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Three big tips, on how to make electronic drums sound good
Okay here’s a challenge for you.
I’ve no real respect for drums, drumming, drummers or drum machines. However, I must own up. I used to own an actual Roland TR-808, and a pair of Korg KPR-77s (hardly used for drums, mainly the pair of s-trig triggers each, which gated my Korg MS-10, MS-20 and SQ-10 back in the past century) and a Roland TR-606 (too strident, too harsh, too noticeable) and a TR-505 (my first drum machine) and at one point an Oberheim DMX, and probably a few more. So, not big on drum machines, me.
Oh yes, and a DR-55.
And some weird pad synth things. Anyway, that’s not the point.
I have no respect for doing the drums, I’m quite satisfied in spending five minutes knocking up a pattern and then using that forever throughout the entire song. And probably the next few songs too.
Now, real drumming is more complex than that. And yet all it is is hitting a thing, or hitting several things. There’s probably some complex subtlety that escapes me, but the tedium really doesn’t make me want to go any deeper. Yet I should. Vince Clark once opined in a similar manner, that he tends to program in a basic pattern and live with that for the duration of a song. I know it’s bad, I know it’s a failing, but I can’t bring myself to give any significant attention to drums, I respect them so lowly.
So, the challenge is this. Can you (you) suggest three quick improvements that I can make, three brief strategic shifts, three short relatively effortless alterations, that I can deploy, to make my programmed drums sound a bit less like someone who rustled up just one acceptable pattern and lived with that for the rest of the year. Are there any (kind of) effortless improvements I should be making which won’t pull me into the whole ‘being and thinking like a drummer’ realm, but nevertheless are fairly good quick cheap cheats which dramatically improve my lowly and low-ranking drum tracks.
Go for it. Three – that’s your max. Just three, just quick, just …I’m lazy, make it easy.
Comments
Hihats man. Push 'em, pull 'em, Go wild with their velocity. Throw in ghost notes.
You can keep kicks and snares stiff like a robot, as long as the hats groove.
And cowbell.
Interesting. Now, none of that had ever occurred to me. Thanks.
Any more, anyone?
Play them, don't program them.
For synth drums, try to use velocity to vary the sound up. Works well if you use a velocity sensitive drum synth, but even the slightly different volumes by themselves can vary the sound up when you mix the drums with your other tracks.
For sampled drums, look for round-robin sample playback. This will subtly vary the sound of the drum hits.
I suffer from this same affliction. Currently “Snap” by Reactable is my secret weapon for lazy drum programming. It’s free to try out, I think you have to pay for the midi out (which you will need as it’s not really a drum sound module). Or if you work well with audio drum loops, iKaossilator as a drum machine is also a super easy cheat, put it through some fx, etc.
Like others have said, velocity on the hats and other percs can easily add life. Also I find personally that laying down the rest of the song first, and then recording drums live to that as a last step gives me more inspiring results often
If you want them alive and engaging, there has to be some degree of unpredictability. Subtle little touches. A missed note here or there, and slight variations in how hits hit. Velocity tweaks, ghost notes and a little swing can all work wonders. I guess that's 3. Compression too, but maybe keep that one in your breast pocket until Act iii.
This for me is the beauty of Patterning where the velocity is so much more visual and easily accessible than your typical drum synth. It just seems to naturally create free flowing, varied and grooving drum sounds. My favorite drum app by far. (and Patterning 1, haven't upgraded to 2 yet)
+1 for Brambos
My 3 "big" tips:
Use swing. Swing is the new black.
Compression (and side chaining...)
Keep it simple and clear.
This. Patterning is where I get my most-natural almost “like I played” it sound. I think the “clearly programmed on a step-sequencer sound” is still really nice though.
One that hasnt been mentioned yet: Use timed delays to add groove and complexity to things like high hats or mid range drums.
B. Create fills
1) You need to use something like NS (or GB) that let's you nudge notes. I quantize my hi-hats and then nudge the hits on the off-beats to the right just a hair. Adds a really nice groove to the hi-hats.
2) For acoustic drums, I double the acoustic kick and the snare with a 909 kick and snare and then adjust volumes so it still sounds like an acoustic drum, but you get all the oomph of the 909. Makes drums sound nice and big and punchy
3) As has been stated earlier, adjusting velocity on the hi-hats (or shaker or tambourine) is key.
Okay, fills. Are they just random blurts of nonsense, or is there some kind of logic or skill behind them? And should they be in certain places, or just anywhere at random? I’ve tried fills before about 20 years ago and all they did was draw attention to themselves and stick out like a dick in pyjamas.
👍
I usually just do 4 to the floor with v slight variation but have noticed huge improvements to the sound and feel after using.....
Compression esp. AD roughrider
Saturation
Polyrhythms
If that doesnt work get a lumbeat app
1 Refuse to program drums via clicking on any grid. Play a pad, key, whatever.
2 Play thru the whole song trying subtle variations with record on. Review and keep the best few.
3 Develop a groove template for each song...figuring out what beats are pushed or pulled. The ‘swing’ slider is a poor excuse. Real beats played by humans follow a multitude of groove patterns.
