How Do I Learn to Program Drums?

[nikos_tsakas]

Yay! My first post! Ok, I have a question. I'm a guitar player, meaning I have NEVER touched a drum kit in my life. I wish to learn how to increase my understanding of how drumming works so I can program drums for my recordings.

What I mean by that, is I want to learn how to think like a drummer. Right now I know the names of the drums on a kit, etc. But I don't know the logic behind making a beat work with the song. (eg. How should I use the snare/bass drum/toms? Where should a drum fill go and how do I create one?)

Any suggestions on how to start thinking like a drummer?

 

[Winspear]

I'm sure you do know - you know what sounds good, you just don't know what it is.
Start studying some drums in Guitar Pro tabs for songs you know.
You'll find common things such as:
-Fills go at the end of the bar, often the end of every 4th/8th/16th bar (you'll be familiar with the fact that riffs are usually this long).
-Kicks go on the beat
-Snares go on the offbeat

These are of course generalizations. Just listen to lots of drums and read drum tabs - try and notate songs that you know. Try write drums for your own songs. It'll come together very fast

 

[mcleanab]

Find a good but cheap drum machine, like an Alesis SR-16...

Read the hell out of the manual and start listening and playing...

Once you get a good ear for what sounds are making what when (there are tons of presets and fills and samples, etc.) it becomes very simple to mimic and begin creating your own...

Programming is every bit of a skill set as is playing...

Good luck!

 

[Ryan-ZenGtr-]

It's pretty easy once you've done it enough.

The *circituitous paths to virtual drum sounds
Route 1
-Be a genius drummer
-Buy an E-Kit and MIDI/USB interface

Pro's
-Most realistic sound
-Incredible tone, touch, technique and unique drum style

Con's
-Need sticks
-Need Stuffs



Route 2
-Programme it in MIDI



The way I do it

My approach is to layer the drum parts, starting with kick and snare, in multiple passes, then copy and paste the repeats. I do a number of passes through the MIDI comparing the audio and make subtle changes to the distribution of cymbals, kicks, snares etc. to add variety and dynamics.

Then I add fills, either preprogrammed MIDI from my drum software or programme a custom fill.

Once all that's done I do a velocity layer, adjusting the velocity of every hit so that the MIDI performance has the same natural ebb and flow of the pulse as a real drummer. This works well with compression later.

Once it is done, takes a few hours or a similar time to setting up and micing a real kit, I render out each virtual mic and sub mix them to various busses, depending on desired sound. Perhap busses for kick, snare, overheads and room, or submix all of them then just a single master buss for drums.

At this time I often render different drum samples for reinforcement and blend them with the original kit, or replace them, or use the MIDI itself with a seperate sampler to playback additional kit pieces from my sample libraries, then blend with main kit sound.

Most people listen to music on shit systems so you can get away with massive bass from kick drums, although it is important to reference your track with monitors and a subwoofer to see how they react as you add additional kick drum reinforcement.

To use preset grooves or hand made

Most drum samples come with a multitude of preset grooves. These can provide a good basis for further editing and development, especially as the preset velocities (or volumes in drummer language) and cymbal or hat useage will be "human".

A common error with programming is to create inhuman passages, much like an octopus playing drums.

The trick is to "air drum" the parts to check for human playability.

Mixing them properly is another topic for another day! Let's keep it simple and say listen carefully to check for balance and make sure nothing is overpowering the rest of the kit pieces.

To learn drum techniques

Listen to real drummers which you admire and transcribe their playing into midi. I've been transcribing some drummers I work with and it's amazing to learn about their styles through transcribing their creations, in a more modern way than notation or drum tab.

The most important single thing you can do with MIDI (since 1983... ) editing is to buy the best gaming mouse and pad you can afford, variable DPI (Dots Per Inch = sensitivity) buttons are amazing. With a good mouse, clicking thousands of tiny worthless dots which add up to insane percussion takes a lot less effort!

