A blog to help with learning and teaching Drums. Written by Theo Lawrence / TL Music Books.
This free drum fills pdf sheet music is from page 11 of the premium ebook Beats and Fills Drum Book – Basic Beginners.
Each drum fill is an ‘around the kit’ fill, meaning that you play each note grouping on the drums as follows: snare drum, tom 1, tom 2, floor tom.
To help with reading the rhythms, you could try this sheet: 10 breakfast snare drum exercises – phonetic rhythms
The drum fills last for 2 beats, or half a bar of 4/4. They are all made up of combinations of 16th notes and 8th notes, and 1/4 note flams. There are 12 drum fills.
The drum fills could be used in the final bar of a section. For example, play 7 and a half bars of drum beats, and then insert one of these drum fills – and then repeat. To finish off the exercises after repeating, you could play a crash and bass together.
The fills could also be used to start off a song or before playing through some drum beats.
Mix and match the fills to create 1 bar fills lasting 4 beats.
At grade 5-6 you should have good knowledge of triplets, 16th notes and sextuplets, and you will need to be able to switch seamlessly between them. This exercise works on changing between
triplets, 16th notes, and sextuplets like usual subdivision exercises, but with the twist of adding some interesting and challenging drum fills rather than just one one drum (usually just played as snare drum exercises).
Start going through the sheet slowly, and work up to being able to practice this sheet all the way through as one exercise.
You might want to brush up the Reading Drum Notation sheet to help with reading this sheet.
Related: 10 Beginners drum fills lasting 1 bar
Related (Premium): Beats and Fills Drum Book – Basic Beginners
