Ever found yourself in your studio trying to program drums for your next great song, and they’re just not sounding right? For non-drummers, it can be a difficult task to make MIDI drum parts sound as though a real drummer is playing. Below are a few pointers on how to get realistic life and feel into your programmed drum parts.
- Get yourself behind a real drum kit and play.
When you sit behind a real drum kit, you’ll be able to see and hear where all of the sounds come from and how they relate to each other. This doesn’t mean you have to learn how to play drums, but it will give you perspective on how a drummer sits behind a drum kit, where the feet and hands go, and how the components relate. - Keep it simple.
Remember that human beings only have two hands and two feet, and drum grooves — most of the time — only utilize three of those limbs at a time. Synthesizers and drum plug-ins usually have all kinds of different sounds up and down the keyboard. Resist the urge to use all of them at once. - Make sure the sounds relate to one another.
Unless you are Terry Bozzio or some other drummer who uses an enormous drum kit, more times than not, you only have a 5- or 6-piece kit. One or two rack toms, one or two floor toms, a kick drum, and a snare. Try to stay within a soundset and use sounds that relate to the style of music you are programming for. For instance, if you’re programming a drum part for a country or heavy-metal song, then electronic sounds such as the iconic Roland 808 kick and snare might not be the best choices. - Take a look at written drum patterns.
A good way to understand where drums fall in a typical rhythm pattern is to take a look at some written-out drum music. You can find all kinds of notated patterns on the Internet that will show you the basics. - Give your programming some feel.
Although drummers try very hard to play in time and practice with metronomes, they don’t play on a grid. Even the best drummers on the planet only sometimes land exactly on a tempo’s grid — and that is a good thing. That is what gives a groove its pocket. The kick and snare should move very slightly in front of or behind the beat. I’m not talking about rushing or dragging; I’m talking about slight variations, so the drum groove doesn’t sound stiff. Don’t just hit the quantize button at 100%! There are some nice options for quantizing in every DAW on the market that will move the drum hits around just enough to help the drums breathe. Try any or all of these options and don’t be afraid to get in there and move some things around yourself. - Don’t just program in 4-bar patterns.
Most of the time when a drummer goes into the studio to record a song, he or she will play the whole song from beginning to end. Even though the song could have a chorus that repeats three or four times, the drummer will play each one a little differently because he or she is human. Programming the same pattern for each section is good, but it is also a good idea to change the feel ever so slightly on each section.
I hope these ideas will help you in creating killer grooves for your next song!