In this lesson you will be applying the Four Hands Two Feet Two Hands Four Feet grouping exercise when constructing two bar fills. You can see the exercise for this pattern about half way down the linked lesson. These patterns will essentially be an extension of our One Bar Fill version of the exercise but I will try to throw in a couple of new orchestration ideas.
On this page you will be shown some common orchestrations of this fill building block. The grouping lasts for twelve notes so when played over two bars you will get two full occurances of the pattern with a minim left over at the end. With those left over notes there is freedom to use other fill construction ideas or to play a partial version of the grouping. Various ideas for how to make use of that space will be shown below.
It is essential with these kind of hand to foot groupings that all notes fall exactly in place, if they don't the part will end up sounding sloppy and inaccurate. It would be well worth you spending some time playing the original exercise to a metronome and ensuring your placement is spot on before starting work on these fills.
Listed below are several ideas for fills following this pattern, take each fill example as an idea for constructing your own fills. Mess around with the orchestrations, particularly of the 'left over' note, and see what new patterns you can come up with. Compared to the fill lesson linked above, there are more options for orchestration as longer groupings are played on the hands.
Example 1
A straight forward orchestration where each grouping of hands moves around the kit. The last minim is a partial version of the initial grouping.
Example 2
This fill is based around groupings of two. The last minim is straight hand to foot in twos pattern.
Example 3
Each hand grouping starts with a tom followed by snares. You end with a simple two bar sixteenth note fill.
Example 4
The groups of four play a 'triangle' type pattern. End with a standard fill shape with a 32nd note thrown in.
Example 5
The groups of two in this fill are played on a snare and crash.
Example 6
Quite a tough orchestration where each grouping is played on a tom and hi hat open handed. The difficulty here will be in the stamina required. The fill ends on a partial grouping.
Example 7
This is a variation on the placement of the fill. By starting two beats later in the first bar the twelve note grouping will finish at the end of the second bar. This is shown without any orchestration here.
Example 8
This is a variation on the placement idea shown above, the 'one hand per drum' orchestration is used here.
Example 9
This is another change to the placement that is a little odd. You are going to start the fill on the '+' count after beat 2 in the first bar. This means you get one full occurance of the grouping with an eighth note left at the end. This is shown on the snare below.
Example 10
A variation in orchestration of the placement given above.
TASK
- Using the 2 minute rule, get all examples up to a tempo of at least 150bpm.
- Add all fills to a structured piece.
- Create your own versions of these fills by coming up with new orchestrations or combining given parts.
- Experiment with constructing longer fills.
