Better Drum Programming

The Lounge General Discussion
#29

A great way to use conditional trigs :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

The first instrument I learned to play was drums, I don’t play regularly anymore and you don’t need to be a drummer to be a good drum programmer but I do think there’s some truth to this.

Anyway conditional trigs, parameter locks, and the fill button are all there to help you add depth and feel to your beats without adding MORE drums/sounds. Use different reverb amounts, decay times, and pitch on snare hits in your fills or conditional trigs. And don’t forget about chromatic mode!!

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#30

Saw it on Amazon last night! Wish I had an extra $60 laying around

Making Music: 74 Creative Strategies for Electronic Music Producers https://www.amazon.com/dp/3981716507/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_CUvvDbS5VG4H5

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#32

Yeah, you can get the ebook for 9,99€.
I actually enjoy reading such books, because they make me look at the topic through from a different perspective and it’s always good to renew knowledge.
Also I think it’s good to sometimes do things in a different way, just for the sake of doing it differently.
I also usually skim through tutorial sites every morning :slight_smile:
So from this perspective I’d say it’s definitely worth reading no matter how long you’ve been making music.

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#33

Just starting to use more pattern variation for drum transitions. Add some toms at the end of the phrase, mute everything else. Throw a crash symbol in there. The hard pattern flip works well at times, but only in certain scenarios.

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#34

it’s still available for ‘normal’ price here:
https://www.ableton.com/en/shop/#making-music

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#35

Hello everybody! Let’s get the TLDR out of the way: My goal is to make better beats. How would you go about it?

I’ve made my own songs for about 20 years but it’s mostly been in the domain of atmospheric acoustic music with absolutely no percussion. Although I’ve listened to all kinds of music all my life, I probably haven’t listened to electronic / rhythmic music as analytically as many other types of music.

Since getting more into electronic music in the past 18 months I’ve noticed what I’ve known all along - I often struggle with making beats.

What I need is practice. What I have is time and determination. Two years from now I want to look back and see how I’ve developed. What I’d like to create is stylistically something akin to Aphex Twin, although more simplistic because my songs have a strong melodic, sometimes cinematic quality to it. In general, I’d like to build a sense of being able to know what kind of beat works with a specific track. This, I know, will be a life-long lesson.

What I would gladly take is advice from you guys. How would you go about it - in terms of listening, reading, practising? The dos and donts of it all… What are your favourite machines for making beats and why? (I’ve got Octatrack, Machinedrum UW and Digitone, although I rarely use DN for percussion.)

Hope you’re all well and can find time and inspiration to make music.

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#36

listening and practicing a lot. The more beats you make the better you get. As with everything you have to put in time to get good at it.
Watching tutorials on youtube. When I started with trying to do idm, electronic beats with some complexity, I found a few very helpful tutorials for ableton. Some of them were eye opener. These techniques usually translate well to all platforms, it‘s not gear specific.
Just put in time to find good quality tutorials, youtube is full of nonsense as well.
And listen a lot, trust your ears. Try to recreate some beats you like.

doesn’t get better than that :+1:
I would go with the machinedrum first, it‘s dedicated for this job

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#37

For a few ideas this is nice, no DAW needed it also applies to groove boxes, drummachines etc.

Of course, there are no rules and I don’t like to think in terms of genres, it’s mostly marketing speak these days anyway. Don’t box yourself in.

I think a simple looper helps to get feeling for a beat just for fun and practise. Introducing/removing elements periodically.

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#38

Any chance you remember which ones? My DAW is Logic but like you said, these will probably be useful no matter what.

My first choice right now as well!

This is where I just have to grind it out. No matter how educational it is, I’ve never, never done cover versions in any genre, as I’ve always preferred to spend that time making my own music. Will have to take a different stance on it now.

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#39

doesn‘t have to be cover versions, just something in the ballpark :slightly_smiling_face:

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#40

Tons of teachers and pros recommend the “make your own version” of an artist’s song. It won’t end up sounding anything like it. Just recently I saw an interview with James Taylor saying he did something similar when first starting out. Also a famous author just said in an interview on NPR that he basically transcribed other author’s works for a few years to get a granular view of story structure and plot. It’s just an exercise that can make you appreciate the craft and learn some tricks. In the end you will still sound like you and AFX will still sound like AFX.

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#41

well, don’t cover things, just try and copy the patterns but with your own sounds.
You aways mess it up and make something new anyway, but the process of listening to something closely enough to copy it is the fastest way to pick up what’s going on.

IDM not withstanding there’s only so many patterns that sound great tbh, after that it’s sound choice, swing and mixing…

Also, it’s quite good to have something like this:

and just build beats based on random selections from it. Your sound, their patterns. After you’ve done a bunch of that you might be stocked up with a lot of new rhythmic ideas.

I find Attack Magazine’s “Beat Dissected” columns are another good resource.

After that use D16 Decimort to get some grit in threre and use some field recordings.

(that last bit might be personal taste)

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#42

Oh, that’s exactly what the last two people said in loads less words.

:upside_down_face:

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#43

By the end of the video I don’t think I would say it sounds exactly like Aphex, but it does sound pretty cool.

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#44

Absolutely Attack Magazine’s Beats Dissected is a good resource. Also, for the basics, I have a little book “Pocket Operations”, which is a collection of drum machine patterns that was made by someone on muffwiggler iirc. It’s pretty useful for getting a starting point, has a ton of different patterns for different genres (a lot of funk and soul, so I guess that is where the authors’ heart lies). I have the printed version, but you can grab the PDF for free from the site.

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#45

I remember some:




You can do a lot of this stuff with the OT.

A recent one, that’s quite nice :slight_smile:

And of course everything by @nedrush for crazy break stuff :slight_smile:
(see @Bwax post above)

This thread might be interesting to you as well:

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#46

This might seem really simple but I’d start by making beats with just 4 or 5 sounds max. It’s really easy to create kits with loads of interesting stuff but you may find yourself adding sounds just to compensate for a lack of a decent structure.

But then on the flip side maybe chuck a load of sounds together, go wild and pick out the interesting bits & dissect them.

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#47

Another great piece of advice! Sprinkling a ”busy” rimshot pattern on top of a very uninteresting beat, then add yet another glitchy sounding pattern on top, yep definitely done that. And I have a tendency for maximalism but I’m working on it! :grinning:

Thanks so much everybody so far and keep them suggestions coming! Will take a good look at the links in the coming days but start with the practising TONIGHT.

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#48

I’d like to echo people’s recommendations for dissecting other’s work. When first trying to wrap my head around making good drum patterns something i did a lot of was finding songs that had melodies that felt in line with what i lean towards in my own writing and doing note for note recreations of the drums to get a detailed view of how they were made. I wouldn’t recommend using these recreations in your own songs but approaching it as an exercise like transcribing someone else’s work on guitar.

That being said nothing beats just making as much music as possible and experimenting as much as possible.

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#49

I’m struggling with the same problems as the OP. Lots of good links here. Beats Dissected looks very promising. Thanks for the tipps