HOW TO PROGRAM METAL DRUMS - 3 Simple Steps

even if you know absolutely nothing about programming drums hopefully by the end of this video we'll have some fundamentals so that you can program your first beats and start turning your riffs into actual song ideas i'll be programming drums tour if i wrote and will hopefully be going from absolutely zero knowledge to you being able to program something that sounds like this [Music] and for those of you that already programmed drums hopefully looking at my thought process behind drum programming will help you develop a more holistic approach consider more stuff or just grab some tips and tricks to do beats that you love even more so let's get into it so i think it's important to start by learning the parts of the kit and internalizing what they sound like and those of you that already know what the parts of the kit are might be wondering why but i think it's good to always remind yourself why does a kit be sound the way it sound and what role should it play based on its sonic characteristics and for those of you that don't know the kit pieces it's also extremely important so let's consider them firstly we have the kick drum so it's the largest strum and as such of course it has the lowest bassist sound of all drums drummer plays it with the legs very powerful sound out of it it's usually used to accent the music after the kick drum we have the snare drum arguably the more important uh shell i say it could be the most important shell because it's the one that's going to give you the sense of groove in backbeat as we'll discuss in a minute and as well because uh the snare is a part of the kit that can change the most in tones and give it the most soul from very low snares to very high tuned snares just pick one you like and let's roll with it the remaining drum shells are the toms are lower sounding drums and they're used more sparingly than the kick and snare which are the more important pieces so they are used to create unique moments in drumming usually transitions as well accenting important parts and everything that's not a drum shell is of course a symbol these are the symbols [Music] they give the drum parts high-end excitement energy they are essential in keeping time in our beats and as you heard there's a big variety of them and we're going to be discussing how they can play different roles based on their sound now that we know what the kit pieces are what they sound like let's get to programming a beat and step one for me is all about laying a foundation that later you can build on top of and remove stuff from and then get really really creative if the song calls for it that is for those of you completely new to programming drums pay close attention to step one which is where i'm gonna suggest some rules that are gonna make the your first beat very very easy to make try these rules for now and then you can break them in later steps when you have ideas to do so so let's hear what they are based on the different kit pieces and what we learned about their sound we're going to give each of them a different role so the kick drum is going to accent the guitars the snare is going to keep our back beat and the symbols are going to keep time all right you might be wondering what this translates to and i'm going to make it happen here in the programming part if you're a guitarist like me and you want to program a beat to your riff i recommend you record your riff to a metronome find its tempo and get it onto your daw before the riff that's we're going to be programming over and let's open the midi and remember the roles that we gave each kid piece the kick drum we said is going to accent the guitars so to start i am going to place a kick drum on every guitar note this tutorial will not be about velocities i'll do everything at the same velocity so that you see that it still sounds good it's about how you write it so [Music] here we go [Music] so now i have done it and you can hear how the kick drum is accenting our guitar part [Music] [Applause] now the snare rule is to give us our backbeat in our sense of groove and tell us where we should be banging our heads this might be strange to you if you've never considered drum playing but i'll give you the simple recipe there's two places i want you to try and put your snare one of them is every third beat and you'd be replacing the kick drum to do that so one two three let me switch to four grid one two three one two three one two three and listen to how our beat suddenly has a groove to it [Music] the other option is you would put a snare on second beat and fourth beats so here and here and i'd have to add back some kick drums that i replaced with snares before i would be removing these kick drums but for now just hear what it feels like watch me bang my head [Music] [Applause] so you can see how the snare is very important in giving us the groove of our beat in this case i will choose snare on 3 which feels of course slower with fewer snares [Music] and since the symbol's role is just to keep time i'm very simply going to put a symbol on every single beat copy past the time and if you play that i will also put the bass in which i've already programmed you will have your first drum beat [Music] with these simple concepts you can get step one done and have a foundation and these are not hard to follow and if you have no idea how to program drums you now have step one and these concepts are simple but there's a lot that you can change within this this foundation for example picking a different symbol this is the right crush which is usually used to keep time but i want the second part of it to be on the china symbol for example which is very aggressive [Music] so this creates even if the riff repeats perfectly the drums are gonna give it a different feeling just because you switch a symbol and when it comes to our snare feelings i want the very last part to have the 2 and 4 feeling it doesn't have to be the same way all across the beat so right here [Music] so i am happy with step one where we've built a great foundation for our drum beat now let's move on to step two where i play with this foundation and add stuff as well as later remove some stuff so usually after you get this base down you should be getting some ideas about stuff that you want to add to spice up the drum part they should be coming to your head that it sounds a little bit too much the same or not which is very important it might just be exactly what you want but me myself for example i want to add symbols to um accent the guitars so a very common one is that you just hit both of the crashes as soon as the beat starts because the drummer has both hands uh free [Music] and again on this repeat and what would be again at the same time as the china here [Music] now there's a very cool part in the rift where i play two harmonics very quickly right there if you can hear them i want symbols to go with those so i'm going to add them in i'm going to use one of the more um special symbols these splashes so i'm gonna