* spell check... Americanese ::*

nikos_tsakas
Any suggestions on how to start thinking like a drummer?

I think most of us around here will agree, that's a little too much commitment for simply programming a drum beat.








^Note:random video, nasty guitar sounds = might help though.


@OP
Answering some of these questions might help with fine tuning your replies;
-Equpment owned
-software
-hardware
-which style of drumming are you interested in?
-genre
-artists
-What is the intended outcome?

^ All the usual things etc. etc.

 

[thedonal]

A good way that helped me improve drum programming would be to load a song you like into your DAW and start programming that specific pattern with the electronic kit of your choice (ie EZ-Drummer, BFD, a hardware drum module or even a drum kit on a synth).

Will give you a good idea of how each drum is used, where fills are put in and eventually the nuances of timing (getting the drums just before/after the beat, as opposed to strictly quantised to the grid- though most DAW's have human-feel quantizing).

 

[nikos_tsakas]

Thanks to everybody for the replies, you've all been very helpful. Especially Ryan, you my friend have been a TON of help. I think I have a good place to start. I'll try to study some drummers, transcribing songs, see how that goes.

Oh, and for the record, the style I play is generally progressive metal, mainly influenced by Periphery, Cloudkicker, Keith Merrow, Chimp Spanner etc. you get the drift.

 

[KDR]

Thanks to everyone for the info!

I was wondering how to go about this very same thing.

 

[hairychris]

Yay! My first post! Ok, I have a question. I'm a guitar player, meaning I have NEVER touched a drum kit in my life. I wish to learn how to increase my understanding of how drumming works so I can program drums for my recordings.

What I mean by that, is I want to learn how to think like a drummer. Right now I know the names of the drums on a kit, etc. But I don't know the logic behind making a beat work with the song. (eg. How should I use the snare/bass drum/toms? Where should a drum fill go and how do I create one?)

Any suggestions on how to start thinking like a drummer?

Learn to count.



Actually I'm being quite serious. Learn to subdivide the beats of music that you play or listen to. Reassemble these counts to put beats & grooves together. Also get used to the flow & counting beats over multiple bars or parts. It's a very simple trick to vary the beat/count under a passage to add emphasis, often this is over several repetitions of a riff (eg during a verse) where you might want to push the dynamic into a bridge or chorus without changing the guitar line/melody/whatever.***

Add the "technical stuff" at this point and it'll make much more sense both to write and to listen to.

It's a bit meta but there you are.

I'm not a drummer, but someone untrained in music who has to try to explain weird beats in ways that the drummer can understand. It's fun to do when you change signature and tempos within riffs... I also do a bit of midi programming - some of that is heading towards the "unplayable" because it's not supposed to be. Writing stuff to make it sound like an actual drummer is surprisingly difficult. You may hit the beats but getting a nice feel is a bitch.

*** Much of the music that you listen to does this, but you may not realise unless you're specifically listening out for the changes in dynamic.

 

[Ryan-ZenGtr-]

I'm gonna bump this up as it has some good replies.

As I said earlier in this thread, I've been programming some of the drummers material which we recorded with a real kit for replacement, reinforcement and convenience.

He did some insane fills which I put down to some secret drummer special sauce, the dark truth of said technique only revealed to the highest echelons of drumming aristocracy, once a year on the summer solstice, high atop the peaks of mount Olympus... (In Greece, not teh cameras!!!)

I'm talking about triplet flams between the kick and the toms, for a constant 32nd minigun effect.

After some time, slowing it down, speeding it up, trying all sorts of different things I decided;
"No, he's just that damn good!"

Turns out he did it just with his feet! ... So much for programming the impossible!

Later on in the track he did left handed snare rolls whilst playing polyrythmns with his right hand on the cymbals!

The only possible explanation, he's descended from:

 

[iRaiseTheDead]

When I listen to music, I don't listen to it for "joy" or pleasure right at first. Being that I'm a guitar player, the first thing I notice is the guitar work.

