My prior post talked about counting out loud – first on the snare drum and then moved on to talk about counting while playing the drum set. I left off talking about drum fills and counting. Please see that post and then continue here.
At the end of the eighth bar, try a simple drum fill while counting. Try starting the fill on beat three of the eighth bar. One idea that I like is to simply keep the groove going and move the right hand away from the hi-hat to a floor tom. Don’t change the rhythm of the right hand (eighth notes) – simply change the sound source. For a more dramatic and powerful drum fill, keep the left hand on the snare drum and add it to the eighth note right hand rhythm. Both hands playing the same rhythm (eighth notes in this case) is a very powerful sound.
The goal is to have the fill finish on beat “1” (the downbeat) of the first bar of a new eight bar phrase. To do this, play a crash cymbal and bass drum together on the downbeat of the new eight bar phrase. Don’t be in a hurry to move the right hand back to the hi-hat at this point. The crash cymbal will ring for a while, so there’s no need to immediately start playing the eighth notes on the hi-hat. The “and” of beat one should be counted, but it’s not necessary to make sure to play it. This can mainly be determined by the tempo of the music, however, even at slower tempos there is not a need to play the “and” of beat one of the new phrase.
Leave out the bass drum during the drum fill, making sure to only play it at the end along with the crash cymbal. Keep counting out loud the entire time. After the crash cymbal and bass drum play on beat one of the new phrase, pay attention to the counting. Make sure that 1+2+3+4+ continues without any problems. Since the “and” of beat one is not being played (for now), the very next thing that will happen after the crash is both hands starting back up with the groove on beat two. The time has never stopped! This is something to get comfortable with as the tendency can be to start over with the counting AFTER the crash. By this I mean, it can be somewhat easy to feel the crash and stop counting temporarily and then restart the counting on a new “beat one” after that nice crash on the real beat one. Take care to practice by continuing the counting no matter what.
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