DRUM FILLS
Put some flair into your programmed drum phrases
A drum fill is a short phrase dropped into the main groove of a drum track every eight or 16 bars (generally speaking) in order to energise the transition between sections of a song (verse to chorus, for example) or individual sub-sections within a section (bar 4 of the middle 8, for example. That description probably makes them sound more coldly functional and ‘secondary’ than they actually are, when in fact a drum fill can be every bit as characterful and memorable as the groove around it, whether it’s just a few snare hits or a full-pelt rip around the whole kit. Just as with programming beats, emulating a real drummer playing a fill via MIDI isn’t as easy as it might at first appear. All the same humanising nuances in timing and dynamics are required, so notes need to be moved off the quantise grid and velocities will want tweaking at an almost per-note level. And in fact, positioning notes and selecting sounds for a fill is actually trickier than for a beat. While a beat usually comprises the holy trinity of kick/snare/hats playing a backbeat groove, with a fill, the toms and cymbals are thrown fully into the mix, and the programming template becomes far less standardised.
Of course, much of what we’ve just said only applies when mimicking a live drummer, and programming fills for electronic and dance music is another matter altogether. In those genres, realism becomes a non-issue and the prime concerns are vibe, energy and sound selection. Pretty much anything goes, essentially.
In this tutorial, we’ll get you up to speed with the basics of drum fill programming, mostly of the realistic kind, but touching on the hyper-real, too. We’ll begin with a look at how the various elements of the drum kit are used in the context of fills, and some truly zero-effort options for conjuring fills out of nowhere, before programming a realistic acoustic fill from scratch, then using it as the starting point for a dance music fill. Pick up those virtual sticks and let’s get to it…