Drum Fills Overview

Learning Drum Fills

In this section, you will be presented with a great variety of 4/4 fills. All fills start as a rhythm and are gradually orchestrated around the drumset. Starting with simple fills, they will get increasingly challenging. The audio has all fills played at 112 beats per minute, but the goal should be to play them both slow and fast. These drum fills can be used in a variety of musical styles (rock, country, hard rock, funk, ..) and will expand your drumming vocabulary.

Fill sections

The drum fill lessons are ordered in sections, these sections are divided into subsections. Each subsection has fills focusing on toms (which include snare and toms), drum set (including cymbals, bass drum, toms and snare), toms and bass drum (hand-to-foot) and bass drum (snare and bass drum; hand-to-foot).
The first sections will be easier to play than the last ones, the last subsection will be more difficult than the first one.
Each section has a number of rhythms to study from. For your convenience, all rhythms have been numbered. This number is just a lesson number, this way you can easily remember wich rhythm you were studying.
The numbers do not imply an order for studying, nor do they indicate a difficulty level!.

2/4 measure combinations

Each lesson exists of combinations of different 2/4 measures. Two 2/4 measures form one 4/4 rhythm.

All drum fill lessons in a subsection are based on the 4/4 base rhythm. From section 1 to section 24 there is only one base rhythm, from section 25 and up there will be two of them.

Learning order

As stated above, the lesson numbers are just a way to name a rhythm. It is not a learning order!
So, which fills to learn first?
Well, that depends, if you are an advanced drummer, you would probably scroll down and look for those fills you haven't played before. You would search for the more challenging rhythms.
If you are a beginner, you should start with section one. If you don't have a drum teacher, now is the time to get one! A teacher will guide you and point out the fills you should start with.

How to practice these drum fills?

Each lesson exercise has an example audio file, if you have no clue about how the fill sounds, listen to it! Also, all exercises have a midi file. You can download it, import it in you favorite music software and play along with the rhythm.
Many of the fill pages have a link to a practice page. These pages contain 'drum phrases' - four 4/4 measures consisting of 3 measures of rock groove and one measure drum fill.

Practice tips

• use a metronome and count (aloud) as you practice
• practice these excercises at a variety of tempos, going from very slow to very fast
• repeat each exercise (drum phrase) four times and play through the whole drum phrase page!
• Midi files are provided for you to download and import into your music software, that way you can play along with the fills and practice more effectively

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