Another item I was working on with a student, for everyone waiting for the other shoe to drop on that 2013 Tiki Fulwood/Funkadelic fills post. It's a fun, low-intensity thing to do with Syncopation pp. 22-27, played in cut time— all the funk stuff I do with Reed is in 2/2.
Here's a basic groove to use as an environment— we'll play one or three measures of this, one measure of fill:
The fill is just one measure of the book rhythm, played on the snare drum. You can start the fill on the 1, or after. The fill here is line 5 on p. 24 of Reed.
We settled on going to the fill on the & of 2— that sounded hippest. It also makes a good lead in— you can jump in with that while they're counting off the tune. Here's the practice phrase:
And the fill portion of some lines from Syncopation:
It usually works best if you start the fill with the right hand, and alternate— most of the time that will have you land on the cymbal with your right hand on beat 1. Drill it with this Betty Davis practice loop.
We were talking about fills, and how they're difficult to teach, and how most books on the subject are not helpful— too specific and too “drummery.” The later parts of my rock drill are helpful for a kind of non-specific textural thing with unisons and singles, which is a lot of what filling is. But a lot of it is just listening and getting a concept in your ear. Ringo Starr's thing is easy to mimic. What we're doing here, copying Tiki Fulwood's 32nd note fills on the slower 16th note grooves on Maggot Brain is another thing. Ndugu Leon Chancler's tom tom fills with George Duke is another one for me. Now we just have to listen to a lot more records and get about 50 more like that.
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