How to Make a Funky Drum Fill Using Syncopation

Video Transcript

"Now let's talk about what it takes to make a drum fill funky. Now what makes a drum fill funky is syncopation, and a great way to work on your syncopation is by buying this book, "Progressive Steps to Syncopation for the Modern Drummer" written by Ted Reed. This has all sorts of syncopated rhythms in this, you can use this for your entire life, it can be used for beginners, and then advanced and experts can take it and create their own lessons and stuff out of it. It's a great book to have for syncopation and it'll really help with ideas. And so when you take the syncopation you apply to the drum kit, you get something off the beat, so if you have ... it's a little bit funkier than a rock 'n roll drum fill which would be something like this. See how I kind of - that's straight, there's no breaks in the beat, it just kind of goes right through. Of course rock 'n roll drum beats can be a little bit funky too, and funky drum beats can also be a little bit rock 'n roll, but what makes a drum beat funkier than other things, drum fills too, is the syncopation, so work on that."