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Hey guys

Im looking at coming back to production after stopping for exams. Ive always found by drum beats a let down to the track meaning i never get a decent full track done as im always restarting.

I seem to add to much or to little and the loops get stale and repetitive. Are there any good guides or tips to creating a better drum beat for the track rather than just snare on 3 kicks and closed hats ? as thats pretty much all ive been doing : /

Thanks for any help it would be great

ghost snares, toms, shakers tamborines more snares. different high hats, bells.

gotta think outside the box.

Velocity, random sounds, sweeps, dubsirens, random percussion. Work it from there

My best tips atleast

pitching snares, reverse hats and claps, exotic percussion, layering, effect processing, real life recordings, animal noises

Do you know anyone that plays drums? If you do talk to them (thats how I learnt).

If not read about drum rhythms on the internet, stuff like fills, accents, polyrhythm, afro-cuban rhythms.....

3za is correct, if you don't play the drums, start listening to one of your friends that does, or listen to some classic rock, or a band you like that uses real drums. Listen carefully to everything that's going on outside the main kick/snare/hat line. Lot's of subtlety that comes naturally from a drummer without thinking, little off-time hits and rolls, doubles, triples that usually get lost on the scheme of things without notice, but in the end build up a very organic environment.

If you're sequencing drums, make sure to play with volume/velocity/panning to give your drums a more natural feel.

Try to have a different sounding beat every bar, play around with the hats on the 4ths/8ths/16ths Ghost snares work well particularly in garagey type dubstep, toms, bells, shakers, layers of percs at different time sequences.

stop making halfstep

i like to sample little noises to put here & there. Rusko has a video on how he creates his drum loops, its pretty informative.

oprs wrote:ghost snares, toms, shakers tamborines more snares. different high hats, bells.

gotta think outside the box.

your avatar, thats not you is it? I seen the big boss video with that guy & it was almost bizarre to me.

the most useful tip ive found was to start the beat on a random hit. not the first downbeat kick.

like to start my pattern on a hihat and put my first kick kick and kicks and snares somewhere along the way.

forces me to ignore the grid or to think of other grooves.

u can also start ur beat with the percussion/hihats instead of the big chunks...

thats if u consider working on a grid.

I'll choose a few random perc samples, say 3 tablas or whatever, then in the FL pattern I'll draw patterns. Not really worried about how it sounds, I just like making pretty patterns. Stuff like 1.2.3.pause.3.2.1.pause.etc. Sometimes it sounds shit and gets deleted. Sometimes it sounds amazing and gets bounced out.

Also, if you apply a small amount of filter to a ghost kick/snare channel and automate it to gradually open/close over the course of the tune, it gives a feeling of the sounds constantly evolving. You can get a similar effect with some very light movement driven flange (and I mean really light, as too much flange sounds shit and painfully obvious IMO) to again give the movement feeling.

afro-cuban rhythms.....


like 3za siad

Make beats with umbrellas = win

I dunno weather anybody else does this but I always get a few open and closed hats, a shaker and some other percussion, and try to make a listenable beat just with those. Then add the kicks and snares, I know Benga does something similar. Works for me.

cloud capture wrote:3za is correct, if you don't play the drums, start listening to one of your friends that does, or listen to some classic rock, or a band you like that uses real drums. Listen carefully to everything that's going on outside the main kick/snare/hat line. Lot's of subtlety that comes naturally from a drummer without thinking, little off-time hits and rolls, doubles, triples that usually get lost on the scheme of things without notice, but in the end build up a very organic environment.

If you're sequencing drums, make sure to play with volume/velocity/panning to give your drums a more natural feel.

dont listen to classic rock drums, well you can but i find rock drums pretty boring. listen to some reggae/dub, hip hop, 2 step garage, deep funky house grooves, techno grooves, blawan grooves. even if its not your type of music, if you listen hard to the rhythms, you can then learn how to construct interesting and rhythmic beats, and transfer it to your type of music.

skimpi wrote:

cloud capture wrote:3za is correct, if you don't play the drums, start listening to one of your friends that does, or listen to some classic rock, or a band you like that uses real drums. Listen carefully to everything that's going on outside the main kick/snare/hat line. Lot's of subtlety that comes naturally from a drummer without thinking, little off-time hits and rolls, doubles, triples that usually get lost on the scheme of things without notice, but in the end build up a very organic environment.

If you're sequencing drums, make sure to play with volume/velocity/panning to give your drums a more natural feel.

dont listen to classic rock drums, well you can but i find rock drums pretty boring. listen to some reggae/dub, hip hop, 2 step garage, deep funky house grooves, techno grooves, blawan grooves. even if its not your type of music, if you listen hard to the rhythms, you can then learn how to construct interesting and rhythmic beats, and transfer it to your type of music.

John Bonham
Keith Moon
Mitch Mitchell
Billy Cobham
Steward Copeland

It's good to have an appreciation for as much music as your ears can stand. Especially if you'd like to go back and hear what influenced all the genre's you named.

^these guys are basically the reason i like rock rythmwise.

since i didnt grow up in a rock environment, it was such an eye opener to watch a woodstock dvd , or that famous Who showcase with the explosive bassdrum.

dont underestimate rock drums.

One of the more irritating things I hear in dance music is people going all out trying to make everything super complex, especially in glitches and stutters and stops and starts every other fucking bar, but also in just trying to make the beat not repetitive by changing it up and adding crazy shit every bar or so. Its infinitely more irritating than any techno, house, or trance beat, which are all really repetitive but all seem to make people dance like motherfuckers. In fact it really just seems to be an issue in breakbeat music (yes, you dubstep, you garage, you jungle/drum & bass, and of course breaks). If you listen to a lot of straight funky rhythms, theres not a whole shitload of things going on. Some of the best beats ever are just kicks and snares and a tiny little bit of shit filling the space between them. Case in point: Billie Jean, Pulp Fiction by Alex Reese, D.M.S.R. by Prince, When the Levee Breaks by Led Zeppelin, every beat ever by the Red Hot Chili Peppers (yeah their drummer did a lot of fills but we all know it would have been fantastic even if he didn't)

Be creative but dont try to overcomplicate everything. Listen to techno and house. As far as electronic music goes, these guys rule in terms of creating relatively simple beats that make you want to groove until the sun comes up.

cloud capture wrote: Billy Cobham

that guy's album has changed my life when i first heard it. "thinking of you" got me out of many moody phases and yes, his drumming is wonderful