The Science of Good Drum Fills An audience loves good drum beats. A drummer loves to show off with spectacular drum beats. Everyone wins when the drummer knows what they’re doing. It’s often difficult just to get their hands to play in time with their bass foot. They want to know what they can do to improve their drum fills. For that there are a couple of suggestions. Learn to love the style of music you want to play. If you want to play rock music, find your favorite bands in rock and listen to them all the time. This will teach you what to expect from that style of music. Maybe you even like the beats that a certain college marching band plays.
What Genre Will You Specialize In? You can learn to play these beats as well. Wear your Texas Tech apparel when playing beats from the Texas Tech marching band and you will be good to go. Once you’ve internalized the style, you’ll begin to know what fills to imitate when you start getting good. Imitation will soon become creative improvisation as you play the set longer. In your Texas Tech apparel, you will better be able to emulate the drum beats of that marching band you love so much. You’ll sound like an award winning drummer in no time. Immerse yourself in the music you want to play to get into the feeling of the music. Next, you’ll need to master the use of rudiments. When you use the right rudiments, you free up your hands to move around the set smoothly, doing whatever you want. Your left stick has to cross over the right hand when approaching the second tom. The sticking slows your transition down and limits the speed in which you can run triplets down your toms. When drumming Jazz, you can’t afford to be slowed by anything but the speed of your imagination.
The Paradiddle Luckily, there’s a variant on a simple rudiment that can help you out in this situation: a paradiddle. When you understand how it works, you can see the usefulness of playing two beats with the same hand. Returning to the problem with the triplet run, you can fix the awkward sticking by adding a portion of a paradiddle into the mix. Practice each rudiment until you’ve mastered them. Practice them until you can play them in time. Play them loud. Play them soft. Play them on every surface of the set. Start moving your hands around while playing them to try different combinations. Play them until you’ve ingrained the feeling and sound into your mind so much that they become natural. You can find all the basic rudiments online for free. Listen to your style, practice the set diligently, and master drum rudiments. These are the basics you’ll need to play mean drum beats. If you dream about becoming an amazing drummer, just believe that you can do it. While becoming a talented drummer requires talent and skill, it also requires determination, focus, and effort. If you believe that you have what it takes to become a star drummer, then you can do it if you set your mind to it. Photo Credit: Chiceaux Lynch, Penn State, starkej2