In project 2.4 you are going to create and record the following:

• 2 different drum beats that are 4 bars long

• a short "drum fill" between those two drumbeats

Let's be honest: hearing the same drum beat over and over and over again is, well, boring.

When you listen to drummers, you'll often find that they'll vary up the drum beats in the song. They can do this in any number of ways - changing the kick drum placement, changing the subdivision, etc. The best way to transition between these pattern changes is a drum fill.

A drum fill is a featured drum part that comes during transition points within a piece of music. Often, drum fills occur on the final bar of a section, such as the end of a verse going into a pre-chorus or when a pre-chorus transitions into a chorus.

Drum fills are, at the basic level, a break from the recurring drum pattern while staying in tempo. 

However, there are some "best practices" that we will follow to help you understand composing drum fills:

1. Drum fills should happen at the end of a section of music. For our work, we're going to put them in at the end of the 4th time through the first groove. 

2. Generally speaking, the subdivison in the hi-hat will stop during a drum fill.

3. You can now incorporate up to 2 tom toms in your drum beat (but are not required to).

Below you find the drum fill composition organizer worksheet. This will help you keep track of your ideas.

PART 1: Completing the drum fill organizer worksheet

1. Download the drum fill organizer worksheet

2. Open in the Preview application.

3. You are going to compose two grooves for this assignment. Follow our rules from the last assignment for each of these grooves:

   1. Hi-hat plays every subdivision. Note that this organizer has 16th notes as a default, but you are welcome to use 8th note subdivision.

   2. Snare plays on 2 and 4.

   3. Kick plays on beat 1, and 1 to 3 more times in the groove.

4. Now we're going to compose your transition, aka drum fill:

   1. Keep the first two beats of your transition the same as groove #1. 

   2. On beats 3 and 4, you're going to change the pattern, and eliminate the subdivision. Note that in addition to the kick and snare, you can now use up to two tom toms. Refer to the keydrumming sheet to see where the tom toms are on your keyboard.

5. Save your work.

6. Upload the completed worksheet to Google Drive.

PART 2: Recording your drum beat

1. Create a new logic file with a software instrument track.

2. Change the software instrument track to a drum kit of your choice.

3. Turn on the click and count-in buttons if they are not already highlighted.

4. Set the tempo to a comfortable performance tempo - I recommend the 60-90 range.

5. Record your groove 4 times in a row.

6. Quantize your recording.

7. Listen to your recording - does it:

   1. Line up with the click?

   2. Sound like what your wrote?

8. Save as 2-4 LASTNAME and upload to Schoology

Following your submission of project 2-4, please fill out the following google form. There are no wrong answers, so feel free to be honest about your work. All self-assessments are graded based on completion.

CLICK HERE TO COMPLETE THE DRUM BEAT COMPOSITION SELF-ASSESSMENT