The Keys to Better Drum Tracks
I have to admit I am guilty. The wonderful keyboard workstation has allowed me (and countless others) to create songs quickly and easily. Sometimes it can be too easy to use a preset drum pattern or quickly lay down a drum track and simply loop some measures. Then we produce the song around these drums but never revisit our drum track to replace, fix, polish or embellish on it.
In my personal musical endeavors, percussion-heavy tracks are common, and I have learned a few things over the years that have helped me produce better drum tracks. No technological magic; just a few very basic ideas.
Care for sample?
Chances are your keyboard has a good amount of drum samples and patterns in it, but don’t forget that there are many great drum samples that may not be included with your music workstation. Even though the included drum samples may sound pretty good, some of them might lack the multiple velocity layers and long decay that make for real sounding drum tracks. Obviously it depends on the type of music you are producing, but if you’re going for a live instruments sound and feel, try some of the sample libraries available for your workstation. Many workstations allow loading of samples from CD-ROM, and there are plenty of these to choose from. I often load AKAI format samples into my TRITON, and I own several drum and percussion sample CD-ROMs I always draw from that result in happy clients and a happy me.
To quantize or not to quantize?
If you are going to quantize your drum parts, try quantizing after the track is sequenced, not as you are sequencing the part. This allows for more control over your drum track. Most workstations and DAWs have detailed parameters that allow you to fine tune the quantize settings on a track-by-track basis. Settings such as swing, intensity, strength and offsets will help retain some of the human feel while still correcting timing errors. If you are going for perfect machine-like timing, it can easily be achieved as well. I see many people set their quantize setting to 16th notes and record away. This makes perfectly-timed drum tracks.
Trigger happy?
Having a drummer (awake and sober) input drum parts into your workstation, using an electronic kit or an acoustic kit with triggers, will give your tracks the realism they need. It’s definitely more time consuming, and you’ll need to make some MIDI settings in your workstation and/or the kit’s drum module so the notes being sent from the kit trigger the correct drum sounds in your workstation. It’s worth the effort. You can’t beat the feel of a real drummer.
Practice makes perfect
If you simply must play the parts yourself using the black and white keys on your keyboard, do your best to play the part in one pass. Play the kick, snare, hi-hats and cymbals all in one pass rather than recording the kick and snare in one pass and then adding the hi-hats and cymbals. For real sounding drum parts, you need to practice becoming a “keyboard drummer,” just like you would practice your keyboard scales and/or chops. My drum programming from years ago is just plain embarrassing, so keep at it.
Quality Time
Like I mentioned in my opening. Spend a little quality time revisiting the basic drum track after your song is complete. Make it breath and interact with the other tracks. This may involve replacing it all together or just adding fills and embellishments. Go into the event edit window of your sequencer and change velocities of certain hits. Make them softer or louder. Basically, make it dynamic! Just like the real drummer you haven’t worked with since you got that fancy
