Percussion is the backbone of a hip-hop beat. A rhythm does not need to be complex to be memorable - some of the most famous beats in the genre are little more than a kick, a snare and a pattern someone could knock out on a lunch table. Think of Clipse's "Grindin'" or Vince Staples' "Big Fish": simple, distinctive, effective.
Hip-hop has absorbed everything from reggae and Latin music to jazz and funk. Listen widely, and ask yourself one question every time you make a beat: how can my drums stand out?
Start with a foundation
Pick a tempo. Hip-hop lives in a wide range:
- 70-80 BPM - slow, heavy, lo-fi and laid back.
- 85-100 BPM - classic boom bap.
- 130-150 BPM - trap, usually felt in half time, so it grooves like 65-75.
Start with stock sounds only - kick, snare or clap, hi-hats - and build a basic pattern. Get the groove right with simple sounds before choosing better ones.
Boom bap
The classic East Coast pattern: kick on the one and the "and" of two or three, snare on two and four, swung 16th or 8th hats. Dusty, sampled sounds, plenty of swing, the snare loud and cracking.
Trap
Trap uses half-time drums: the snare or clap on beat three of each bar at a fast tempo. Hi-hats carry the energy, playing 8ths or 16ths with fast rolls and triplets - 1/32 bursts, 1/16 triplets - leading into snares. The 808 does the heavy lifting in the low end (see the 808 chapter).
A step further
Once the basics are down, ask:
- What could I replace my closed hi-hat with? A shaker, a rim, a vinyl crackle, a found sound.
- What could I layer my snare with? A clap, a rim, a snap, a sampled break snare.
- What percussion from other regions could I bring in? Bongos, congas, tamboras.
- What field recordings could I use? Doors closing, keys rattling, footsteps, animals. Free sound libraries are full of them.
Rhythm and dynamics
- Mute and drop. Pull drum elements out for a bar or a section. Silence makes the return hit harder.
- Offset sounds. Move an element off its usual step to an unexpected one. Glitch plug-ins such as Glitch 2 and Fracture can do this automatically.
- Flams and rolls. Hat rolls into the snare, flammed snares at the end of phrases.
- Polyrhythms. Treat kick and snare as one rhythm and percussion as another, cycling differently.
- Half time and double time. Make some parts move twice as fast or half as fast as others.
- Automation. Effects, panning and volume moving over time.
Give drums a human feel
Even if you have never held a pair of drumsticks, approach your programming like a drummer:
- Crash on the kick on the first beat of each new section.
- Kit positioning. Pan snare and hats slightly - 5-15% - as on a real kit, and toms from one side to the other, high to low.
- Swing and groove. Letting elements fall slightly behind the beat gives a laid-back feel; ahead of the beat feels rushed and urgent. Apply groove templates from classic breaks.
- Velocity. Vary it, especially on hats.
- Pitch. Pitch snare fills and hat rolls up or down across the roll.
- Tune your drums. Tune kicks and snares to the key of the track.
Effects
- Saturation - warm, gritty colour for lo-fi and boom bap drums.
- Reverb on sparse elements - sizzle and space on trap percussion.
- Modulation - a phaser, chorus or flanger with automation for evolving movement.
- Distortion and bass enhancement - for thump and weight.
EQ
- Cut kicks around 300-400 Hz to remove boxiness. The same move on the drum bus cleans up the whole kit.
- Too much low end in the kick will fight the bass. Decide which owns the sub (roughly 100 Hz and below).
- Cuts around 100-250 Hz on the drum bus can tame boominess.
- A boost around 250 Hz adds weight to snares.
- Hats and cymbals can be harsh - look around 2.5 kHz for cuts.
- A gentle high shelf can add sizzle and air - but watch for harshness.
- Kicks and snares usually sit in the foreground; place percussion further back.
Compression
- Fatter snares - fast attack to tame the transient, make-up gain to bring up the body and tail.
- Glue - gentle bus compression with a slower attack and fast release to bind the kit together.
- Energy - slow attack, medium-fast release to accentuate the punch.
- Parallel compression - blend a heavily compressed copy under the dry drums for extra punch and grit.
Do this now
- Build a boom bap beat at 90 BPM and a trap beat at 140 BPM using only stock sounds.
- Replace the closed hat in one of them with a found sound, and layer the snare.
- Add swing, pan the kit slightly, and tune the kick and snare to a key.
- Process the drum bus with an EQ cut around 300 Hz and glue compression.