Programming Beats 4: Top, Bottom, Left, Right
Problem:
From listening to a lot of music, you have a general understanding of how to program beats that sound similar to those in the music that inspires you. But you don’t really have a sense of how the various drums in a drum kit relate to each other or the way human drummers think when they sit down at the drums and play. As a result, you’re concerned that your programmed beats are either too mechanical sounding or are simply the result of your own interpretation and guesswork about what you hear in other music.
Even if you have no intention of writing “human”-sounding drum parts, it can be helpful to understand some of the physical implications of playing a real drum kit. Here are some ways that drummers approach their instrument.
Solution
At a philosophical level, a drum kit can be thought of as divided into top and bottom halves. The top half includes all of the cymbals: the hi-hat, ride, crashes, and possibly more esoteric cymbals like splashes, Chinese cymbals, gongs, etc. These are the “top” half for two reasons: They’re both physically higher than the drums, and they also occupy a higher range in the frequency spectrum. In contrast, the bottom half is the
drums themselves: the kick, snare, and toms. (The snare is a special case and can be thought of as somewhere in between the top and the bottom in frequency. But for our purposes, let’s consider it part of the bottom group).
Drummers tend to unconsciously approach beat making from either the
“top down” or the “bottom up,” depending primarily on genre. Jazz drumming beats, for example, are generally built from the top down, with the ride cymbal pattern being the most important element, followed by the hi-hat (played by the foot). In this context, the kick and snare drum serve to accent or interrupt the pattern which is established by the cymbals. A typical jazz drumming pattern might look like this:
In contrast, rock, pop, or R&B drumming beats are built from the
bottom up, with the interplay between the kick and the snare comprising the most important layer and the hi-hat or ride cymbal patterns serving as a secondary element. A typical rock drumming pattern might look like this:
Note that in both jazz and rock beats, the cymbals generally play simple, repeating patterns, while the kick and snare play gestures that are more asymmetrical. But in jazz, those simple cymbal patterns are fundamental signifiers of the genre. In rock, the cymbal patterns are secondary in
importance, while the asymmetrical kick and snare gestures are what define the music.
An awareness of these drumming concepts might give you some things to think about when writing your own electronic drum parts. Are you thinking from the top (cymbals) down, or from the bottom (kick and snare) up? Is the genre you’re working in defined by repeating patterns (such as the steady four-on-the-floor kick drum of house and techno) or by asymmetrical gestures (such as the snare rolls used for buildups in trance)?
In addition to the top/bottom dichotomy, drummers also must make decisions along the left/right axis when determining how a particular pattern is divided between the left and right hands. On a drum kit, some of this is determined by the physical location of the instruments. But for an instrument like a hi-hat that can be reached by either hand, there is often a subtle difference in sound depending on how the pattern is played. For example, consider the following beat:
At slow-to-moderate tempos, most drummers would probably play the hi-hat part with one hand, leaving the other free for the snare drum. But once the tempo becomes too fast, it’s no longer possible to play a
continuous stream of sixteenth notes with one hand. At this point, many drummers would switch to playing the hi-hat with alternating sticking, each stroke with the opposite hand. But this requires some
compromises: Beats two and four require both hands to be playing
together, so the player must either move one hand very quickly between the snare and hi-hat or play at least two consecutive hi-hat notes with
the same hand. In both cases, there will likely be a slightly different resulting sound. Even the subtle physical differences between two drumsticks can result in a different sound versus when a pattern is played with a single hand.
Of course, none of these physical restrictions apply to the electronic
domain by default. There’s no inherent physical speed limit and no need for any notion of “alternating stickings.” At any tempo, consecutive
notes can sound completely identical if that’s your intent. But if you’d like to apply some of the sonic characteristics that come about as a
result of these human restrictions, you can do so manually. For example, you could try creating a very small change in velocity for every other
note in a repeating pattern. Or with a bit more work, you could actually use a slightly different sound for every other note. Some software
samplers have a feature called “round robin” that automatically plays a different sample with each key press.
Thinking like a drummer can be a useful exercise when writing beats for any genre—even ones that have no overt relationship to acoustic music at all.