Programming fills and turnarounds

In the world of drum programming, a fill is vaguely defined as pretty much any rhythmic phrase – long or short – that disrupts the predictable rhythm of the main beat. Imagine that moment when a rock band all go silent and allow the drummer to freestyle a solo groove before dropping back into the main song again. Similarly, a turnaround in this context is a kind of rhythmic punctuation to mark the end of one section and lead into the next.

Within electronic music, there are tons of examples to consider. In house genres, the ubiquitous 16th-note 909 snare roll is often faded up at the end of eight- or 16-bar sections to create a rise in tension before the core beat is brought back in; in a similar vein, modern tech-house producers often throw in 16th-note bursts of synthetic claps to punctuate the end of a section. In-your-face styles often feature some kind of rhythmic ‘stutter’ effect that turns the entire beat (or track) into a buzzing blur of glitched-out repeats that instantly slam back into the full groove.

Drum machines give you several strategies to improvise the creation of fills, especially in a live scenario. For one, many drum machines (such as the relatively new Roland TR-8S) feature a dedicated ‘fill’ mode: set up the notes for your fill ahead of time, then punch in your created fill at any point with a single dedicated button. But even without this kind of setup, hands-on step sequencers make it easy to switch up your grooves when needed – simply light up a few extra notes on the step sequencer to add in flourishes and extra notes when needed, then unlight the notes to go back to the ‘regular’ groove. If you’re using a software/ hardware system such as Ableton and Push or Maschine, you can even reach for the undo button to automatically revert to the pre-fill state you had set up.