What do you do if you suck at programming drums?

[Deleted User]

The user and all related content has been deleted.

michael_m

Different Drummer has been around for a few years and has amazing potential. It suffers from a dense, cluttered UI, but if it ever got an update to streamline the UI and the process of creating drum parts it would be perfect for anyone struggling to come up with ideas.

senhorlampada

@lasselu said:
What do you guys think about the Drum Sessions app?

I like it and was about to recommend it. Sometime I export midi and/or audio (as one file or multiple separate parts).
They may release a new version sometime in the near future, so that could be a heads up if you buy it now.

Besides that, the Lumbeat apps - Rock Drum Machine, Funk Drummer, Future Drummer, AfroLatin, MidEast, Brazilian, etc are nice too.

DrumJam is easy to jam with and come with interesting patterns too.

All that and the random sequencers, layered or with parts from one or another can be a nice way to get some pleasing rhythmic stuff.

senhorlampada

Oh yeah. forgot a lil' detail on your original post... for ambient, maybe Drum session wouldn't be what you want, the patterns are mostly rock-pop oriented. For ambient, I would probably stick to DrumJam and Soft Drummer. Or use Rozeta's sequencers and trigger your rhythmic stuff

NeuM

Practice, practice, practice!

Lil_Stu07

My iOS drum machines of choice are EG Pulse, Digistix, and Drum Computer (iPad only). These all have step sequencing, which like someone said before, makes it pretty simple to figure out patterns you may like. Start with a kick and a snare and try different placements. Listen to music you like and try to replicate their drums. Keep your kicks away from 5, 9, and 13 if you want to get away from four on the floor. If you have samples or specific kicks you like, these all allow you to import your own samples. Easier to do on the first 2. Ruismaker is also a good resource with rozeta X0X as mentioned before.

Poppadocrock

Listening, tutorials, what I hear in my head based on what I have already laid down, randomize, experiment.

Lil_Stu07

Also, cymatics.fm has sales all the time and lots of royalty free drum loops. You can use them as is, reference them for inspiration, or chop them up. They have the best affordable samples imo. And there's always Splice.

Franketti

@NeuM : 👍👍👍. Hear the drummers in your favourite tracks and try to make patterns. It is not the main patterns. More the fills, that are difficult. And the ghostnotes. Hard work for me to try to feel like a drummer everytime.

Obo

Well, what an epic thread filled with knowledge this is turning out to be… whoa! 🤯. A lot of great/inspiring ideas here already.

One thing I would say that may sound counterintuitive is to learn some additional common drum patterns (that aren’t 4 on the floor or offshoots). Play around with programming those to where you have at least 3-4 others memorised (for lack of a better word). What I mean by memorised isn’t to say you should know where every closed hat and snap goes - that might get boring fast. Just that you know the basics of where the major components go through maybe 4 bars (or even 1-2 bars with some patterns is fine). A lot of times, you really only need to remember where the kick/snare goes for a couple of bars with many genres. The way I think of it, you’re basically getting the basic groove down which can act as a base for al kinds of inspiration and tweaking later on. But if you don’t have some of the basic grooves hard coded in your mind, you can’t use them for inspiration and for adding your own flavour later on. I hesitated on this because I wasn’t interested in mimicking existing patterns, I thought I wanted to come up with all my own stuff. Turns out, it’s pretty hard to come up with your own stuff without some basics and since there’s very little that hasn’t already been done in a drum machine, you might as well learn the very basic structure of the ones you like sooner than later.

Also, I’d be cautious of thinking you want to avoid other genres. Some of my favorite electronic music relies heavily on hip hop drum structures but had I not taken the time to learn some of the basic patterns in a few genres, I may not have to what extent (I love hip hop, I just thought at first I didn’t really want to make hip hop).

Those are a couple of things that help me get out of the 4 on the floor rut!

tahiche

Tap the drums!. The good thing about sucking at finger drumming is tha5 you probably only do one kit piece at a time. This leads to some interesting (impossible for a real drummer) rhythms. Besides finger drumming you can also just place dots on the sequencer and see what happens. Drum sequencer, that is, I can’t stand piano rolls for drums!. Thing with drums is whatever you place on a drum sequencer sounds good. Dot, erase, move, another dot, move dot, erase, move p, dot… sounds good, next one…
I also dig @u0421793 ’s method.

Obo

@tahiche said:
Tap the drums!. The good thing about sucking at finger drumming is tha5 you probably only do one kit piece at a time. This leads to some interesting (impossible for a real drummer) rhythms. Besides finger drumming you can also just place dots on the sequencer and see what happens. Drum sequencer, that is, I can’t stand piano rolls for drums!. Thing with drums is whatever you place on a drum sequencer sounds good. Dot, erase, move, another dot, move dot, erase, move p, dot… sounds good, next one…
I also dig @u0421793 ’s method.

