How to Write Drum Parts (for non drummers)

[Music] if you don't play the drums the task of writing parts for them can seem impenetrable whereas building up skills on one instrument such as a horn or a piano could theoretically transfer to writing for other instruments drums are so different in how they're played and in their role in an ensemble that it requires a lot of extra knowledge just to get started today i want to talk about the drums laying out the basics of how they work and how to write for them for writing drum parts the three essential things you need to understand are groove form and fills a lot of writing groups comes down to knowing the conventions of the genre that you're working in but no matter what you're going to need a short repeated pattern that you can have the drums default to of course we'll add the fills and shots and bells and whistles later but we need a solid bedrock to support these extra flourishes the style of music dictates what kind of groove is appropriate but in any style i think effective grooves have three distinct layers that i'm going to call the beat the engine and a constant first up is establishing the beat rhythms don't make sense without relation to an underlying pulse and it's the drummer's job fundamentally to give the band that pulse specifically it's typically the bass drum's job laying down a beefy low note on beats 1 and 3 a tactic used by many genres all around the world does the job nicely in drum notation bass drum notes go on the bottom space of the staff and for ease of reading downward pointing stems will indicate that the notes are going to be played by one of the drummer's feet next we need to make the pulse exciting and doing this requires a rhythmic layer that goes against the pulse i call this the engine because the dissonance of two contrasting rhythms is what gives a piece its sense of forward motion the backbeat is indelibly carved into our public musical consciousness at this point accenting beats 2 and 4 on the snare while the kick drum hits beats 1 and 3 is the rhythmic foundation of almost all modern western music on a staff the snare is on the space where c would be in treble clef stem pointing up to indicate that it's played with the hands finally we need a constant or a continuous recurring sound that ties the layers together this could be as simple as a hi-hat playing eighth notes or the ringing of a symbol or something more complex like an ostinato pattern on a bell or stream of ghost notes in the snare the constant is not supposed to get attention it's supposed to be the backdrop for the other layers of groove but oftentimes this layer will make explicit how the beat is being subdivided in the music 8th notes or 16th notes or triplets or whatever in drum notation change the note head to an x to mark that the note is a symbol the top line of the staff can be the hi-hat and the space above it can be the ride but i've seen music do it the other way around as well it always helps to write a note to clarify this basic rock beat here perfectly exemplifies this concept the kick lays down the beat the snare gives us the engine and these symbols give us a constant stream of noise [Music] other genres basic drum conventions tend to fit into this framework too in jazz the ride lays down the beat the constant layer is provided by the ringing of the symbol and the chick sound made by stomping on the hi-hat pedal accents beats 2 and 4 to make the engine a note on the space below the staff with an x note head and the stem pointing down indicates that you hit the hi-hat pedal with your foot [Music] a lot of older styles of music tend to take a steady kick drum beat and accent every upbeat in order to create a rhythmic engine you can find this concept driving pokemusic second line bluegrass and others with the same exact idea used in styles conceived more recently like techno disco ska punk the list goes on [Music] [Music] metal seems to flip our layers upside down establishing the beat with a symbol while a stream of double kick drum hits creates our constant layer seems like subtle backdrop might not be the right description for this layer here but i do think the kick drum fills that role in metal music [Music] now latin music tends to be more complicated using multiple contrasting rhythmic patterns layered over top of one another in a relatively simple style like bossa nova the beat will be established by this kick drum pattern while a clave rhythm layered over top provides the engine and a layer of hi-hat or shaker or other percussion will tie it all together [Music] now the deeper down the south american rabbit hole you go the more complex each of these rhythmic layers get let's leave that for another time a fun inversion of the rock beat is the classic motown groove because the snare establishes the beat by playing constant quarter notes and offbeat kick drum hits create that rhythmic engine that we need [Music] no matter what a drummer is playing regardless of complexity it will be rooted in a basic groove like one of these depending on the genre so if you want to get beyond these most generic grooves and tailor drum parts so they fit your song specifically it's best to start with something super simple like this and change it piece by piece a helpful way to think about these changes is to keep in mind two rhythmic concepts rhythmic approach notes and rhythmic anticipations rhythmic approach notes are notes that are played on the subdivision prior to a note you want to accent so if i want to accent beat 4 in a rock beat i can add a kick drum note before it to accentuate that snare hit [Music] using a 16th note to approach a target beat enhances this effect rhythmic anticipations are when a note is shifted one subdivision prior to its original place this creates a strong sense of forward motion when anticipating beats 1 and 3 and kind of pulls the reins back when anticipating two and four [Music] with these two techniques you'll find a world of endless rhythmic options now the question is how to know which of these options to choose to walk you through my basic process i'm going to write a simple drum part to azalea town's theme from pokemon gold and silver because the choices drummers make are always dictated by what a specific piece of music needs let's take our basic backbeat groove as our foundation right away the intro gives a solid rhythmic template these upper voices are accenting beat 1 and the and of 2 and i'll have the drum part mirror