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I have all my hi-hats, rides, and tambs, but how do I assemble them so they can sound great together with my kicks and snares? I always used to put my hats going every two steps and my rides going every 4 steps but they never sound good, most drum & bass artists have their hats and rides sound perfect.

Make a pattern that compliments the rest of the beat rather than doing a one-size-fits-all method that clearly isn't working. Listen to songs you rate and how they use high hats and rides. Also, you could look at the waveform of some parts of tunes where it's just the beat and try and recreate what that producer has done.

I haven't been listening to DnB for years, but 16th note high hats were pretty standard.

Slice up a breakbeat and layer that into the kick and snare rhythm, then accentuate that beat with one shots.

rides are tricky. you gotta choose good samples. a lot of the ones in popular sample packs like the vengeance ones sound nasty with a lot of distorted mids and sloppy highs. the transients suck too. high pass EQs and some reverb can help a bit, but play with the attack and decay of the samples too... you can sidechain them to the kick to get a pumping feel. mostly just focus on picking good samples to start with. when you find a really good ride you should save it cause you can use it in pretty much every song

also dnb is all about the syncopation and funky grooves so if you are always putting your hats in the same places it probably won't sound good. a lot of people use breaks but i think shakers on every 16th note with velocity changes sound better and cleaner

You can also put random sounds (congas, heavily EQ'd ringy snares, cymbals, sticks) starting on the second or fourth 16th note with a particular interval (every quarter, half, 8th, etc) and then listen to the beat and remove the bits that sound worse. Do that with 3 or 4 sounds in different intervals and play with the velocity. If you do that, you won't have to 'guess' and can just remove, add or move beats without having to imagine them in place. I used to do that a lot before I knew how to get a good groove going

8th note rides are like pasta and cheese. It's just meant to be.

- ghost hits
- 16th note hihats
- EQ boost at 12 kHz (although this might be viewed as cheap or mainstream)
- people might disagree with this one, but moderate compression (on a drum bus) can create a cool rhythmic pattern with the hihats (because they aren't as loud when the kick and snare(s) are hitting). only really sounds good with a breakbeat

dubunked wrote: - people might disagree with this one, but moderate compression (on a drum bus) can create a cool rhythmic pattern with the hihats (because they aren't as loud when the kick and snare(s) are hitting).

I almost always lightly sidechain all other percussive elements to the kick and snare of a track. Sometimes I even sidechain things like ride cymbals to hi-hats so that the ride ducks a bit when the hi-hat hits.

Also using different velocities is very useful... as is adding in various random percussion hits.... just try them in different places until they sound good. Subtle sweeping sounds like a reversed open hi-hat leading up to the downbeat of a bar can add motion to the percussion.

Also get a bunch of ambient white noise samples (like crowd noise, wind, stuff like that) so you can put them behind your beat... when the full track is playing you can't even notice them but they help fill out the frequencies that might be missing.

A cool thing artists do in this situation is take a groovy existing loop & put it in a program like Fruity Slicer & chop/rearrange the parts until it compliments the kick/snare. An example of this sort of loop is the overused Amen Break.

Try finding a break (or layering a few) that gives you the rhythm and or shuffle you want. use your one shots to compliment and bring that groove out even more. I find it pretty tough to just drop one shots onto the grid and make an interesting groove, but after throwing some breaks in there you can start to pick a direction

Try beatboxing or playing stuff yourself like a drummer, it'll help you find a natural rhythm you might not be able to just see on the sequencer

Try building up your drums one hit at a time and really think about the placement of each hit. Run different percs through different fx chains to create more of a contrast between them. Try running a couple of bongos through a big delay and reverb and placing them tastefully about. Start simply and build the loop up slowly and intentionally. Remember to use panning and reverb to place hits in their own space.