In this lesson you will be applying the Four Hands Two Feet grouping exercise when constructing one bar fills. As this grouping is made up of six notes it will have a slightly syncopated feel to it. The timing and sticking for this grouping has been covered in the lesson linked, if you aren't familiar with this basic pattern you will need to have a look through that lesson first.
On this page you will be shown some common orchestrations of this exercise. As discussed in the lesson linked above, the full bar will be made up of two full occurances of the six note grouping which leaves a quarter note left in the bar. For that last quarter note there is a little freedom in what you can play and I will show various ideas throughout the lesson.
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 blocks of four hands into groupings of two. Four sixteenth notes are used to end on.
Example 4
A variation on the fill above where an extra set of kicks is added at the end. You would generally expect the next bar to start with a kick, meaning the two kicks at the end of this bar will lead into the start of the next bar with no break in timing.
Example 5
The blocks of hands are split between three drums here and the bar ends on an eighth note.
Example 6
Each hand switches drum on every stroke, a quarter note snare and crash is used to end the fill.
Example 7
In this example I am showing how the grouping can be used without needing to be syncopated. Only one occurance of the six note grouping is used at the end of the bar and it starts on an '+' count.
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 play two occurances of the six note grouping but starting on beat 2 of the bar. In this example the blocks of hands start with a tom followed by snares.
Example 10
A variation in orchestration of the phrasing given above. This time a combination of two earlier examples is used.
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.
