Must-know drum fills and how to program them with MIDI

Drum fills are a variation in a drum part’s rhythmic pattern, usually for one of two bars, and in the context of a piece of music they serve two primary purposes:

1. Drum fills help to define the end of one part of a piece of music, and lead into the next part, helping the listener follow the arrangement.
2. Drum fills keep a piece of music interesting, switching up the rhythm and providing a variation that keeps the listener involved in the story of the music.

In this tutorial we’ll walk you through creating several types of simple drum fills across a variety of genres, giving you an understanding of basic drum fills and some inspiration for creating drum fills of your own.

Jump to these sections:

• House snare roll
• Trap snare roll
• Motown fill
• Jazz fill
• Rock fill

To follow along with this tutorial, check out: Komplete Kontrol, Battery 4, Abbey Road 60s Drummer, Abbey Road 80s Drummer and the Higher Place and Sacred Futures expansions.

How to program a drum fill

Typically, drum fills are programmed with a drum instrument using MIDI information to sequence the pattern. Alternatively, they can be created by chopping up audio drum loops, using bespoke drum fill samples, or sequencing one-shots.

How to build drum fills

The first thing to do when building a drum fill is to decide where it will occur in the song. This will typically be at the end of a section. Secondly, the basic rhythmic idea needs to be defined, and this can be anything from a light variation on this existing drum pattern to something much more dramatic, though typically a live drummer would try to keep the groove of a track flowing through a drum fill. Thirdly, this idea can be fleshed out with extra drum sounds and subtle programming touches.

How to program real sounding drums

When your goal is realistic-sounding drums, it’s important to use drum sounds that are authentic and suited to the style of music you are creating. Also, if you’re after a natural sound, it helps to think about how a real-life drummer would play, and program the part accordingly.

How to make drum fills sound better

Steps you can take to ensure your drum fills sound their best include making sure that you’re in-keeping with your track’s groove and swing, using appropriate velocity modulation where necessary to get a naturalistic feel, and mixing them in a manner that fits in with the overall project.

Must-know drum fills and how to program them

1. House snare roll

Let’s start out with a very simple form of drum fill, a snare roll that’s often used in early house and techno music. Here’s an example from early 90s British house music. You can hear the drum fill in action at the 1:13 mark.

This fill is simply a snare drum sound playing on 16th notes with an increasing velocity level. Let’s create a version of this in our DAW. Begin by setting your project tempo to 125 BPM.

Typically Roland TR-909 snare drums are used to create this type of fill, and we can find this sort of sound in Battery 4. Load up an instance of Battery 4 onto a MIDI track, and double-click the 909 Detailed Kit to load it up.

This kit features a whole slew of 909 snares for us to pick from. Snare 909 8 sounds great, and this is played on G3. So, sequence G3 on 16th notes for one bar with a velocity of 100. We’ll use a velocity of 100 for everything in this guide.

In the X-Press 2 track, the velocity level of the snare increases so that the snare gets louder as the fill plays. We can recreate this effect by adjusting the velocities of our snare notes so that they come in gradually.

You can get a tighter, more modern sound by turning down the drum sample’s Volume Envelope Release in Battery 4, and shortening the length of the notes.

You can also add a touch of swing by moving every second snare to the right slightly, making sure that the swung rhythm still fits with your track’s beat. Before we do that, though, let’s add a house loop so we can more clearly hear the difference between the straight and swung snare roll.

We’re going to use the Drums[125] Cite 1 house drum loop from the Higher Place expansion, and position the snare roll on the fourth bar.

You can find this in Komplete Kontrol by clicking the Loop button and searching for “Drums[125] Cite 1”. You can then right-click the sample and select Show in Finder (on MacOS) or Show in File Explorer (on Windows) to locate the audio which you can then place on an audio track. Alternatively you can double-click the sample to load it, and sequence it to play on C3 for four bars.

Here’s how the snare roll sounds playing straight over the drum loop.

Now, if we move every other snare back slightly, here’s how it sounds.

2. Trap snare roll

Now let’s try something slightly more rhythmically complex, a trap snare roll. Start by setting your project tempo to 140 BPM

We’re going to use sounds from Sacred Futures to make this fill. First, click the Loop button and enter “Drums[140] Cm Ermias” into the text search field. Then, drop this file onto an audio track or load the sample up in Komplete Kontrol and sequence it to play on C3 for eight bars.

Here’s how this beat sounds.

Now on another track, add a new instance of Komplete Kontrol, this time click the One-shot button, and search for “Snare Courtside 1”, which gives us a punchy Roland TR-808-style snare.

Sequence the snare copying this pattern on the final two beats of the 8-bar section.

Simple, but very effective!

We can get a more dramatic effect by deleting the loop audio when the snare plays, meaning that we only hear the snare.

Because now we only hear the snare during this section, the drum fill is more prominent, giving us a more dramatic effect.

3. Motown fill

The Motown fill is a style of drum fill popularized by Motown Records artists in the 1960s, and it became an influential stylistic trope. You can hear a classic example of this fill at the start of The Temptations’ “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg.”

These fills can be complex, but we’ll look at creating the simplest version with Abbey Road 60s Drummer. Add Komplete Kontrol up on a MIDI track, then locate the Abbey Road 60s Drummer library and double-click AR60s Late Kit Full to load it up.

Sticking with the default project tempo of 120 BPM, place an AT high tom on the sixth 8th note of the bar, with an F1 low tom on the eighth 8th note of the bar. Sequence a C#2 cymbal crash at the start of the next bar. This gives us the basic foundation of our fill.

Now add E1 and D#1 snares on the first two 16th notes of the last beat to provide a pacey bridge between the toms, and underscore the cymbal crash with a C1 kick.

4. Jazz fill

Jazz drumming can be enormously complicated, but we can program a simple jazz-style drum fill quite easily. Again we’ll use Abbey Road 60s Drummer, this time selecting the Early Jazz preset.

Again sticking with the default project tempo of 120 BPM, program a basic swing rhythm, that’s an A#3 ride cymbal on the first and second beat of a bar, with another hit on the final 8th note triplet of the second beat. Duplicate this out so that it plays for two bars.

With triplet quantization still active, add D#1 and D1 snares playing eighth note on the third beat of the second bar, and A1 toms playing with notes on the final beat of the second bar.

Now let’s punctuate the end of the fill and the start of the new bar with an A#2 crash and C1 kick on the first beat of the third bar.

5. Rock fill

Let’s finish off with a big, classic rock fill that’s a great beginner drum fill. For this we’ll use Abbey Road 80s Drummer, specifically the AR80s Chrome Kit Full preset.

Set your project tempo to 90 BPM.

This fill is just a sequence of 16th notes. Start with D#1 and E1 snares on the first four 16th notes of the first beat, followed by B3, A3 and G3 toms, finishing off with a C3 kick and B2 crash at the start of the next bar

Start programming your own drum fills with MIDI

Here we’ve shown you some of the most common beginner-friendly drum fills that you can use and customise in your own music. If you’d like to learn more programming drum parts with MIDI, check out Drum programming 101: How to program your drums, and 7 drum patterns every producer should know.

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