Posts Tagged ‘ Drums ’
Break out of your usual rhythms. Think about all the usual assumptions you make when you’re programming drums and rhythms for other parts. People often speak of breaking the rules… what happens when you break your own rules? Take the kick drum for example… do you only ever place the kick drum on quarter-notes? See [ READ MORE ]
Group busses are a versatile and useful mixing technique. They’re often used in a variety of different situations: Distorted guitar stacks. It’s quite common to layer or doubletrack (or tripletrack or quadrupletrack) distorted guitar parts in order to make them sound bigger. Sometimes the layers are all recorded with the same setup (same guitar, same [ READ MORE ]
Who doesn’t want bigger beats? Well, maybe your neighbours. But maybe you don’t like your neighbours. Who am I to judge? I just supply the tools. It’s up to you to use them ethically. Here are some quick tips: Depth. Separate your drums into two groups – main foreground drums (kick and snare) and secondary [ READ MORE ]
How often do you see the terms ‘humanising’ and ‘randomising’ being used interchangeably? Or maybe you’ve seen someone ask how to make something sound more natural or human, and someone else suggests adding random variations to timing and/or velocity? Perhaps you’ve tried adding random variations yourself, only to end up with something that doesn’t sound any more [ READ MORE ]
Don’t overcompress those drums! When drums are compressed, the body of the drums is brought up in level (relative to the transient). This creates the perception of longer sustain, making the drums sound bigger. By bringing up the level of the audio between the transients, there is more sound overall. This makes the drums sound [ READ MORE ]
Variation Like for any other part, adding variation to the kick drum pattern adds interest and scope. Generally speaking, there are two kinds of variation – changing the timing of notes (keeping the same density) and adding/removing notes (changing the density). These variations are most effective when a regular pattern has been established (repeating for [ READ MORE ]
Sparser Kick Drums In general, sparser kick drum patterns will be less energetic. As with the First and Third pattern, a sparse approach is generally useful for leaving space for other instruments. Taking this approach, the kick typically only emphasises the first beat of the bar, and sometimes a secondary beat (secondary in importance – [ READ MORE ]
Kick drums. Where would we be without them? They are the foundation of the rhythm section. In most dance music, the kick drives the rhythm and groove of the entire song. Even in other genres, the kick drum provides a grounding. It marks the most important beats in the rhythm pattern, it helps us understand [ READ MORE ]
This post is about drum programming, but these prinicpals apply to all aspects of rhythmic composition (including basslines, melody, etc). Additionally, these principals are applicable to drum patterns of arbitrary (any) complexity, but for simplicity we will be primarily concerning ourselves with the four-on-the-floor kick drum pattern often heard in popular club music. A little [ READ MORE ]
Every time I see someone asking about reversed cymbals, my first reaction is that of disgust… and then I realise that I use them too. I occasionally find them useful for some songs where dramatic changes between sections are appropriate. The key word here is dramatic. Reverse cymbals (and reversed drums in general) as section [ READ MORE ]
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