Adding A Crotchet Into A Full Bar Quaver Fill

In this lesson you will be breaking up eighth note fills by adding in some quarter notes. These exercises will be very useful to a beginner player due to the slow speeds of the rhythms given. As well as giving you some new ideas for your fills this is also a great exercise in developing your reading. In later lessons the note values of these fills will be doubled to create some faster patterns using a similar idea, by learning these fills you are making these later lesson far easier.

If you haven't already, read up on Quavers, Crotchets and Counting. Our lessons on Counting Snare Drum Rhythms and Counting Building Blocks may also be useful.

For each example you will start with a snare drum rhythm. This on it's own will make a decent fill, but in addition to that I will provide some orchestrations of this rhythm to create further fills. A counting checker box has been included to make sure you are counting the rhythm correctly. Make sure you apply each bar of music to a Phrased Example in various different structures. Some examples of this will be provided on the last page of this series.

All examples on this page will have one crotchet in the bar and the rest will be eighth notes. On the next page you will start adding in more crotchets. In terms of sticking, start each numbered count on a right hand. When a crotchet is added this will force you to use two right hands in a row.


Example 1

Snare Rhythm

A snare rhythm made up of crotchets and quavers. Check Your Counting:

Can't work it out? Click here for the answer.

The counting for this rhythm is: 1 + 2 + 3 + 4

Orchestration 1

A fill using crotchets and quavers.

Orchestration 2

A fill using crotchets and quavers.


Example 2

Snare Rhythm

A snare rhythm made up of crotchets and quavers. Check Your Counting:

Can't work it out? Click here for the answer.

The counting for this rhythm is: 1 2 + 3 + 4 +

Orchestration 1

A fill using crotchets and quavers.

Orchestration 2

A fill using crotchets and quavers.


Example 3

Snare Rhythm

A snare rhythm made up of crotchets and quavers. Check Your Counting:

Can't work it out? Click here for the answer.

The counting for this rhythm is: 1 + 2 3 + 4 +

Orchestration 1

A fill using crotchets and quavers.

Orchestration 2

A fill using crotchets and quavers.


Example 4

Snare Rhythm

A snare rhythm made up of crotchets and quavers. Check Your Counting:

Can't work it out? Click here for the answer.

The counting for this rhythm is: 1 + 2 + 3 4 +

Orchestration 1

A fill using crotchets and quavers.

Orchestration 2

A fill using crotchets and quavers.


TASK:

  1. Using the 2 minute rule, get all exercises up to a tempo of at least 120bpm.
  2. Create your own orchestrations based on each snare rhythm.
  3. Use each example as a fill in a longer phrase.

Why not try our lesson on adding Multiple Crotchets next.

Lessons

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