drum fills – Page 5 – Learn Drums For Free

10 Beginners 1 Bar Drum Beats With 1 Bar Drum Fills

These exercises are great for putting together drum beats and drum fills, like they might appear in a song, although usually there are more drum beats than fills in a song. These exercises have a 1 bar drum beat and 1 bar of a fill, so that each type is practiced equally.

The drum fills are ideal for those playing drum fills for the first time. The drum beats are quite hard for complete beginners, so some experience of playing them first is recommended before mixing them with the fills, which are a bit easier than the drum beats.

One thing that could be a stumbling block to playing the drum fills, is reading the drum notation and knowing which lines of the staves the toms are on. Here is a useful reference sheet for this: Reading Drum Notation.

Beginners Drum fills lasting for 2 beats – Half bar drum fills

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.

10 beginners drum beats with 2 beat drum fills exercises

The structure for these drum exercises is: One and a half bar of a drum beat, then half a bar drum fill – and repeat.

These drum exercises are for practicing drum beats and fills, similar to what you would do in a song environment, by playing the drum fills before and after drum beats.

The exercises have been limited to 2 bars, with a single repeat, so that the drum beats and drum fills are practiced fairly equally, rather than playing the drum beat for longer like in a song. Therefore the skill of playing the beat for longer and counting bars like 7 and a half, or 15 and a half before playing the fill is not being exercised here, but should be practiced another time.

This sheet could be used by beginner students up to grade 1 or grade and even grade 3 students could find these useful and challenging by playing them very quickly.

For a variation on the drum beats, you could swap the hi hats for a ride cymbal, or even a floor tom. You could also add in open hi hats (or ride bells) for quick drum beat variations.

1 Beat Snare Drum Fills with drum beats exercises

Sometimes in drum sheet music you will see parts of the music that aren’t written. There may be a space in he music, with an instruction such as ‘develop’, ‘ad lib’, ‘cont. sim’ or ‘fill’. In these examples, there are spaces marked out for drum fills to be played for the duration of 1 beat at the end of the bar.

There are 4 different drum fills to choose from for each exercise. You could pick any fill and mix and match with any exercise.

By learning and playing through these exercises, you will build up an understanding of the type of fills you could add in as short little breaks in the drum beats to add interest to your drumming. 1 beat fills could be used at the end of a section, or during a section of music for a bit of variation in the groove.

Developing rock grooves with quarter note hi hats – Grade 2-3

I wrote this sheet initially to give students an idea of the type of things they could do to start off developing the drum beat for the guitar solo in a Grade 3 Rockschool song called Overrated (2012-18 syllabus). This sheet is also good for learning to develop the bass drum around a standard quarter note hi hat rock ostinato.

Start off by learning each bar separately before attempting a full run through. The hands will be playing the same beat in every bar apart from a crash half way through, and a drum fill in the last bar.

Every hi hat is to be played fairly open – enough to get that nice sizzley or slushy sound on the hi hats. You could play them more closed but with a slightly open feel, so they sound more crunchy – this would give a more hard rock sound.

These drum grooves would work well with classic rock and modern rock styles, and would fit with other styles in some situations, like for a slow metal groove or breakdown section, or played in a lively way in soul music, or in pop music (closed hi hats would also work well for pop).

6 Essential Drum Exercises – Essential Beginners – Sheet 1 – Drum Workout

These 6 essential drum exercises have been designed to be played by drummers that have already covered these things, possibly separately in their lessons. They are to be played as quick exercises, to build up confidence. Players should feel good about playing these because they will sound good, and they will not have too much trouble playing them.

If this sheet looks too hard, perhaps start out with some beginners drum beats and beginners drum fills that look a bit easier. It shouldn’t take long to get up to playing these exercises though, and could be played by a drummer that’s only been drumming for a month or few. The main thing is that the drummer should find the reading easy, so make sure whoever is learning this is comfortable with reading drum music.

In this sheet, we will put together some basic drum beats with some easy drum fills, and make them sound good.

Related (Premium): You can find more exercise sheets like this in the premium drum ebook Beats and Fills Drum Book – Basic Beginners

10 beats and fills exercises – Grade 1-2

10 drum exercises, each consisting of a 1 bar drum beat followed by a 1 bar drum fill. Play each line at least twice. Ideally, play each line 4 or more times to really work on them, and revisit the sheet several times.

Subdivision exercise with linear drum fills

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).

10 Drum Fills lasting 1 bar – Grade 1

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

10 Beginners drum fills lasting 1 bar

Play Right hand on all crotchets (1/4 notes), and Right Left on all of the Quavers (8th Notes) – (opposite for left handers).

Young beginners players could count the crotchets as Tea, and the quavers as “Cof-fee”.

You might want to brush up the Reading Drum Notation sheet to help with reading this sheet.

Related (Premium): Beats and Fills Drum Book – Basic Beginners