Drum Fill Generator

By clicking controls with your mouse or more quickly editing via your computer keyboard, you can shape drum fills. The system generates a couple of approach that you can play back to compare, pick your favorite strokes, and hear them land clearly on beat one. Use it as a practice tool to explore other rhythmic languages or as a creative playground to find the right groove.

First, pick your fill dialect from the dropdown list: Latin color, metal tom assault, jazz triplet language, neo-soul drag, pocket funk, or arena rock. Depending on the style, it will set the feel for the articulations and make it more likely to use specific drums. With the jazz option, for example, the grid will convert to triplets to reflect that vocabulary.

How to Use the Drum Fill Tool

The toms travel contour can be set to guide their movement from floor to rack, rack to floor, or in a scattered arc around the kit. The grid language sets the resolution (the number of subdivisions within a single beat). This allows you to select between eighth notes, sixteenth notes, or triplets.

To give yourself time to wind up the pattern, you can also expand the length of the approach runway from one bar to two bars. This controls how dense and far apart the generated fills are, allowing for control over how complex the resulting patterns is.

The stroke density slider regulates how many beats has real drum sounds. Higher means more active and more hits on that beat. Lower means more ghost notes and more space.

The hand lead versus the foot drive balances how often the kick drum plays compared to the hands. Foot drive balance out the number of times the kick drum comes in compared to the hands. Move this up towards the feet to add more layers of the kick drum to really drive the rhythm.

You can adjust the tempo to suit your practice speed or match your project’s tempo too.

Click here for the Overhead Kit Map. Place drum sounds in the current subdivision by clicking on their location within the overhead kit map. This includes kick, floor tom, snare, ride, high tom, mid tom, hi-hat, rim, and crash. Or you can place notes one at a time using your keyboard. Assign kick, snare, hat, high tom, mid tom, floor tom, crash, ride, or rim to the highlighted step by pressing 1-9. Use arrow keys to select the next step down the runway and press Enter to audition just that single stroke.

Below the timeline are buttons for editing the articulation of each stroke. Articulations include Flam spread, Drive accent, Ghost touch, and Center. The accent hits harder; the ghost sounds softer, bringing dynamic contrast to the fill. Pressing a key on your keyboard (K toggles a kick layer underneath a hand stroke) Or pressing A/G/F to instantly add ghost, accent, or flam articulations respectively. This lets you get just how you want it to feel without having to reach for the mouse.

Regenerate fills and pins the strokes that you want to keep. To do so, simply hold down the P key on your keyboard (or click the pin button) to lock-in a subdivision. Once you have clicked shape, the generator will generate patterns based off your pinned note allowing you to keep a solid anchor point or run whilst exploring variations of the remaining part of the phrase. If you wish to begin again, simply unpin all strokes.

Try it yourself under the approach A and approach B tabs. Then fork out a different version as a variation of what you have so far. You can easily see the differences by looking at the VAR flag timeline to find where the paths split. Click trade A then B to listen in sequence with a breath of air between each. This will enable you to judge which direction sounds like the cleaner shape into the landing.

Click here to listen to the complete sequence: click in; land. In this case there are four clicks followed by the fill played from beginning to end. The fill then lands on the next beat one with your selected target (e.g., just a low kick anchor or kick and crash). You can see that the sticks animate to mimic the physical motion whilst the kit illuminates showing you what’s happening on each drum.

The overall level can be set using the master volume slider at any setting that suits you. In the lower-right-hand corner, keep an eye out for the limb feasibility score. It’s a gauge of hand alternation and reach and gives you an idea of comfort playing this type of fill. A higher number makes it easier to alternate your hands, and the toms are easy to reach. As the number decreases, the widget will prompt you to use a middle tom bridge or simplify your ghosts. That kind of feedback make these fills more than just rhythms; they are also physically playable.

So explore some beats, using different densities and styles. Regenerate from one run in a particular style and pin the notes you want to keep. Then watch how the generator creates new patterns around them. Then watch how the generator works its way round the bar. Use the fork feature and try making two alternative ending bars on the same set up. Switch to full screen mode or back to normal to get more space as needed. Begin forming your own fills today and let the tool inspire some new rhythms for you to explore.