In this lesson you will be applying the Two Hands Four Feet Four Hands Two Feet Grouping Exercise grouping exercise when constructing one bar fills. These will essentially be two previous fill construction ideas nailed together to create one super fill and will be the exact reverse of our One Bar 4 Hands - 2 Feet - 2 Hands Four Feet Fills lesson. Before starting these exercises I recomended working through the exercise linked above, our One Bar 4 Hands - 2 Feet Fills and One Bar 2 Hands - 4 Feet Fills fills as everything here is built from those patterns.
On this page you will be shown some common orchestrations of this exercise that you can apply as fills. The grouping is made up of 12 notes (two lots of six note groupings) so you will have four sixteenth notes to play around with at the end. For that last quarter note you are really free to play whatever you like and I will show various ideas throughout the lesson. These patterns will be very similar to the fill lesson linked above as it is just the same pattern played in the reverse order.
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 sound 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 short fills following this pattern. Take each fill example as an idea for constructing your own fills. Mess around with the orchestrations, particularly of the last quarter note, and see what new patterns you can come up with.
Example 1
A very simple orchestration where each grouping of hands is played on a different drum.
Example 2
A variation on the fill above using a quarter note flam to end on.
Example 3
In this version you are splitting the block of four hands into groupings of two. Two floor toms followed by two kicks are used to end the fill.
Example 4
A variation on the fill above where the groups of two are carried on into the last quarter note.
Example 5
The first note of each grouping is played on a tom with the remaining notes on the snare.
Example 6
Each hand switches drum on every stroke.
Example 7
In this example you are switching around the placement of the fill. By starting a quarter note later the twelve note group ends at the end of the bar.
Example 8
The same phrasing as the fill above is used here with a different orchestration.
Example 9
Continuing with the idea of moving where the fill starts, this time you are delaying the start of the fill by an eighth note. This leaves another eighth note gap after the twelve note grouping. This is an odd placement but can give some interesting results.
Example 10
A variation in orchestration of the phrasing 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 two bar fills either by using the same rhythm twice or by continuing the six bar pattern over the bar.