In today's lesson, we're going to expand on what we worked on last week, and learn a couple more fills using our baqueteo pattern to anticipate them and create some space. So if you haven't already, make sure you check out last week's lesson to get caught up.

Now for today's fills, we're gonna use a bit of a variation on the common baqueteo pattern, and play closed slaps on beat two, the "and" of three and the "and" of four. This pattern has a bit more movement than our common baqueteo, where we only played closed slaps on beats two and four. This one stems from the songo and is commonly used in a more modern timba or salsa context. Now of course you can also work on playing both baqueteos over a two bar phrase, and choose whichever one you'd like to play in the bar before your fills.

So, let's work on our first fill. We'll practice it over a four bar phrase in 2-3 clave. We'll play two bars of tumbao, followed by our baqueteo in bar three, and our fill in the fourth bar.

Now this fill works just fine, even without anticipating it with our baqueteo in the bar before. But, by omitting open tones for an entire bar, and leaving some space in the groove, our fill will have even more of an impact. Just remember that because these types of fills are pretty busy, they're better suited to be used in the "up" sections of an arrangement, and generally only once in an entire song.

And remember that it's super important that we take the time to analyze and clap the clave along to each example, so we can start to understand how the tumbao and the accents of each fill fit and work in respect to the pulse and the clave.

So for this second fill, let's re-voice the baqueteo pattern that we're playing in the third bar. This time, we'll play a low drum muffled tone on the "and" of three, and an open tone on the "and" of four to set up our new fill in the fourth bar.

Now this is one of my personal favorite ways to set up a fill. And we can think of it in a couple different ways. We can assume that the third bar is still just being used to set up the following bar, since we are mainly playing non-open tones for an entire bar: a closed slap on beat two, a low drum muffled tone on the "and" of three, and only playing an open tone on the very last eighth note of the bar. Or, we can think of the low drum muffled tone on the "and" of three as our jumping off point for the fill.

Now the difference is just simply conceptual, and it doesn't necessarily change what we're playing. But thinking of the jumping off point for a fill in different places within a phrase can inspire us to play some different and at times longer shapes, and help us create some tension with our fills.

So for our last fill, let's use our most recent baqueteo variation in the third bar, but this time we'll leave an eighth note rest and then play a left hand ghost tone on the last eighth note of the bar. We'll then play a ghost on the first eighth note of the following bar, and play an eighth note build up to help us emphasize the downbeat of the following phrase.

Now this is just a simple variation on one of the fills that we checked out a few weeks back using open tones. But placing a bar of space before definitely gives it a bit of a different feel than when we were just inserting it into our tumbao pattern.

Now make sure that you take the time to go over each pattern slowly, work on the sticking and tones, and do your best to lock up with the metronome before you speed these up. So for this last example, we'll play six bars of tumbao, followed by our baqueteo pattern in the seventh bar, and then each of our respective fills in bar eight. Let's see what it sounds like at a bit faster tempo over one of our exclusive CongaChops practice loops.

Now generally speaking, aside from being aware of what's going on musically with the other instruments and the vocals while we're playing, this simple concept offers us one of the best ways to deliberately create some sonic and mental space, to allow ourselves to become inspired to play some fills and variations, like the ones we just learned. So feel free to practice doing this same thing on the opposite side of the clave as well, or by making your baqueteo pattern longer or shorter, to give your fill a different jumping off point.

These types of fills are again something that you'll hear used more deliberately in a modern context. So try to see if you can spot where they come up as you're listening along to your favorite recordings. Now, analyzing and learning to understand the way that your favorite percussionists think, and utilize different concepts, will definitely give you a ton of insight as to when these types of fills can feel natural to play throughout the course of an arrangement, as well as generally improve the way you approach any and every musical situation, whether it's laying down a groove, playing through an arrangement, or taking a solo.