Reinvent Your Drum Programming Chops
It’s easy to get stuck in a rut when making a track. When it comes to programming drums from a MIDI controller, you might find that your fingers naturally fall into particular habitual sequences. Likewise, grid editing comes with its own problems. Brian Eno famously created a set of cards for use in the studio that contained statements, instructions and random philosophising. These Oblique Strategies were designed to interrupt the normal flow of things when looking for creative inspiration. Sometimes it pays to have your own in reserve. Here’s a few suggestions to switch up your flow when programming drums:
- Remove other drums when the kick hits. This can create space and make you think about shifting other elements to create a more fluid groove. You may not always want to use this approach on all parts (snares and claps often align with the kicks).
- Which elements define the groove of your track? The most interesting drum patterns are often very simple with the exception of one dominant sound.
- Shift hats or percussion back (or forwards) by one grid position. Completely change your beat by moving a bunch of elements one 1/16th or 1/8th note in time.
- Randomise. Paste drum hits into gaps in the groove. Draw pretty patterns with hi-hats. Turn off your monitors and draw a beat. Don’t think, just do.
- Fix the velocity. Electronic music sometimes needs to be machine-like in its accuracy. Random or sloppy velocity variation may ruin a good groove.
- Unfix the velocity. Electronic music sometimes needs to be sloppy. Edit the velocity of each element to enhance or change the groove. (Velocity is an area which is often overlooked when programming drums. Check out our recent walkthrough on the topic for more suggestions.)
Challenge your approach in this way to break out of habits. Deep down you’re probably aware of the routines you fall into. Get out of your comfort zone.
12.48 PM
best mag in the net!
06.29 PM
Good Job Bruce!
05.12 AM
Superb
11.22 AM
meh, equalizing is much more important than compression
12.16 PM
The tuning of the drums is also very important. Not all percussion is unpitched, therefore it might be a good idea to tune drums either to the tonic, fifth, or whatever scale degree the drum section accompanies. Great tips, tho.
02.23 PM
Another thing you can try: Use a Vocoder on your drums!
02.25 PM
Leo – great point, and not just for pitched elements either. Pitching anything from kicks to claps to hi-hats up or down a step or two can have a dramatic impact on the overall sound of a beat.
Check out our guide to the basics of drum tuning here: http://www.attackmagazine.com/technique/walkthroughs/how-to-tune-kick-snare-tom-drum-samples/
11.32 AM
Great tips! You can also drive tracks and groups trough guitarpedals. Adding a hint of distortion to beats sound pretty amazing many times. No need to add it much, a bit of nice harmonic distortion you don’t even notice brings nice crispy attack and richer harmonics. Mooer pedals for example are pretty cheap but effectice. Here some kick drum / various pedals examples http://thegearfiend.com
Would be nice to see an article about how different pedals work with full beats;)
09.02 PM
Second that article idea from Hannu!
Just use everything you have in your toolkit. I begin with pitching sounds, to see if they can fit better to the mood. EQing the shit out ouf your drums, you don’t need or want (which depends on the overall sound you’re looking for actually ). Then you might compress your drums to beef ’em up if your tracks need it, give specific sounds some room and reverb (I do it with sends) and then do some bus compression. Don’t overdo it and the result should be a drum sound you can definitely use. Tweak the rest later in the Mixing, because you will then have a stronger opinion on the overall sound you want.
I think a big problem is a missing idea of the “big picture” in the first place. It’s easy to trick yourself into twiddle your drums and bass and all that difficult too long, while you don’t have any idea about how you want them to sound when it’s done. This idea can be there from beginning or can build up while you compose and arrange the track – just be sure you don’t tweak for hours without thinking of your whole track and how it should sound in the end. It’s easy to lose hours when not thinking the way, I did it – and still it’s happening too often.
11.43 PM
it’s easy to mix and compress just drums and make them sound beefy and loud like in your examples. in fact, there are tons of garbage tech house sample packs with pre-compressed drum grooves that can serve the exact same purpose as having loops like these
how about you throw in some vocal samples? and a couple chords? and a bassline? and some reverb? maybe show a distortion heavy track with elements that are difficult to fit into the mix? and maintain the quality throughout an entire track? i’m not trying to bust your chops or give you a hard time for the sake of it, but there are many tutorials online that say “hey guys check it out, mixing and compressing is a really easy way to make your drums sound massive. check this example out for instance!” and then they loop a generic tech house beat with the cleanest and easiest to mix percussion and call it a day while not really proving nor teaching much
i’m new to your site and am always open to any good tutorials or knowledge that others have to share though, so keep on writing articles. i especially liked the seventh tip on exploring transients more
05.32 PM
” ….we’d definitely recumbent exploring the higher reaches…..”
*recumbent
Darn that auto spell correct!
03.06 AM
Compresión is more important than eq…