What’s @u0421793 method?

tahiche

@Obo said:

What’s @u0421793 method?

Here you go. I didn’t quote it because it’s pretty long…

@u0421793 said:
I think I’ve solved this problem for me in the past few weekends.
I’ve never respected drums, the concept of drumming and the purpose of having drums at all in my songs. What, you expect me to understand any of that? So all my songs either had basic plonk blap plonk blap tss tss tss type of basic synth drumming like most early 80s electronic music, or it’d go way over the top in a stupid ‘use everything everywhere at some point’ direction.

Over the past month I’ve been on a hunt. I’m doing all my music in Logic Pro X now (the iPad remote for it is really superb - vastly improved with the recent iterations).
I started using Drummer a few years ago when I couldn’t be arsed trying to do my own drums that worked. It was good the first few times, but I now know Drummer is actually very limited, has only a small amount of styles and only a few of those will work with what I’m doing. Worst of all I came to the realisation that Drummer makes it sound like a Japanese keyboard demo tune.

So I went on the search for drum machines. Decades ago I owned a TR-808, TR-606, TR-505 (my first) and a bunch of other non-Roland ones like Korgs, this dusty Oberheim DMX thing I was glad to get rid of, and others. So I’m not unfamiliar with them.

What is there on iOS that works? I tried what I had, didn’t buy anything new. Went through a few likely candidates such as Elastic Drums and others, and in the end settled on a really good drum machine:
Korg Electribe Wave with all the synths switched off. I now think that is about the best drum machine on iOS. Obviously it probably isn’t, I just don’t own a lot of iOS drum machines. But, it is really good and I recommend it. (Yes, I also tried Drambo, nearly settled on it, but the boundary between tweaking and actually using with Drambo is too precarious and I kept on falling off). So, if you want a good usable fun drum machine on iOS - Korg Electribe Wave, with the synths switched off. Really good song mode, too.

Then I tried my old Novation Circuit, dug it out, put 808/909/606 samples on it (there’s a good github repo with those in for Circuit if you search) and that actually worked well for me, but in the end I got tired with a] not having a song mode (ie, having to live switch the patterns) and b] having to run each pad as a separate recording because no separate outputs.

So in the end, here’s how I’ve solved my make-my-drumming-not-crap problem. Back to LPX, into the new drum machine stuff in there, into the new step sequencer stuff in there. First, dump all my existing attempts at drum tracks. Then do a Drummer track and tediously try and pick one I like that works well for the song. Then turn that drummer track to midi regions. Then make a new drum machine track and in the step sequencer try and imitate what the drummer track (which is now midi) was doing in each region, don’t try and imitate it exactly, rely on my laziness and inaccuracy in copying, just try and get 80% of what I perceive in the drummer midi. That’s it. Basically, do a Drummer track, and tediously try and imitate it myself. Tadaa!

senhorlampada

something I did one of these days was lay a song I dig the drums on cubasis, dropped some empty midi clips on each section and labeled them (drums, only hats, or BD, SN, HH, CH, CY, etc.)

Deleted my reference track and went on to work on other stuff
Came back later and played+sequenced my drums according to that template, commited to audio and further sliced and re-arranged some parts

JudasZimmerman

A book with lots of patterns to start with:
https://shittyrecording.studio/

Paul16

Rozeta XOX > Ruismaker > Scatterbrain, add multibussed AU FX of your choice & tweak to taste

Poppadocrock

@JudasZimmerman said:
A book with lots of patterns to start with:
https://shittyrecording.studio/

PDF is free too.

Poppadocrock

An app like Drum Beats+ could be useful it has drum rudiments and a huge variety of drum beats, categorized by genre/type. This way you can clearly hear a ton of basic or increasingly complex drum beats/styles/etc…

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/drum-beats-rhythm-machine/id461218759

Here is the free version with even more IAPS

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/drum-beats-rhythm-buddy/id1474287010

Here are 2 different free apps that are similar, there’s a bunch out there, varying in quality

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/jam2/id1289739215

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/drum-beats/id353093075

seonnthaproducer

Here’s one that really helped me understand different drum styles...for free. Plus it gives you MIDI files that you can use.
Nick Chen from Splice made an excellent video that walks you through a ton of popular drum patterns.
https://splice.com/blog/how-to-make-drum-patterns/

He even released a part 2 of it recently.
https://splice.com/blog/create-drum-patterns-across-genres/

Seriously, it’s one of the best videos on drums I’ve watched. Quick, concise, and he even gave free MIDI loops.

