In our last exercise exploring the idea of putting some bass drum in our fills, we’re going to explore the kind of fills you’ll hear in Nu Metal songs like Breathe Into Me by Red 
. The idea here is fairly simple, in idea if not in execution, we’re going to play a ruff starting in the kick drum(s) and ending on the snare. Like this:
Once you’ve got this idea down, you can start to apply to different fills. Our fill is best used as a pick up to start a song or a new section of song. All you do is play one of these ruffs on beat 4 and follow it up with a hit on the open hi-hat then the bell of your ride (or you could use any combination of cymbals like splashes and stacks, too). Check it out:
Try this out the next time you need to lay down some thunder to kick off a new song.