put one in one harmonic and one in the other i want the symbols i want 20. so let's hear what that sounds like that sounds sick [Music] i am also wanting to use the same trick here to fill up space before the snare hit i wanted to go to want to get those splashes in there as well [Music] and at the end i do want the symbols to completely stop so i will introduce a choke where the drummer plays the symbol and very quickly mutes it [Music] you might have noticed we haven't used our toms yet because the tom's usual role is to create transitions and to create unique moments and accents in the middle of the song so i am feeling that i don't want it to start here i want to hear a tom phil right before the song so i'm going to add that in and i am thinking about a fill that plays on this very very um cute part of the riff which is this ending here before the repeat [Music] the way it feels like i am going to have that rhythm inspire the way that i write this feel phil because is very much a rhythmic language [Music] so let's come up with something right here and even though this isn't a tutorial on how to write a fill or it is a tutorial on when you should be thinking about a fill and how you can drive inspiration from the guitars to pull one in instead of just putting one in so dude [Music] [Music] so something like this [Music] can you hear the similarities with the it has the same feeling and thus it makes sense in the song and i am now deciding that i want that in the end too i want to go to so it actually plays it at the same time as the guitars which would make a lot of sense [Music] oh yeah so we have a lot of fun adding stuff but i think it's very important and underrated and underappreciated to remove stuff because everyone always talks about more but you you should be thinking about less and i think honestly kicks on every single note gets boring i am going to introduce some silence right as we switch to the china let's see how this feels [Music] i enjoy that i think we need to put one kick here not there not there either [Music] and same here so let's leave these first beats wide open [Music] there it can keep going because the snare from step one is making it feel busy again and here's something awesome that i've noticed so your drum programming should inspire you to go back and change the the guitars because everything should be interconnected and it shouldn't just be your programming over a riff you should be writing the song as it goes and i think if we're opening space here the bass should stop and we should leave guitars playing [Music] these gaps right here [Music] so it leaves room for the clean and the lead that i also have there [Music] oh yes so your drum programming should inform the rest of the material as well so at this point i have a drone part that i'm really happy with [Music] i'm hearing some more toms that i'm going to add [Music] i want that to be the most important part of the riff of this little song so i am going to use toms that's the role we attributed to toms was create the special moments in accent them so i wanted to go to [Music] and then you sh i should use a symbol to accent this last note by that logic yes okay enough with the adding this is a part that i am now happy with and um i would stop here but i am going to give you guys step three when you really want to get creative with your drum programming and that's where you break the rules from step one that is the way i like to think about writing really really creative drum parts if we attributed to symbols the role of keeping time why don't we make symbols accent like the kick and you've noticed that we've been doing that already they're symbols keeping time but we've also used a few for accenting purposes [Music] and i definitely got ahead of myself here because i just did that in step two i move the symbol from time keeping to absolute accent material not on the beat [Music] so we just made symbols from keep time roll to accent roll how about we try the snare going from a back beat groove roll to an accent role at least somewhere in the song i think there's a very very groovy part i really really like this i think this has a very bouncy rhythm and a snare going out of place here i feel is gonna give us some epic balance [Music] i feel like that keeps you on your toes and that's by making the snare have a different role in the song and honestly guys i am happy with where this beat is at and i think that is one of the more important lessons we all want to do the craziest stuff but at the end of the day it's just about serving the song with your drum programming and these are just tools to do that in the spirit of step three you could go a lot further you've probably heard parts where the tom switches from uh in accenting role to a keeping time role something akin to a jungle beat where you keep time with the toms which is a very very cool resource in the spirit of step three you've probably also heard entire songs where the snare is nowhere to be found in terms of backbeat and groove something like a meshuga song where it's just accenting it's very very sparingly used for backbeat you can get absolutely crazy step three is for the crazy boys and uh that's the framework in which i like to think about getting super creative but i am very happy with where this part is at [Music] so final thoughts this is just a breakdown of my framework as you get more experience and even i fail to completely break it down into three steps you see they just start to merge into one in your head as you're doing it as you build a foundation from step one you are already adding a few things removing a few things both in step two and you might already be switching roles in between the drum parts in the spirit of step three but for those of you that are beginning step one is going to get you to make a drum beat right now when you close this video and record your riff to a metronome but kicks on guitar snare on backbeat symbols keep time and it's gonna get you creative to try step two try step three this is kind of the way i like to think about programming drums so i really hoped showing my thought process helped you gain a different understanding or a completely new understanding about a way that you can program drums if you'd like to see this for guitars which i've done a video for where i also give a few steps that i think about watch this video here watch a more advanced educational guitar video here you can check out the final midi in the description and you can get all of the stems and see how the song is mixed right here on my patreon page thank you guys hope you liked it and i'll see you in the next one

Channel: João Medeiros

Views: 13,752

Keywords: how to program metal drums, programming metal drums, drum programming, how to program drums, drum programming metal, metal drums, metal drum programming, ggd tutorial, drum promgramming tutorial, how to write drum beats, programmed drums

Id: cYzfCX2Siy8

Length: 20min 57sec (1257 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 11 2021