[slingerland59]

Woodshedding -- locking yourself away with your drums for hours at a time, honing your craft, perfecting a technique or pattern until you're ready to spring it on the world.

What things are you working on that you want to share with us?

[Drum Key]

At the moment, a cool fill that I thought up.
The phrase is four 32nd notes (LRLR or RLRL), and then a 16th note bass drum shot.
To fit it into a 4/4 bar I normally repeat the phrase four times, then add four 16th notes on the end.
Another thing you can do with it is think of the leading hand strokes (both rights, if you're right handed) and the bass drum stroke as 16th note triplets, then add a left between the right hand hits, so that you can repeat the phrase 8 times in a bar and it fits perfectly.
I thought of it because I'm not very fast, and it's a way (for me) of playing 32nd note fills in a fast groove without just playing straight 32nd notes.
I thought of it when I was listening to The Dark Eternal Night (Dream Theater), because of the fill Mike Portnoy does leading into the vocals.
Thanks for the question!

[slingerland59]

Thanks for your post, Drum Key. I tried out your second example of 16th note triplets as a double bass exercise: right hand, right hand, right foot,; left hand, left hand, left foot. I think your suggestion was to flam the second hand stroke. That made me slow down some I can tell you!

Have you ever tried just playing a full bar of 16th note triplets but with double sticking -- i.e. RRL LRR LLR RLL RRL LRR LLR RLL? When you move them around the drums and play different bass accents, it becomes a nice syncopated fill.

Does anyone know what the real pattern Portnoy is doing at around 1:08 of the song? I think he's just trading 4 beats between the hands and feet really fast, but I'm not sure.

YouTube - Dream Theater - The Dark Eternal Night...

[Drum Key]

The funny thing is, you misinterpreted it and came up with something cool aswell!
Think of it like this:
RLRLK
Now if you took out the lefts, the rights and the kick would make three 16th note triplets.
Or, if you don't understand me still (it's very hard to explain without actually playing it), think of it like this.
Play this - RLRLKR
As 16th note triplets.
Ghost all the lefts and the last right.
Notice how the un-ghosted strokes make 8th note triplets?
Now remove the last right in the phrase, and that's the fill!
Or, do what you've been doing and try not to look too confused.

Oh - and the doubles in a triplet feel I have done before and it is real cool!

This is definitely what Portnoy plays at 1:08, except I am not sure about the last bit with the triplets on the bass etc.
I figured it out by slowing it down in windows media player (I ripped it from the CD of Systematic Chaos)

RL KK RLRL KK RLRL KK RL KK RL KK RLRL KKK K K
-The three K's next to each other at the end are triplets, and the 2nd last bass drum shot has a splash, and the last shot has a crash.