In this lesson you are going to play a fill that makes use of a crescendo that has also been covered in 3/4 and 4/4. The fill will be a simple repetitive pattern that starts quiet and gradually gets louder. Lessons on a similar topic have been linked at the bottom of the page, if you find this page isn't making sense have a read through some of these.
For this 6/8 build up fill you are going to play a bar of sixteenth notes with some dynamics. The bar will start at 'p' (soft) and end up at 'f' (loud). When playing softly put less power into your strokes and don't lift your sticks up very high. As you progress through the bar gradually start lifting the sticks higher and putting a bit more power into your strokes until you reach the end. This all happens over six beats and looks like this:
Remember the '<' sign underneath the stave is a crescendo and that tells you to gradually get louder. Once you are comfortable with the above pattern you can then create a few variations by changing the orchestration and adding in feet. When feet are shown in these kind of patterns you can often choose whether to apply to crescendo to the feet or not.
Listed below are 4 variations on this fill. I have included a bar of groove before each, it is important that there are no breaks in timing when switching from groove to fill or back again.
Variation 1
Variation 2
Variation 3
Variation 4
TASK
- Using the 2 minute rule, get all fills up to a tempo of at least 135bpm.
- Use the concept in a structure part.
- Create your own fill pattern using this concept.
