Linear drum grooves and fills / chops are all the rage these days! And rightly so, they’re fun to learn, create and play so why wouldn’t they be?!

In this drum lesson, we’re going to keep it simple, and go through how to apply Augmentation to our linear drum grooves and fills in order to spice them up.

In the lesson, we’ll create a linear drum fill based using one of my favourite rudiments: the Six Stroke Roll in its sextuplet interpretation. The key ingredients here will be the concepts of Augmentation and Replacement.

You can learn more about Augmentation and Replacement, as well as many more ideas to freshen up your drumming, with my book Concepts! Check it out below.

My book Concepts has tons of ideas to help you create fresh linear drum grooves and fills!

TIPS TO CREATE LINEAR DRUM GROOVES AND FILLS

As you’ll notice from the examples on the video, I’ve not really orchestrated the linear fill, keeping everything to the bass and snare drums. Why? This is because it helps to learn a new idea by keep the orchestration at its simplest form. Similarly, there are tons of orchestrations we could apply to this linear fill,  that I felt it best to leave it to your imagination to create your own variations.

Also important, as you go through each exercise, is to go through them slowly. Use a metronome to help you keep time, and pay attention to your motion; remember the space between the notes is as important as the note itself!

LINEAR DRUM GROOVES LESSONS

If you’re interested learning more linear drum grooves and fills, by the way, head over to my drum lessons page and get in touch! I teach students of all ages and levels both online and face-to-face at my studio in West London.

DOWNLOAD THE FREE PDF HERE

Download the PDF and go through all the exercises! Try to apply the concepts and processes discussed to other grooves and fills you already know to get more juice out of ’em! 

Thanks again, and enjoy!

Nick 🙂