4 For extra variation when I’m not coming to it naturally, I sometimes delete randomly some of the secondary elements and then go back, listen, plug different stuff in it it feels it is missing.
5 Single tempo songs are rarely as good as ones that accentuate their energy with changes. If you analyze even a lot of rock and jazz songs with no overt changes, you’ll see consistent small ones of a few bpm, they matter.
Haha...well I think its okay if they stick out, think of those Phil Collins transitions.
THIS THING 👇
@u0421793 said:
I usually do fills at the end of a musical phrase.
Random 🤔
I usually try some sort of rhythmic subdivision of the regular beat. Something like using triplets or upping the steady quarter beat to 8ths for a beat or two and hitting a tom or crash. You know 😜, part of the drum voicing that wasn't used in the steady portion.
Just something that draws attention or is staccato enough to denote the change to come or break a ridgid regular pattern. Um so yes sort of "blurts of noise" YMMV.
Yes. And maybe analyze what it does and when.
SAGE!
I like to send the drums into to a mixbus with other ‘groove’ based instruments and apply a little compression and saturation at the ‘top’ of the bus channel. I prefer an unlinked compressor here, which can potentially cause some stereo image issues on centre sounds (I usually work with a ‘centre/left/right’ ethos on panning) that may need accommodating for downstream.
I tend to have an effected and dry drum track separately and vary them slightly through the track.
Often I find that having a percussion and drums track separately and muting one or the other for a few beats at different times goes a long way.
In the past I used patterning live with 2-3 different basic ‘over complex’ rhythms then muted/unmuted various elements with a midi controller while switching between the patterns less often. That got a lot of variation pretty easily.
Sometimes I’ll make a quick hi-hat track using apple’s drummers — easy way to add some dynamics/variation on the hats.
I recommend using KEW and/or Nanostudio 2. IAPs are optional. KEW has groove templates you can use to add instant groove to a drum track. Nanostudio 2 has bpm and time signature changes in the playlist.
Program a full loop with everything in it. This full loop most likely won't make it into the final track as is, but now you have all of your drums playing and can mix them down. You can also adjust timing and velocity at this stage to get a proper groove going.
Then, you copy the pattern and use the "subtraction" method. Take away a percussion line. Take away some hi hats to make it less busy. Etc, rinse and repeat.
In NS2, send your drums down a buss and slap on a compressor to glue it - a good starting point is ratio 1.1:1-2:1, attack ~0.1ms, release set to auto would be ideal, but since Pro-C2 is not available in AU form yet, go with the release around 1-100 ms to search for the most pleasing results, and a gain reduction around 2-5 db.
Not sure if this counts as two, three, or four tips, but whatever.
Use high pass / low pass filters and eq to separate the frequencies and give the different drum tracks their own space.
If fills sound random and drums aren't something that you respect, it will be hard to come up with good drum parts. I'd start by taking some songs you love and breaking down their drum parts.
A ton can be learned by taking a ding with a drum groove you like and re-creating it. Then take the hi-hat part and see what happens when you shift (rotate) the part by a sixteenth of an eighth.
Fills can be super simple. As simple as making the snare slightly busier in the last half of the last measure of a section. And listen to lots of tunes solely to find simple fills that don't sound random.
I'd spend a lot of time playing with patterning, too.
I like to play notes in in real-time along with loosely quantized, tightly quantised, and robotically timed stuff here and there. Why not? Explore, believe, create, GROW! Oh and high-pass filters on most items not bass related. And polyrhythms. Whatever. But real human timing always seems to make things sound more fun IMO.
For lazy drums without being absolutely repetitive I create a pattern I like in Rozeta.
Then I copy that pattern to the next pattern position. In this second pattern I make some simplification by taking out a few notes here and there, or by pulling some off-beat notes onto the beat. I’ll usually reduce the hats, sinc there will be more other hits happening. Next I crank up the mutation dial a bit on both parts that have hits and those that have none. Sometimes I’ll push up the swing on this pattern too. Lastly, I set this 2nd pattern to go back to the first pattern after one loop, and set the first to go to the 2nd pattern after 3, 7, 11, 15 bars, depending on how often I want “fills” to occur. Oh, and setting the “fill” pattern to a different length does wonders as well.
If that isn’t enough, then I dial in just a touch of mutation into parts in the first pattern, but usually none, or very little on the kick and snare. Mutation works particularly well on hat patterns.
Totally lazy, but I’m usually just wanting to get a decent groove going so that I can focus on the rest. I always figure I’ll come back to polish the drum parts, but many times that never happens.
Of course, the other way to bust out of that the doldrums (pun intended) is with Ruismaker Noir, alone or in combination with one of the other Ruismakers providing solid backing.
I am lazier than you apparently. I only do approximately 50% of what you do. Totally changing my ways and doing 100% of your tips.
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