Electronic music lives on its drums. A great sound means little over a weak groove, and a great groove can carry a track built from very simple sounds. This chapter is about patterns: where each hit goes, and why.
The roles
- Kick - the pulse and the weight.
- Snare or clap - the backbeat; marks the structure of the bar.
- Hi-hats - subdivision and energy: 8ths, 16ths, open and closed.
- Percussion - shakers, rims, toms, congas, effects - movement and character.
Templates
- House - four-on-the-floor kick, clap on 2 and 4, open hat on the offbeats, shuffled 16th hats. Around 120-128 BPM.
- Techno - four-on-the-floor, often with a rumbling, processed kick; hats and percussion carry the variation. Around 125-140 BPM.
- Breakbeat and UK garage - kicks avoid the obvious downbeats; garage swings its hats and uses skippy two-step kicks. Around 130-140 BPM.
- Drum and bass - fast breakbeat patterns, snare on 2 and 4 at 160-180 BPM.
- Trap and drill - half-time snares, rolling hats with triplets and 1/32 rolls, 808s carrying the low end.
Learn the templates, then break them.
Groove
- Swing delays every second subdivision. A little swing on 16th hats turns a mechanical loop into a groove.
- Groove templates take the timing and velocity of an existing performance or classic drum machine and apply it to your parts.
- Offset elements - a hat slightly early drives; a snare slightly late relaxes.
Velocity and ghost notes
Vary velocity, especially on hats. Add quiet ghost notes on snare or percussion between the main hits. Accents on some offbeats and not others create shape.
Variation
- Change something every four or eight bars - an extra kick, a dropped hat, a fill.
- Use different patterns for different sections.
- Mute elements: removing the kick for a bar makes its return feel huge.
- Automate filters and effects on percussion for movement over longer sections.
For the dancefloor
DJs need clear, steady drums at the start and end of a track to mix in and out. Build intros and outros with drums and few melodic elements, in multiples of eight bars.
Do this now
- Program a house, a techno and a trap pattern from scratch, each with kick, snare or clap, hats and one percussion part.
- Apply swing to the hats of one pattern at three different amounts and choose the best.
- Write an eight-bar variation for each pattern with a fill and a dropout.