Powerful Rock Drumming Fills To Spice Up Your Drumming
This drum lesson features some solid drum fills that you can use within your rock drumming. They are fairly basic, but work well in many playing situations. All are based on eighth notes, and can be played with either right or left hand lead. Just be sure you count out loud (one, and, two, and, three, and, four, and) as you practice them.
It helps if you have already mastered the rock drumming grooves, so that you are familiar with playing eighth note based patterns. Go check out that drum lesson first if you haven't had a chance to review it yet.
The first drum fill is fairly basic. It includes alternating eighth notes on the snare drum. Start by playing the provided eighth note beat, and then transition into the drum fill. Once completed, you want to loop the pattern back into the beat to repeat it again. It helps to count out loud the entire time, and it's best if you can play along with a metronome to assist you with keeping time.
This second fill starts on the snare drum, and then moves down all three toms. As you can see, there are two strokes on each drum as you move down around the kit. Again, focus on playing in perfect time as you count out loud.
The third pattern is very similar to the last. It just moves around the toms in the reverse order. So, it starts on the snare, then moves to the floor tom, then the mid tom, and ends on the hi-tom. This can be tricky if you are playing with the right hand first, but just practice slowly and your hands will get used to moving out of each others way.
The fourth and final drum fill starts with four strokes on the snare, and then moves to the hi and low toms (skipping the mid-time entirely). This is a popular fill for drummers that only have two toms (on a four-piece kit), and is a great way to mix up your tom rolls. You can play it as written, or reverse it if you like.
Once you have mastered all the drum fills on this page, you can move on to some of our other drum lessons.