at one, usually followed by a cymbal.

Sticking fills is basically like sticking rolls, except a roll is a constant “right, left, right, left, right” — played really quickly. Fills usually involve more than just the snare drum, but that doesn’t really matter for what I’m talking about. I’m talking about sticking — the pattern of lefts and rights (L and R).

RLRL == "hit with your right hand, your left, your right, your left with no empty time"

That’s how you’d write a roll. A fill might be written

RLR RLR RL LRLR == "play three notes, silent for one note, then play three more,

another silent note, two more, another silent, then four more "

Normally drummers count in “1 2 3 4, 1 2 3 4”, but when counting fills and rolls, I’ve found it easier to switch from counting the beat to counting the number of notes in the fill or roll, then switching back to counting the beat. So, the above one would get counted like

1 2 3 (pause) 1 2 3 (pause) 1 2 (pause) 1 2 3 4

Hope it helps you. Rock on.