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20 Tips On Creating Realistic Sequenced Drum Parts
20 Tips On Creating Realistic Sequenced Drum Parts
Many SOS readers would rightly argue that the great advantage of sequenced,
electronic drums is that they don't force you to use 'realistic' drum patterns or
sounds. Much dance music, for instance, is built around incredibly fast, precise
patterns and sounds which bear only the loosest relation to anything you can
actually produce by hitting a stretched skin with a wooden stick. The ability to
produce rhythms through programming, layer by layer and step by step,
certainly offers great scope for the imagination and freedom from the technical
and sonic limitations imposed by having to play and record real drumming.
Nevertheless, it's often the case that the sound and feel of a real drum part is
required, and circumstances - time, space, lack of facilities or lack of a
drummer - force people who don't play the drums themselves to knock
something up on a sequencer. And though a sequenced part will never be a perfect
imitation, there are a
number of things you can do to make it sound more convincing.
1. Remember the physical limitations to which real drummers are subject. Obviously,
individual
drummers have only two arms and two legs, and are therefore only 'four-note
polyphonic' in
synth-speak - but there are also other restrictions on what is physically possible.
Many typical rock
and pop rhythms incorporate a steady eight- or 16-to-the-bar hi-hat or cymbal
rhythm. Above a
certain tempo, this will necessarily involve using both hands, usually playing
alternate notes, so it's
important to think about which hand is doing what; you can't hit the hi-hat at the
same time as the
snare or crash cymbal, for instance, if you're using both hands to keep up a steady
rhythm on the
hi-hat - see example 1, on page 70.
2. For the same reason, there are certain sounds which can't be combined
realistically in the same pattern. You
can't switch instantaneously between brushes and sticks, for instance, or between
using a normal hi-hat and
one with a tambourine clipped to the top. Sticks can be used to produce rimshots,
but brushes and beaters
can't, so it would be unusual to mix rimshots and brushed snare. Nor is it common
to combine hi-hat and ride
cymbal in the same pattern - they're usually set up on opposite sides of a drum
kit. You wouldn't usually do loud
crashes on the same cymbal in quick succession, either; if you want successive
crashes, use two different
cymbal sounds.
3. Bear in mind that the force with which drums are struck will not be constant. To
a certain extent,
there will be random variation in the velocity of each hit, but there will also be
more predictable
variations. In pop and rock drumming, for instance, the first beat of the bar is
often emphasised,
while reggae rhythms are characterised by a heavier third beat. There are also
physical limitations on
how hard you can strike a drum: beats played in quick succession will tend to be
quiet, since you
can't raise the sticks as high, or get so much travel with the bass drum pedal,
between hits.
4. Also, don't ignore dynamics within the song. In dance music, the drums are often
compressed to the point
where they are totally even in volume throughout, and any dynamic changes are
effected by simply dropping out
parts of the rhythm. Real drummers, however, use crescendos and other dynamic
effects to add feel to a track;
often, for instance, they will build up the volume going into a chorus.
7. It's one thing to have the feel of a pattern in your mind: however, it's much
harder to analyse the
slight timing variations that produce that feel. The best way to capture 'feel',
therefore, is to play the
parts into your sequencer, from a keyboard or other controller, in real time. Start
with the two most
important - usually the bass drum and snare - in a single pass. Playing the drums
well is, like most
instruments, difficult, and requires a lot of learning. However, it's not hard to
use two fingers to bash
out a basic rhythm, and doing so makes it much easier to capture the elusive 'feel'
of a real drum
part. And the beauty of sequencing is that you can correct any mistakes afterwards.
8. If you're not sure what sort of feel your drum part should have, or you can't
seem to get it right by just recording
to a click track, remember that you don't have to record the drums first. If your
song centres around a particular
piano or bass riff, for instance, you could try recording that into your sequencer
first and add the drums later.
Being able to hear the important instrumental parts is very useful for deciding
what kind of rhythm will or won't
work.
9. If you do need to edit the patterns you've entered, avoid snap to grid or
similar functions. It's all too
easy to end up not only correcting mistakes, but also the timing variations that
are responsible for
the 'feel' of the part.
10. Though editing can be used to remedy mistakes or really sloppy timing, there's
little point in painstakingly bashing out your rhythms in real time if you're then
going
to quantise away all the variations. If you must quantise, leave a fairly wide
margin
so that only really late or early beats are corrected.
11. Bear in mind that a lot of real drumming styles actually depend on
consistent deviations from theoretically accurate timing. Sometimes this is
quite obvious, as in the case of heavy syncopation or 'swing', which
imposes a triplet feel on a four-beat rhythm, but it can be much more subtle.
For instance, playing slightly ahead of the beat, particularly on the first and
third beats of a four-beat bar, is a common device used to add urgency to a
rhythm, and is characteristic of much disco, pop and country drumming. In
other genres like the blues, by contrast, drummers sometimes deliberately delay the
'off' beats to
create a laid-back feel.
12. Don't simply record a one- or two-bar sequence and then repeat it throughout
the entire song. Even if you
want to have the same drum pattern all the way through, record it several times and
mix the different versions
up. Each version you record will have slightly different dynamics and timing
variations, and the variety will help to
reproduce the looser feel of a real drum track and implement some of the dynamic
changes I've already
mentioned.
13. Keep it simple. With today's sequencers and multitimbral sound sources, it's
easy to over-egg the
rhythmical pudding, either by adding improbable numbers of virtual tambourine,
shaker and triangle
players, or by programming intricate rhythms and fills where most real drummers
would exercise
self-restraint (or lack of ambition!).
14. Listen to drumming on records to pick up the sort of patterns and fills that
get used in a particular musical
style. Careful listening can make you realise that your assumed ideas about a
particular style of drumming are
actually quite wide of the mark. For instance, it's very easy to get into the habit
of automatically plonking a heavy
kick drum on the first beat of every bar - but there are a number of styles,
notably reggae and jazz, in which the
bass drum is often not played at all on the first beat (see example 2, on page 70).
19. Another problem with many sampled sound sets is that they do not reflect the
ways in which the
sound of real percussion instruments varies depending on the force with which
they're struck.
Giving a hi-hat or a cymbal a heavy bash produces a sound which is not only louder
than a gentle
tap, but quite different in timbre; the same is true of snares and other drums. If
your sound set merely
responds to velocity by making the sounds louder or quieter, you need to be careful
how you use
them (for instance, avoid trying to reproduce quiet cymbal washes if you only have
samples of loud
crashes).
20. Don't be afraid of changes in tempo. Real drummers speed up and slow down -
sometimes deliberately,
sometimes not - and these tempo changes can help to give a track a more organic
sound. Some tempo
changes are very obvious, such as rallentando (slowing down towards the end of a
song) and segues between
slow and fast sections of a song. Others, however, are more subtle: it's quite
common for drummers to speed
up slightly going into a chorus, for instance. Some classic recordings even feature
a gradual increase in tempo
over entire sections or, in extremes, over the entire song - a well-known recent
example is Pulp's 'Common
People'. It may take a little extra sequencing to implement tempo changes in mid-
song, but the results can be
very effective.