Where, how long and how much?

The placement of drum fills within a track should be quite intuitive. Assuming the track in question fits the standard template of eightand 16-bar sections, you’ll likely know instinctively where they should go – one leading out of the first verse into the chorus, another leading out of the chorus into the second verse, etc. Fills at these ‘anchor points’ can be up to a bar long, depending on how the rest of the instrumentation ramps up alongside them. If, for example, the transition from verse to chorus is an uneventful one in terms of arrangement and buildup, you might only want your fill to occupy the last beat or two; or if there’s a bar-long synth riser at the end of the chorus, a fill of the same length could make the perfect partner for it.

Fills can also be dropped in within sections of a track, such as the middle of a verse. These tend to be one or two beats long, relatively sparse and often involving only the snare drum. Indeed, this kind of incidental fill could in fact be a pause, with the drummer playing nothing at all for a beat. Does that count as a fill? We’d suggest that anything breaking up the continuity of the groove qualifies, so yes, it does.

If silence marks one end of the spectrum of drum fill complexity, the other end is rather less quantifiable. Drum fills can get very note-dense indeed, but squeezing as many hits as you can into two seconds of music should never be your goal. With regard to technicality, intricacy and busyness, fills should match the groove in which they’re embedded, so unless you’re putting together some sort of jazz-fusion workout, keep everything dialled back and under control. Otherwise, you risk your fills sounding amateurish and poorly judged.