Customer Reviews

Essential Drum Fills (Book & CD)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Great idea but not well executed. The CD tracks need to be split. Lots of tracks I know but when u're working on one lick, u can't be fast forwarding to find it every friggin' time!!!!

I love this book!

Some great fills and comments by Mr. Erskine.

Don't know if he is really playing the examples , but it sure sounds like him... his touch for dynamics within a fill are what make them groove.

I use this to teach my students and have gotten licks from it as well
Highly recommended.

I love Peter Erskine, his music, his playing, his versatility, his taste, his sound ... This book is marvelous, plenty of good and simples patterns, easy to practice and it works well on the drumset, you can trust the Great Peter ! The book is mainly about the fills : Questions, answers, thoughts, feel with exercices in triplets, swing, eighth notes, sixteenths notes and beyong, it is really a pleasure to practice them ! The second part of the book is dedicated for tunes with transcriptions like : "Sing, Sing, Sing" ( Rich vs. Roach ) - "Boogie Shuttle Stop" ( Erskine/Pasqua/Carpenter : Badlands ) - "Rhythm Method" ( Wayne Bergeron's Big Band ) - "Waltz of the Flowers" ( Wayne Bergeron's Big band ) - At the end of the book, some Advanced Fill Concepts like : "Daddy, What is God's Last Name ?" ( Erskine/Pasqua/Carpenter : Badlands ) - "Worth The Wait" ( Tim Hagans and the Norrbotten's Big Band ) - Four famous fills : Shadow Wilson, Buddy Rich, Tony Williams, a "Motown" drum fill. I really enjoy this book and for his price it is worth to buy it ! As Peter says : Fills + Fills + Fills ... = A solo ! And not to forget that Music is the best teacher, so listening is the best way to learn ! Emilio L. ( Dordogne, France ).

I am a fan of Erskine. I bought this book on impulse when I saw Drum Fills. I assumed I would get a book written by Erskine, but I think he probably was too busy to actually do his own writing. The fills are laid out like most of the drum books available in this genre. In fact it reminds me of 4 way Coordination fills/exercises. There are only so many combinations of sticking patterns. His comments on his general thoughts on playing is great, but hardly warrants his own Drum Fill book. Lastly, the transcriptions of his playing is written by another player. That is super lame. Had I known this, I would not have bought the book.

Like the book a lot, just what I am needing at this point. Lots of cool fills. Especially the type of fills that you wouldn't think of but that sound bad. Like rolls between the hands and feet, or rolls that traverse the entire set of toms in on quarter note, etc....
I personally like the fact that each page of fills is a single mp3 on the cd. What you do is learn the whole page of fills, then fire up the mp3 and play along through the whole page, adding the fills each measure. It would be a pain the have each fill as a separate mp3.

A very useful one again. Easy to understand and well layered in different types of fill ending points. With proper music loops to practice.

Over the years I have collected many educational drum books, dvd's, and cd's - including Peter Erskine's "Drumset Essentials" series (which I would also highly recommend). There are lots of good books out there, but this is one of the best. It's great book for a drummer (like me) who has been playing for a while and can lay down a nice groove, but is not real comfortable moving around the set.

The exercises on the cd are very nice. Peter Erskine makes the most simple fills sound really good. What I like most about this book is that the fills don't all end on 1. There are exercises that have different "destination points" like 2, or 2+ (the and of 2). This is great for practicing fills that cross over the bar line or fills that are contained within a measure. It's also great for developing a better sense of time.

This book will inspire your creativity. I find myself thinking of new fills, writing them down, and then practicing them with the cd.

Buy it now. It is so worth the money You will not be disappointed.

There's only one short section on fills for rock beats. Everything else is jazz, or jazzy sounding 4/4. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it would have been great if the title or book-synopsis had indicated that. CD also could organization. It would have been nice to have a spoken exercise # before the sample of each example, rather than having 40 of them strung together as a single track.

You certainly can't complain about the low price though.

Other books have done this in different ways; I think Peter has written this in a manner that's is easier for many, myself included, trying to find new ways to be different. It's fairly dense, too, so there is a lot of material to digest.