NeuM

@Franketti said:
@NeuM : 👍👍👍. Hear the drummers in your favourite tracks and try to make patterns. It is not the main patterns. More the fills, that are difficult. And the ghostnotes. Hard work for me to try to feel like a drummer everytime.

I’ve gotten pretty good at it for my purposes and I’ve been using programmable drum machines since the Alesis HR-16 first came out.
http://www.vintagesynth.com/misc/hr16.php

Remember the Mattel Synsonics, Linn Drums or Simmons drums?

ejacul337

@lasselu said:
Lots of interesting drum apps coming up and for the umpteenth time I want to incorporate drums in my music but I totally suck at coming up with interesting patterns.
I always end up with a basic four on the floor beat and that's not of much use when you make ambient music...

So, any ideas for learning how to program drums? Any tips on apps that can help?

Learn. Drums are super easy to learn - most drum tracks are pretty basic. I find Rock being the most difficult because of the timing and the amount of drumheads involved. For the most part- focus on the main four. A good resource is Tokyo.

Learn some basic patterns- for BD, SN, OH, CH - then eventually you'll start complimenting with TOMS, Claps, and rims.

• I never liked using loops because none ever fit my style of music. Just practice brother. Also, loading midi drums and analyzing them in EDIT / BRUSH mode is a great way to learn.

Wrlds2ndBstGeoshredr

@lasselu said:
Lots of interesting drum apps coming up and for the umpteenth time I want to incorporate drums in my music but I totally suck at coming up with interesting patterns.
I always end up with a basic four on the floor beat and that's not of much use when you make ambient music...

So, any ideas for learning how to program drums? Any tips on apps that can help?

If it has interesting drum patterns, it's probably not ambient though. For ambient I would suggest sending random notes from Rozeta Particles to your drum app.

For interesting drum patterns, you can buy midi grooves from a variety of sources. I haven't found a source for drum midis that really swing though.

Lil_Stu07

Once you learn some patterns you like, many drum machines have probability. You can program in the sounds and put each hit on a low probability to give it that ambient sound, plus some filtering.

RajahP

Get DrumLab… a simple > @lasselu said:

Lots of interesting drum apps coming up and for the umpteenth time I want to incorporate drums in my music but I totally suck at coming up with interesting patterns.
I always end up with a basic four on the floor beat and that's not of much use when you make ambient music...

So, any ideas for learning how to program drums? Any tips on apps that can help?

Lumbeats...

Obo

@tahiche - thanks for taking the time to find and post that! Just revisited Electribe wave drums and I think he’s onto something! 🙏🏼

Wrlds2ndBstGeoshredr

@Poppadocrock said:
An app like Drum Beats+ could be useful it has drum rudiments and a huge variety of drum beats, categorized by genre/type. This way you can clearly hear a ton of basic or increasingly complex drum beats/styles/etc…

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/drum-beats-rhythm-machine/id461218759

Here is the free version with even more IAPS

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/drum-beats-rhythm-buddy/id1474287010

Here are 2 different free apps that are similar, there’s a bunch out there, varying in quality

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/jam2/id1289739215

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/drum-beats/id353093075

Here's another free one focused on jazz and world beats:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/drumgenius/id492279351

Wrlds2ndBstGeoshredr

@Spidericemidas said:
Gently automating some reverb length or depth on snares is quite effective at keeping things interesting too. Gently automating a delay length on certain drum/perc sounds also works well. It’s amazing how those little things can transform even the most simplest straightforward beat into something more dynamic and interesting. Try those little things out on a really simple beat and you’ll be amazed!

If you’re confident with miRack just try hooking up some drum/perc sounds from a bunch of (Plaits) Macro OSC 2 modules to a couple of the Euclidean sequencers triggering from different lengths to each sound and you get some great shifting beats. Insert a few Bernoulli Gates in the chain for creating probabilities and you get even more variation.

I think for ambient music especially, the pattern itself is not as important as variation via probability triggering and very subtle filtering or effecting are on some of the actual drum/perc sounds themselves.

Good advice. Or just run it into Replicant.

Deskscape

How about DrumJam? Doug gives it a workout:

NeuM

@Deskscape said:
How about DrumJam? Doug gives it a workout:

Keep in mind there are a LOT of options built into iOS GarageBand, including the Smart Drummer (second image shown, which is very similar to DrumJam) and the Beat Sequencer (someone will correct me if I got those names wrong).

Lil_Stu07

@JudasZimmerman said:
A book with lots of patterns to start with:
https://shittyrecording.studio/

This is an amazing resource. Just downloaded, printed and folded it up (booklet version). Sitting with my dawless setup! Thanks!