Hi, I'm an intermediate drum player who's been working on my rudiments recently (as I was too lazy to back in high school).

The next step up for me is to really start revisiting old songs, and even experimenting with new ones. I'm a fan of all things Jazz and Rock, but my weakest aspect in drumming had always been my improvisation and fills. What I've always struggled with over the years is not the technical difficulty of performing the fills, but in fact achieving a sound that, quite simply, sounds good.

My main problem isn't rhythm or accuracy, it's just not knowing how to transition from drum to drum. I know intuitively that making a transition between certain toms or the snare or adding in a cymbal at the wrong moment can just sound awful.

What bewilders me is just how naturally professional drummers can work their way around the drum kit, yet every transition between snare, tom, cymbal, and bass drum is seamless and sounds natural. Yet when I try to do the same thing, I find myself unable to instinctively know what drums to transition to, and even if the pattern of hits would technically sound good on just one drum, when I try to incorporate multiple drums into that rhythm it's just a cacophony.

Does anybody have any tips on what I could do to figure out this problem, or any ideas of what the problem could be in the first place?