How a drum fill is built
The kick
The snare on two and four
Hats in eighths and the crash
Then a variation: Two‑bar build
Every pattern starts with the basic beat in bar one: kick on steps 1 and 9, snare on 5 and 13, hats on the eighths. The fill lives in bar two. The one-beat fill replaces beat four (steps 29 to 32) with four snare sixteenths; the two-beat fill gives beat three to the high and mid toms and beat four to the low tom; the full-bar fill spends a beat each on snare, high, mid and low. The syncopated fill groups the last two beats as 3-3-2, so it lands a sixteenth early and tips you into the next bar. Kick and snare alternating on sixteenths is a fill with no toms, useful on a small kit. The two-bar build is snare eighths that become sixteenths, the way a chorus is announced. The drop-out does the opposite: nothing for two beats, then a single kick on step 32. And the last pattern has no fill at all, only a crash on the downbeat, which is often the right answer.
More drum patterns
- Trap
- Boom bap
- House
- Techno
- Drum and bass
- Reggaeton
- Jersey club
- UK garage
- Rock
- Drill
- Lo-fi hip hop
- Hip hop
- Amen break
- Basic drum beats
- Hi-hat patterns
- Jazz and swing
- Funk
- R&B and soul
- Pop
- Bossa nova
- Samba
- Afrobeats
- Reggae
- Disco
- Punk
- Metal
- Breakbeat
- Dubstep
- EDM, trance and hardstyle
- Phonk
- Country
- Blues and shuffle
- Latin
- 6/8 and 12/8
- All drum patterns
- Program your own: the drum sequencer
