In this lesson you will be applying the Two Feet Four Hands grouping exercise when constructing two bar fills, you can see the exercise for this pattern about half way down the linked lesson. As this grouping is made up of six notes it will have a syncopated feel to it, much like the similar lesson on fills using a One Bar 2 Hands 4 Feet type pattern. The timing and sticking for this grouping has been covered in the exercise linked above, if you aren't familiar with this basic pattern you will need to have a look through that lesson first. The content on this page will be similar to our One Bar 2 Feet 4 Hands as the intention here is to show you how to extend those patterns.
On this page you will be shown some common orchestrations of this rhythm. As discussed in the lesson linked above, there are two ways the two bar version of this pattern can be constructed. It could be five occurances of the six note pattern with an eighth note left at the end or four occurances with a minim left at the end. With those left over notes there is a lot of freedom to use other fill construction ideas, especially over a minims worth of music. Various ideas for how to make use of that space will be shown below.
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 sounding 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 fills following this pattern, take each fill example as an idea for constructing your own fills. Mess around with the orchestrations, particularly of the 'left over' note, and see what new patterns you can come up with. You will notice that because of the fact there aren't many hands used in this pattern, orchestration options are limited.
Example 1
A straight forward orchestration where each grouping of hands is played on a different drum moving around the kit. The last two beats of the fill is a straight roll on the snare that starts with two kick drums to help mainting a comfortable flow.
Example 2
The hands are split over two different toms here with a quaver snare to end.
Example 3
Straight snares on the hands with a staggered rhythm on snare/crashes to end. A kick has been placed on beat 3 to help ease the transition to the snare and crashes.
Example 4
This time the hand orchestration that is used over the first two occurances of the six note pattern is repeated. This will further emphasize the syncopation.
Example 5
The 'triangle' style shape is used here with an extended version of the shape at the end of the second bar.
Example 6
Uneven groups are used for the hands in this example.
Example 7
In this example I am showing how the grouping can be used starting later in the first bar. This pattern ends on two double kick notes which will lead straight into the next bar.
Example 8
This is a variation on the placement idea shown above. Differenct orchestration ideas shown previously have been combined here.
Example 9
This version still starts later but only by one occurance of the six note pattern, so you still have four full sets
Example 10
A variation in orchestration of the placement given above. Again, various different ideas have been combined to create this fill.
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 longer fills.
