In this lesson you will be taking the RLRF Exercise In 6/8 based on the snare and moving the first right hand of the grouping around various parts of the kit. All exercises presented on this page should be taken as construction concepts that you can then expand on to create your own fills. If you have covered the exercise linked above, these patterns will be pretty straight forward.
Each fill is presented as part of a four bar phrase and will be built using various different lengths and various different parts of the kit. It may be worth breaking each pattern down into its individual parts to make the learning process more straight forward. One thing that may cause you issue is switching from the standard 6/8 compound timing into the syncopated fill. If you are struggling slow the part right down and play to a click.
A trick you will notice is used a lot in these fills is ending on a quarter or eighth note rather than a full 'RLRF' shape. This creates a bit of 'space' before returning to the main part which can be affective, but also removes the two quick 16th note kicks you get between the end of the fill and start of the groove. This is handy when you are playing at higher tempos.
Example 1
Example 2
Example 3
Example 4
Example 5
Example 6
TASK
- Using the 2 minute rule, get all example phrases up to a tempo of at least 130bpm.
- Create your own versions of these fills.
- Include these fills in an 8 bar pattern.
