Dave Grohl Drum Fill Language

Dave Grohl has been and continues to be an influence on tons of drummers since his rise to drumming fame with Nirvana. He can be found in numerous interviews listing some of his biggest drumming influences, and it’s obvious that he spent countless hours studying the grooves and fills that made those drummers great. Let’s take a moment to dissect a piece of Dave’s own drumming vocabulary.

Note how similar but different these two drum fills are that Dave played with Nirvana. The first fill is taken from “Smells Like Teen Spirit” leading into the chorus, while the second fill is taken from “Come As You Are” leading back into the second verse.

“Smells Like Teen Spirit”

“Come As You Are”

In both cases, Dave fills the fourth 16th note of beat three with the bass drum. One good reason to use the bass drum there is to allow your hands an extra split second to prepare to play a flam on beat 4. 

The floor tom notes preceding the bass drum note during beat three blend together very nicely in “Come…,” whereas in “Smells…,” that bass drum note is in contrast to the preceding snare drum “3-E-&” notes. Both make for very powerful & succinct fills leading to a stronger accented “4 &” to finish the fill and land the band all together on the next beat 1.

In essence beats 3 and 4 of both drum fills are the same piece of drumming language. Dave has made that “lick” a part of his drumming vocabulary and is comfortable leading into and out of it. You can make your own variations on these fills to get comfortable enough with the concept that it becomes part of your drumming vocabulary.

Common methods of varying this fill include:

-        Re-orchestrating the fill. Dave showed us this already in that your hands could play “3-E-&” on the snare drum or the floor tom, but you could move to the mounted tom or even the closed hihat for different effects.

-        Fragmenting the fill. In essence, play the pattern from beat 3 (“hand-hand-hand-BD” from “3-E-&-A”) on beats 1 and 2 as well. Something like:

-        Re-orchestrate the fragments. Something like:

There are plenty more possibilities so have fun with these variations and make your own!

Contact me to download more complete drum parts to both songs “Smells Like Teen Spirit” AND “Come As You Are.”

Happy Practicing,

Jonathan