For this single stroke seven fill you will be taking a simple orchestration and combining it with groove to create a simple half bar pattern. To add an extra layer of rhythm and complexity to the part, ghost notes are added to the snares. With practice this can give you a really fast fill that can be applied in many different situations. At the very bottom of the page you will find links to lessons you may find useful, i recommend working through some of these to help develop the necessary hand speed and co-ordination.
This fill is half a bar long and has any notes that would fall on a numbered or '+' count moved to different toms. These fit nicely around the sticking to make a smooth movement around the kit. On top of this simple orchestration, all snare notes are ghosted except the one on beat 4 which is accented. The base version of the fill looks like this:
The smaller notes that you can see in this fill are ghost notes, the bracket has been removed to prevent the notation getting too cluttered. The '>' sign above the stave is an accent and these should be significantly louder than the ghost notes. Spend some time getting comfortable with this basic pattern ensuring dynamics and note placement are accurate
Adding Groove
Now fill up the rest of the bar up with groove. It doesn't matter what groove you use as long as it's only half a bars worth. Below are a couple of examples.
Grooved Version 1
Grooved Version 2
Grooved Version 3
Ideas For Adding Feet
Listed below are a few ideas for foot placement in this kind of fill. They are mostly time keeping ideas but use the given parts to create your own variations.
Foot Variation 1
You'll start off nice and simple with some eighth notes. This is great for time keeping when slightly odd or fast rhythms are used and gives the fill a slightly more solid feel.
Foot Variation 2
A similar time keeping idea using quarter notes on both foot.
Foot Variation 3
A more complicated idea that sort of follows a reverse triplet sticking on the feet. The left foot is falling on all quarter notes and the right will play the triplet notes between, the kicks are very fast in this version.
Foot Variation 4
Here you are playing eighth note triplets on the kick drum to create a slightly off time sound.
TASKS
- Using the 2 minute rule, get all exercises up to a tempo of at least 110bpm.
- Use the given ideas to create you own version of this fill, either by combining the parts or expanding on them
- Vary the length of the fill to create full / three quarter / quarter bar fills.
- Experiment with switching up the orchestration.
- Shuffle the accents around or add more.
