Phrases in drum kit writing and composing a fill

Hello, my name is Mrs. Tipping and I'm really looking forward to learning with you today, all about phrases in drum kit writing and composing a film. We're going to do lots of thinking, talking and exploring today in our lesson. So should we get started? Let's go. By the end of today's lesson, you'll be able to judge how and when to add an appropriate drum fill to a drum groove. Before we start, I would like to introduce you to some keywords. We'll be using these keywords during the lesson, so it might be a good idea to write these words down. The keywords we'll be using today are phrase, drum fill, eighth note, sixteenth note, improvise. Now let's think in more detail about what these keywords mean by taking a look at their definitions. A phrase is a section of a piece of music piece. A phrase is often two or four bars long. A drum fill is a short variation in a drum groove, usually at the end of a phrase or section. An eighth note is a note lasting half a beat. It is also called a quaver. A sixteenth note is a note lasting a quarter of a beat. It is also called a semiquaver. To improvise a new idea is to create the music on the spot. Pause the video here to make a note of these keywords. And when you're ready to continue, press play. These are the learning cycles I'll be working through together in today's lesson. Recognizing phrase structure and drum fills. Creating space for a drum fill in a digital audio workstation. And creating drum fills in an R'n'B groove. In this first learning cycle, we're going to be recognizing phrase structure and drum fills. In popular music the building blocks often work in groups of four, four beats in a bar, four bars in a phrase. What happens in the drum parts at the end of the phrase? Listen here. Drum fills are short variations in a drum groove, which help to show the phrases and sections in a piece of music. Small fills may occur at the end of phrases. Listen to those here. And larger fills may show the change from verse to chorus. What happens in the music when the fill arrives? Drum fills add interest to the groove and can be used to help transition between different sections. They often fill in the gap created by the phrase end. Other parts in the music might play a more simple rhythm, or the melody may stop briefly. Let's take a moment to pause and check our understanding. Where is the most common place in the music to use a drum fill? At the start of the phrase. In the middle of the phrase. Or at the end of the phrase. Pause the video here and give yourself a moment to think. And press play when you are ready to continue. If you said, "At the end of the phrase." Then you're right, well done. Now which of the following is not the purpose of a drum fill? Creates interest in the drum groove. Helps transition between sections of the music. Helps to set the tempo of the music. Often fills a gap in the melody. So pause the video here and give yourself a moment to think about which of the following is not the purpose of a drum fill. And press play when you are ready to continue. If you said, "Helps to set the tempo of the music." You're right. That's not the purpose of a drum fill. This brings us to our first learning task. I'd like you to listen to each of these clips and consider these questions. In the first, how many full bars are there in this clip? In the second, how many phrases can you hear in this clip? And what happens in the music to show the phrases? And finally, where does the fill arrive in this clip? So pause the video here and give yourself enough time to have a go at this learning task. And press play when you are ready to continue. How did that go? Well, if you listen to the first one, hopefully you could hear that there are 8 bars. In the second one, there are 2 phrases in the clip. And what happens to the music to show the phrases? Well, there is an open hi-hat in the drum groove and a short gap in the melody. And where does the fill arrive in the final clip? Well, it's at the end of bar 4 at the end of the phrase. So well done for having a go at that learning task. We're now moving into the second part of our lesson of creating space for a drum fill in a digital audio workstation. To record a drum fill, we need to make space for them in the kick/snare track in our project. Watch this video to create space for a fill. Before we record any drum fills in, we need to create space for those fills. Now normally drum fills come at the end of phrases. So in this example, what we're gonna do is we're gonna have our drum fills at the end of every eighth bar phrase. So the first one is gonna come in bar 8. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna select my kick and snare track. I'm gonna shorten the loop so that it'll last for seven bars. And then we have an empty bar in bar 8 where I'm gonna record my fill. I'm gonna now repeat this throughout the whole project. And the way I do that is I right click and copy that region and then paste it to start again, one bar later. So there's a bar of gap at the end of that eight bar phrase in bar 8. Now I'm gonna do the same from bar 17. So I've got seven bars of my loop and then a gap, and then the same at bar 25. So I should now have four 7 bar loops with a single bar of silence in bar 8, bar 16, bar 24, and bar 32. To be able to do this, you need to shorten the kick/snare loop to seven bars. Copy the loop to the start of each phrase and make sure bars 8, 16, 24 and 32 in the kick/snare track are blank. Let's take a moment to pause and check our understanding. Which icon represents the end of a loop? A, B, or C. Pause the video here and give yourself a moment to think. And press play when you are ready to continue. If you said, "It's B." You're right. Well done. Now which bar of each phrase do we need to remove in the drum groove in order to leave space for a drum fill? Is it A, bar 1 B, bar 6 or C, bar 8? Pause the video here and give yourself a moment to think. And press play when you are ready to continue. If you said, "Bar 8." You're right. Well done. This brings us to our second learning task. I'd like you to create space for fills at the end of each phrase in the drum groove. Make sure that your kick and snare loops last for seven bars. That there is a one-bar space at the end of each loop for a drum fill in bar 8, 16, 24 and 32. So pause the video here and give yourself enough time to have a go at this learning task. And press play when you're ready to continue. How did you get on? Well, if you check your backing track against the picture below. Are the spaces for fills in the same place in your track? Take a look at that there. Can you see where those spaces are? Well done if you are able to put them in the same place in your track. This