The free heavy metal drum lesson on intermediate drum fills focused extensively on blending constant runs of 16th notes with quick bursts of 32nd notes. Above all, those drum fills promoted your physical development, doubling as great musical fills and coordination exercises.
The five advanced heavy metal drum fills you’ll find here work in the same vein as the previous ones, adding cool rhythmic nuances in the form of broken patterns and creative orchestrations around the whole drum set. In the video, Sean Lang goes through the fills at two different tempos – medium and fast – so you can see exactly how they should sound when you get really comfortable with them.
Since this lesson is geared toward advanced drummers, you should approach it with a different mindset. These advanced drum fills are two bars long. You can actually play them as one-bar drum fills if you double the speed at which you play each note value: 8th notes as 16th notes and 16th notes as 32nd notes, for example. This is a great way to further challenge you.
When you feel comfortable with these drum fills, adjust your metronome. Instead of having the click going on each quarter note, set it to click on the half notes or on the whole note. Doing so will make these patterns even more challenging to practice since you’ll have a lot more space between each click. With half notes, the click plays on counts 1 and 3, and with whole notes you get one click per bar, or for every count 1. This is fantastic for improving your sense of time. You’ll have to rely upon your internal clock to play these drum fills in time because of the amount of space between each click.
Once you feel you’ve attained a good level of control over these advanced heavy metal drum fills and would like to learn some drum beats to go along with them, check the free lessons “Iconic Beats Every Metal Drummer Should Know” and “Metal Fundamentals.”