Today's article is about spicing up you loops with some drum fills. Drum fills add interest to your beats and can create excitement to your vocal or instrumental lead parts as well.
Drum fills can usually work well in various parts of your song or loop as long as they complement or support the main lead part. Both intro and ending or out-tro of your song is effective for using fills. Most music based on loops follow pop song form at least to some degree but tend to be less structured than typical pop songs. Typical song chorus and bridge sections tend to be simplified or removed all together in favor of more repetition particularly obvious in hip hop loops. This makes adding drum fills a little less obvious as song form is minimized. Even so, drum fills can be used effectively in looped based music.
Drum fills work best at the end of a vocal or lead melodic phrase. A rare occurrence is to add a fill during a line but is very effective at accenting or building up a lead in your song. Look for adding drum fills during these breaks in your music. The last bar of every four or eight bars in your song is typical for adding a drum fill as well.
With that in mind, here are some our tips and ideas for adding drum fills to your music loops.
1. Short drum fills. In figure one we have variations of a 16th note pattern. Any of these notes can be used at the end of a bar usually on the fourth beat (quarter note) of the pattern and could be used on snare drum or toms as part of a fill. Experiment with these variations. Be sure to program added accents for greater interest to your drum fill and add a crash/bass drum hit at the end of the fill.
Figure 1
Figure 1
2. Half bar fills. Longer fills can be created using the the same patterns shown simply by combing any of the patterns together to form a half bar pattern (two quarter notes) or even longer patterns. Figure 2 shows an example of how this is done. With this simple method seemingly endless variations are possible by assigning the basic 4 or 3 or 2 beat patterns shown to snare, tom tom, or bass drum hits to create your drum fill.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
3. Cymbal fills. Another idea here also is to use the same method describe but assign patterns to cymbals rather than drums to create cymbal fills. This would work well in ballads or slower songs in particular and would be somewhat more unique.
4. Rudimentary fills. Again take the basic bar pattern and introduce rudimentary aspects such as flams , rolls - open or closed, drags, paradiddles or any other drum rudiments to your patterns.
5. Triplets. Add quarter note or even 16th note triplet patterns in the same method to create even more variations.
6. Melodic ideas. A different method that can extend a fill into a solo is to use a melodic lead and express the rhythmic pattern of the melody onto your drums and cymbals. Shorter melodic phrases seems to work best here.
7. Transcribing and writing. A good idea is to transcribe patterns from your favorite tunes and to experiment writing out your own patterns as well. Before long you will have your own library of patterns to draw upon.
8. Accents and articulation. If you are programming your fills be sure to add accents and experiment with tuning you instruments varying the pitch to simulate stick articulation or right and left hand strokes, to allow for better realism and greater expression.
In conclusion, we have covered some simple thoughts and ideas to creating more interesting drum fills and to finding a more valid musical experience for everyone.
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