Are your fills planned?

[oxford]

When  you head into a fill, do you know what you are going to play? I mean, is it planned what you will strike in a certain order?

I often enter a fill and either pull something from my catalog or try something new but I never really know for sure what I will do when i get there. It usually sounds OK but each one is kinda like a snow flake.

[nitro101]

i generally know it a split second before it happens....but it is never fully planned

[Joe]

I would dare say it is planned, yes.  When I know the structure of the tune, I'll get it together mentally as I play time.  

During a jam it is much more spontaneous, but a simple matter of counting tells you if a triplet is needed, a drag, etc.

[Mark Schlipper]

Yep, they are all planned and written as much as the rest of the song.  Every part of what I do as a drummer relates specifically to what is going on in the song at the time.  Fills included.  

That said, I dont always stick to what Ive written 100%.   I do sometimes mix it up a bit, try something different, etc.   Usually thats in an effort to improve on what Ive done.   On the occasion I let fly, its typically very close to what was written, if not just like it.    Since, as I said, each part is written for each part, my fills make sense for that part of the song.

[drumwild]

I'll improv fills while working out a new song. But once I have a song worked out, I play it exactly the same every time... fills and all. And I try my best to not use the same fill in more than one song. Don't want to get stuck in some kind of rut, and not every fill works for every song.

I guess every note I play is planned. But things happen on stage. I'm always prepared for that, too.

[Jay Northrop]

This may sound crazy but when it comes to fills I never plan them.Its like in the back of my head I know when I am going to do it and what fill I am going to do.The fill has to fit the song of course.For me its just a natural occurance I guess.I dunno.

[oxford]

I've been thinking about this and realize in most cases (just before a fill) I think mostly about the tonal quality I want in the fill. Some sections of songs are dark and "bass-y" while others are bright and spirited. For the DARK, I will stay on the toms more and the BRIGHT will get more snare and symbals. This is not a hard rule -- more of a general outline.

[paul]

In a few cases I'll have a fill designed for a specific part of a specific song, but usually I decide what I'm going to do as I'm playing.

I can't imagine playing a song exactly the same way every time.  For me, music must have some spontaneity, and what I play reflects how I feel now.

Once I find a groove that works on a song I'll try to keep it whenever we play that song, but fills are forever changing, and grooves are subject to change if I have a better idea, or if the bass player does.

Besides, I can barely remember what I did last time.

[Nick]

Once we have written the music it stays exactly the same every time that includes the drums…

We can sometimes put 8+ hours of careful thought into a 15 second section, I personally cant find the logic in replacing a part of that on the spur of the moment with an improvised fill, it seems unlikely odds wise, that we are going to better something that has been carefully planned, listed back to and mulled over..

How ever if we are improvising a piece, which is usually once a rehearsal, but never live, anything goes & we try and record them just in case we stumble on anything that might inspire a section when we come to be writing again, and it helps build our toolbox…

:)

N

[Jay Northrop]

I like a little spontanaety in my music.Granted my main drum beats stay the same.I like to maybe hit the 16" crash instead of the 18" or maybe hit my floor toms instead of my rack toms.Little things like that keep me going.And I think that each day you have a newer and maybe even better idea than the day before.Not to say that planning and doing the same constant isn't bad,Neil Peart does this.And I think its great.Its just not me personally.

[Floyd42]

For covers: fills are ALLWAYS planned. My band allways try to play the song exactly as it is written.
For original songs, it is totally improvised untill we write down the exact fills to play, which (I hope so !) stick to the music.

[felix]

I try to plan as few as possible.  What a drag.  

[Kelly Minnis]

While in the process of writing the arrangement of the song I will throw out fill ideas.  Sometimes those stick and become THE fill.  I usually stick to that fill when I'm playing rock songs with basic song structure.  In the band I'm in now (www.thelunamoth.com) the song structure is based around themes rather than riffs or vocals, so my fills are almost always improved differently each time we play the song.

[ritarocks]

Planned?  Nope, not unless its a cover tune that requires a certain signature fill or an original that I've decided works well with a specific fill combination.

For me, a lot of the fun is playing it as it happens.

[Nubert Thump]

I would say that the places in the song's arrangement where I put fills are planned, but I may vary what I play there. There are certain songs that I play the exact same way every time, others I will vary the fill slightly though they may be very similar.

[random]

i plan my fills but occasionally i get some grand inspiration in the middle of a song.   but then there's the improv stuff i play (most of what i play), for that i pull everything straight off the top of my head.

[smoggrocks]

yes, and unfortunately they sound it.



on the rare occasion i improvise a fill, it's still a semblance of the original fill i came up with. in a "jam" context, i do whatever, but the only real jams i've done are blues and fake jazz ones, so every fill sounds like a stock blues-or-fake-jazz fill [eg; triplets galore, simple 16th note fills with lots of holes to give that "tension" everyone digs.]



obviously, i need to learn the art of improvisation.

[drumwild]

My comments on planning my fills in songs we write have already been posted. The talk of improv brought me back, as it made me think of my last show.

We were supposed to play a short groove to bring out the singer. The groove started out fine. But when security started messing with my girlfriend and decided to take the camera away from her, the guitarist flies off the stage. The singer comes out and sees what's going on. The bass player and I are keeping the jam going. She says, "we'll be on in about five minutes!"

The bass man and I kept playing in order to keep the energy up, not to mention distract people from the battle between the club security and our own security over the camera (we got it back!) It would have been more uncomfortable to stop playing and just stand there.

In this situation not only was it fills that were not planned, but most of what we played before the show officially started was not planned. That short groove turned into a back-and-forth between drums and bass that was actually fun. We played well off each other.

Then, the guitarist decides he wants a solo. He'd been complaining about not having one. So mid-show he instructs the bass player to start something and I join in. The vocalist goes along with it and dances to the groove.

There was a total of approximately 8 minutes of unplanned, unrehearsed music played that night. Most of it was on video and sounded good.

The ability to improv with grooves and fills is important, but I believe it's also important to write fills that work best for the song. Finding the fill that helps define the song is a cool thing.

[Mark Schlipper]

The ability to improv with grooves and fills is important, but I believe it's also important to write fills that work best for the song. Finding the fill that helps define the song is a cool thing.

Totally agree on both counts.

[James Walker]

Most of my fills are improvised, but occasionally, a fill will become part of the arrangement of the tune, as others have noted here, and that's when you keep it "as is."  Other times, I'll keep certain characteristics of a fill the same, and improvise within that.  If I'm playing with a steel band, and we're doing a short vamp for a pan solo, I'll give the "out cue" by playing a fill - and in order to make it very clear, it'll be exactly a measure, and usually very snare drum heavy, just to make it that much more obvious to the band:  "OK, BOYS AND GIRLS, NOW WE'RE GOING TO THE NEXT SECTION OF THE ARRANGEMENT..."  Within those guidelines, however, there is improvisation.

What I've noticed in the practice room where fills are concerned, is that the more I "compose" fills - map out every last detail - the better I get at improvising good, coherent fills on the fly.  I've found the same thing when it comes to jazz improv' on vibes.  Sometimes, even when improvising, one of these "worked out" fills will make its way through my sticks, and other times, it may just be bits and pieces.

Working out fills helps me to conceive of them as phrases, not just a series of consecutive notes on various drums.  It's like learning a foreign language - you don't just sit at a desk learning vocabulary, you put it in context, form phrases, memorize phrases...and then when you're conversing, these phrases come out, either in part or in their totality.