now brings us to the final part of our lesson where we're going to be creating drum fills in an R'n'B groove. Drum fills can use the kick, snare and hi-hat in different combinations. Some examples are snare, (upbeat music) kick and snare, (upbeat music) and kick, snare and high hat. (upbeat music) Fills vary the rhythm of the drum groove, creating a break in the pattern. They can be simple (upbeat music) or they can be complex. (upbeat music) Drum fills can be improvised changes in the rhythm and pattern, but they still need structure. It helps to not change the groove too much. In the first fill the rhythm was quite simple, changing only the end of the groove by playing repeated snare drum notes to finish the bar. The second fill was more complex. It lasted the whole bar, but still developed around the alternate kick and snare pattern and the open hi-hat to finish. Extra snare notes were added and the hi-hat rhythm was more complex. Not straying too far from the main groove means we create a balance between repetition and contrast. Options for improvising a drum fill similar to the groove could be to keep the first half of the bar the same. To keep the backbeat on the snare, 2 and 4. To copy parts of the kick and snare pattern. And these are just a guide. Remember to try a few ideas. So here's a recording of a kick and snare fill. I'm gonna start by recording a four-beat fill in bar 8. What I want to do is I want to solo my hi-hat kick and snare and backing track so that I can't hear the original drum track. If that's playing while I'm doing my fills, it's gonna sound really messy. I'm not gonna be able to really hear my fill very clearly. So I've made sure that that drum track is not playing. My two tracks that I've recorded are, and I've got the backing track going on as well. I've also got the metronome on just to help me really record this in time. Now to begin with, I'm gonna be using just the kick and the snare. So I need to find those two on my instrument. (upbeat rhythm) I found them here and I'm gonna make sure I've selected the kick and snare track because it's in here that we're gonna record this fill in bar 8. Now what I'd like to do to begin with is I'm just gonna practice improvising some different fills. I'm gonna try and come up with some ideas. And to do that, I'm just gonna loop this short section so that it keeps playing over and over, and so that I can try out some different ideas. So each time this empty bar comes around, I'm gonna try some different fills based on the kick and the snare. Maybe I'll try some with just the snare and I'll see what I can come up with. Here we go. (upbeat music) So there are a few different ideas there, all based on the kick and the snare. Another experiment with lots of different rhythms. When I've got some ideas that I like. I'm then gonna record in my first fill in bar 8. It's gonna put the playhead sometime before bar 8 and get ready to record in the bar here, making sure my metronome is on, my playhead is where I want it to be. And that I've selected the kick and snare trap to record in. Here we go. (upbeat music) I can then quantize that and based on the rhythm I've used that will quantize either to quavers or semiquavers. In this case, we're gonna quantize to semiquavers, sixteenth notes 'cause I've used a few semiquavers in there. Let's have a listen to that fill. (upbeat music) And then I'm gonna repeat the same process in bar 16. This time, trying to use a contrasting rhythm. So not one that's too similar to the one I've already created. Here we go. (upbeat music) And that one contrasts nicely with the first one. It's a bit simpler than the first one. And again, I can quantize it. I've used some semiquavers here as well. So I'm gonna quantize to 16th note again. So have a listen to that one. (upbeat music) So we've got two contrasting fills there. One in bar 8, one in bar 16, both using the snare and the kick with some different rhythms. And I've recorded them in those first two gaps in my kick and snare track. Can you see that you use two different fills in bar 8 and in bar 16? And to quantize to the eighth notes, quavers or sixteenth notes, semiquavers, depending on the rhythm. Let's take a moment to pause and check our understanding. Which parts of the drum kit can be used to create a fill? Pause the video here and have a discussion with your peers. And press play when you are ready to continue. What did you think? If you said, "All parts of the drum kit can be used to create a fill, including the kick, snare and hi-hat." You are absolutely right. Well done. Now which three of the following would help you to keep your drum fill similar to the original groove? A, double the snare back beatnotes. B, change the groove on every beat of the bar. C, add an open hi-hat on the last quaver of the bar. D, delay the kick drum on beats 1 and 3. Pause the video here and give yourself a moment to think. And press play when you are ready to continue. What did you think? If you said, "Double the snare backbeat notes. Add an open hi-hat on the last quaver of the bar. And delay the kick drum on beats 1 and 3." You are absolutely right. Well done. This brings us to our final learning task. I'd like you to improvise and record drum fills into your R'n'B project. The success criteria for that is to make sure that you've recorded fills in bar 8 and 16. That the new rhythms contrast slightly with the main groove. That they use the kick and snare drums. That the second drum fill is more complex than the first. And the final recordings are quantized. So pause the video here and give yourself enough time to have a go at this learning task. And press play when you are ready to continue. How did that go? Well, listen to the following example of the groove with two added drum fills. Are the fills quantized? And which fill works best? And why? Listen to that now. (upbeat music) What did you think? Well, both drum fills are quantized accurately. And both drum fills work well. The first is simple as it only uses the kick drum. The second is more complex rhythmically, and uses both kick and snare. It provides a clearer contrast and could be suitable to transition to a new section. So well done for having a go at creating drum fills in an R'n'B groove. Before we finish this lesson, let's summarize what we've learned in phrases in drum kit writing and composing a fill. Pop music often uses four-bar phrases. These phrases may end with drum fills, which helps listeners feel the phrases. Drum fills change the underlying groove of the music to create a contrasting break in the pattern. They can use all parts of a drum kit and we created fills using the kick and snare. Thank you for joining me in this lesson today. I hope to see you in the next one. See you next time.