Making Drum Beats Sound “Natural”

Tuesday, October 5th, 2010

One of the hardest things to do is get a natural sounding drum track without hiring an actual drummer. But getting a fabricated-sounding drum track can throw off the rest of your recording. Since drums are the basis of most recorded music and the first thing we lay down for a song, they can dictate the feel and vibe of every instrument that comes afterwards. So it seems pretty clear why having the most natural sounding drum beat possible stands to take your song to higher levels than robotic, artificial-sounding drums.

There are many options when it comes to manipulating your drum beats to sound more “human.” Here are a few that may help your next recording.

Variety is the spice of life

One problem with drum loops is the lack of variety. Most drummers don’t just play the same pattern over and over again throughout a song. Usually there are multiple sections, fills and crashes that give the song a little more variety. Therefore, adding variety to your drum track makes it sound much more real. If you’re using loops, find some that include more than one version of each pattern and various fills. You can even use a combination of loops with samples to add cymbal crashes and other fills. If you’re sequencing drum patterns with samples, be sure to program in your own fills and switch up the drum track throughout the song.

Randomizing

Drummers aren’t robots–one of the things that makes a drum track sound natural is the very slight variation with which the drummer plays his kit. They don’t always hit the snare drum exactly on beats 2 and 4 for every single measure… There are tiny differences in timing for each drum hit, and while we can’t usually directly perceive them with our ears, the variation makes the track feel more human to us, and we connect with that as listeners.

Most digital audio editors have a randomizing function. If you’re assembling a drum beat out of samples, it may be worthwhile to use the randomizer to shift various beats slightly off the click. You can determine how much you want to move the beat around by adjusting the randomizing percentage.

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Drum Loops and Sample CDs VS. FULL-LENGTH Drum Beats

Tuesday, September 14th, 2010

I remember a time when I was in college and I wanted to record a few of my songs. I didn’t have a lot of recording gear, and I didn’t have any good drum sounds in my studio setup. I wasn’t about to drop hundreds of dollars on a drum machine–I was a college student, after all, and I was still buying ramen noodles because they were ten cents a package. So I figured it was about time I stocked up on some drum loops.

Scouring the Internet, I looked for what my options were. To my surprise, many drum loop CDs (more…)

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Drum Beats – the Definitive Guide

Thursday, June 3rd, 2010
Drums are a unique beast in the world of music recording.  These days, it’s pretty common for even casual musicians to be able to record guitar, bass, or vocals in the comfort of their own bedrooms.  With some software and a little knowhow, guitars can be recorded directly into your computer and manipulated to sound like you played through an amplifier.   It’s much less common to have the resources to easily record drums.  Drums usually need complex setups of (sometimes expensive) microphones, and won’t exactly provide the silent recording experience you would need to lay down some late-night grooves in your apartment complex.
But unlike guitars and vocals, drums are much more easily reproduced using synthetic methods such as sequencing and drum loops.  And recording over a drum track played by a session drummer isn’t nearly as limiting to your creativity as hiring someone to play guitar–you can easily change notes and chords in your song without needing to alter the drum track.
So along with a few limitations, drums also come with their fair share of freedoms and options, as well.  Now, what exactly are your options when it comes to making drum beats for your songs?

Photo by goodrob131. Play them yourself

There is, and will always be, the old fashioned way of recording drums: by playing them yourself.  If you have a drum set, you’ll have to set up several microphones–typically on the snare drum, the kick drum, the tom-toms and “overhead” mics to capture the ambient sounds–and hit the record button!  After you play, you can edit the beat if desired, and then mix the individual drum mics to taste.
Another option is an electronic drum set, such as the Roland V-Drums.  In this case, no microphones are required.  You can simply connect the output of the electronic set to your recording interface and play away.  This is a more viable option if you don’t have the freedom to make a bunch of noise any time you’d like.
If you don’t have access to your own drums, you can always rent out a recording studio.  Many of them have in-house drum sets, and they always have high quality microphones and staff engineers who know how to set them up.

2. Use samples

The V-Drums that I mentioned above use “samples” to simulate a real drum set.  Samples are audio clips of actual drums that are triggered each time you hit one of their electronic pads with a stick.  So every time you hit the snare pad, an audio recording of an actual snare drum will sound.
Samples are incredibly flexible by nature.  You can manually piece together drum samples in a digital audio workstation (DAW) such as Pro Tools to create your own custom beats.  Most DAWs also have MIDI capabilities, which allow your computer to communicate with external drum machines, keyboards, or other MIDI controllers to sequence drum samples into beats.
Samples are very versatile–they aren’t limited to “normal” drum sounds.  Although you can use samples to imitate a real drum kit, many artists use electronic drum samples in their songs that sound nothing like an organic kit.  (You won’t hear too many songs with “fake” sounding guitar parts!)  One of the beauties of sampling is that you don’t have to commit to a sound while you’re recording; if you’re using MIDI, you can actually change the sounds of your drum set after you already sequenced the drum beat!
One drawback of sequencing samples is that it can be difficult to get a “natural” drum sound…  It’s actually the little inconsistencies in dynamics and time that make a real drummer play something that sounds more “human.”
If you’re interested in going the sample route, you can buy sample libraries and CDs online.

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