I had to start learning to listen to the drums in every song to learn different drummer's techniques. That is how I learned Hope you get something from it!

 

[F0rte]

I'm sure you do know - you know what sounds good, you just don't know what it is.
Start studying some drums in Guitar Pro tabs for songs you know.
You'll find common things such as:
-Fills go at the end of the bar, often the end of every 4th/8th/16th bar (you'll be familiar with the fact that riffs are usually this long).
-Kicks go on the beat
-Snares go on the offbeat

These are of course generalizations. Just listen to lots of drums and read drum tabs - try and notate songs that you know. Try write drums for your own songs. It'll come together very fast

Ethereal always knows what's up...always

Good solid advice here, just mess around a bit and you'll get it sooner or later

 

[iRaiseTheDead]

^Yeah he does!

 

[Fiction]

I'm just going to copy+paste a post I used in another thread regarding drums, but this one is on the topic of velocity, and sounding like a drummer. Once you have your drums set up, on playback they will sound with structure, but lack dynamics, so once you use everyone elses great advice on writing drums then you can maybe try fiddle around with the dynamics (velocity in this case).

------

What I recommend doing is setting out your Basic drums, Just flesh out the drums and the fills all at 127 Velocity. Once you've done that Select everything or press 'ctrl' + 'a' and then bring up the quantize menu (For pro tools: Alt + 0) and set it up to randomize the velocity between say 112 - 127 and press enter, which will change up the velocity, you can also quantize the hits to be ms off where you placed it with quantizing. Once you've done this you can then start hand velocitizing lol your fills and filling in gaps.

I'm just going to plug one of my songs here, to use as an example;

Super Happy Awesome Fun Song! by Zackyyyy on SoundCloud - Create, record and share your sounds for free

Worth noting is, I don't play drums, I've only ever played the drums at school or if i'm at a drummers house just to play around, never been taught anything.

Those Tom rolls that start at ~0.06, here's just a screenshot of them and I'll detail a few things.. also, you can get a visual feel for what the screen should look like.

I'll just explain what ive, uh, rectangled.

Yellow; These notes I like to call Sonic Filler, I use them A LOT in my fills. There is a few more in there that I didn't circle, I just did a few so you realize. I call them a filler simply because they're barely audible, they act more filling in frequency, they're awesome in fills because instead of a note ending, you can throw one of these in and it almost acts as a natural reverb, you can get the rumble of the toms to continue, a slight rumble of the snare coils on the base, or simply keep the cymbals 'cymballing'. These notes I usually range in velocity anywhere from 0 - 60, mostly around 40-60.

Green; These notes I call Leading or Running notes. I might place these prior to a red Hit, or after the note to emulate the stick bouncing off and hitting the skin again, which is something I've noticed happens when playing. These notes are usually from around 60-100, mostly sit around the 80s though. I'd use these in almost every fill somewhere, just to change the variation up, also think if you're playing on the right side of the kit, and about to hit something on the left, you're probably not going to get the accuracy/strength if you were focused on the left, so just drop the velocity a tad and throw it off a few milliseconds.

Also, the 3rd Velocity bar (Box at the bottom are the velocities) I've circled as green should be red. Dun Goofed, sorry.

Red; The red notes are just straight up hits, pretty straight forward, They're your main notes. I usually just set all these to randomize in between 112-127, and change whichever notes I need to 120-127 if I really want the drums to be 100% Accented.

Anyways, not sure if it will help.. Just thought it might be a bit helpful to see a picture of some midi drums with a few things detailed. Again, i'm not a drummer, these i've just picked up from mucking around and watching how it's played. When you're writing listen back and try and play air drums to it, my method is fingers on the desk and to me is a vital tool to drum programming, albeit as simple as it sounds. Hopefully you understand what I mean, I don't really know much drum terminology, so some of it may off, but you can catch my drift

Good luck!