that with an anticipation of the kick drum hit on beat 3. [Music] since we have a rhythmic anticipation i'll add a rhythmic approach note at the end of the bar approaching beat 1 of the following bar just so we have both techniques on display [Music] now we could loop this one bar groove for the entire song and have a drum part that is functional but let's push ourselves we'll take this first bar change one note and voila we have a second bar i simply added an approach note to the snare hit on beat 4 mirroring the rhythm of the bass line alternating these two bars will make our drum part seem much more sophisticated than it really is [Music] a two bar drum groove feels a lot more human than a one bar drum groove even with this subtle of a difference between the two bars adding or changing just one note is enough to give a rhythmic question and answer effect that can bring a groove to life you also can arrange two bars into a four bar groove by using an aab pattern or an aabb pattern or write a third bar and use an abac pattern there's a lot of different ways to phrase a drum part using just a couple of variations on one idea but the shorter length of sections in azalea town mean our two bar groove will serve just fine and here is where we come to form good drum parts don't just fit the vibe of an arrangement they guide the music through the course of its entire form acting like an orchestra's conductor from inside the band let's zoom out and paint a broader picture of our drum part as a whole you'll need to figure out what kind of default groove you want for each different section just like how we did for the beginning this could be a simple change like moving the hi-hat to the right symbol for our constant layer or we could construct a whole new groove it all depends on what the music needs but each new section should present some change in texture azalea town has just two sections a and b each eight bars long we have our a section groove already and for the b section i'm hearing that basic motown beat i mentioned earlier i'll stretch it out into a two bar groove by adding one more kick hit on the end of two in the second bar now we have the broad strokes done and it's time to fill in some details dynamics are a crucial part of humanizing drum parts and the drummer is in charge of a song's dynamic road map azalea town is just a looping aab form in the game but for our purposes i'm going to stretch it out into an aabab form let's start at a medium volume kick it up a bit for our b section make the following a nice and soft and then bring it up to make the final br climax there are many ways a drummer can control a part's dynamic in general the washier the symbol the more intense it sounds and adding or removing notes from the groove can make a part sound busier or more laid back the first two a's are fine assets but for the b section i'm going to play the hi-hats open just a bit to give a little sizzle this will give the section a step up in intensity to note a half open hi-hat put a circle with a line through it above the hi-hat notes i've also seen this written using diamond note heads although i prefer the circle due to reasons that we'll get to [Music] later for our quiet a section i'm going to break it down to just the kick drum pattern but play it softly on the ride symbol then halfway through the section i'll do a big crescendo on the floor tom and snare to bridge the gap between our lowest point and highest point dynamically since the climax of the piece is going to come right after for this final b section i'll keep the motown beat but move my right hand to a washy ride cymbal and put in lots of giant fills [Music] that's right there's just one piece we're missing that'll tie all of this together drum fills the real purpose of a drum fill isn't sounding cool or hyping up the audience it's to telegraph the feeling of each new section of the piece this means setting up all of the changes in grooves or dynamics before they happen as well as simply marking the form of the piece i should note that if you're writing out a chart to give to a real live drummer you can leave these out and just trust that they'll add their own feels appropriately at most you can write the word fill above any specific bars where you really for sure want them to go bananas if you're programming a drum part or just very anal about your sheet music this is my approach to writing fills first you'll want to drop one at the end of every section of the form i like using short fills early on in the arrangement like one or two beats long and saving longer fills for later on to have a sense of growth throughout the piece but the most important thing is setting up each section properly moving from our first a to our second is a lateral move dynamically so a super simple one-beat setup is enough to keep momentum up [Music] i chose a slightly more complex film moving to the b section and tried to make it motown-esque to match the b-section's groove [Music] now the crash symbol is used to release all of the tension built up by the drum fill and it's written on the first ledger line above the staff on beat one of the following bar but don't over crash a pet peeve of mine is when drummers usually rock drummers let's be honest whale on the crash at the start of every single phrase it's like oh has it been four bars already i know it's idiomatic of some styles of rock and metal but it still just bugs me you gotta save your crashes so that they really count when you need them to anyways setting up the quiet a section requires a fill that slows down our momentum making use of space is key for that there isn't much to say about the note for note specifics when it comes to writing fills it's an issue of vocabulary listen to great drummers notice what they play for fills and steal their ideas unashamedly seriously you can't copyright a drum fill they are there to be stolen like juicy rhythmic fruit ripe for the picking i also like to sprinkle in extremely small fills at the end of each melodic phrase or usually the end of every fourth bar just to make each section feel a little more alive for these one added snare or kick hit will work great or better yet one added open hi-hat note an open hi-hat begs to be closed and opening the hi-hat one eighth note before a snare hit makes that snare feel oh so satisfying notate an open hi-hat by drawing a circle above it and a closed hi-hat by drawing a plus sign above the next note this is where the symbol for a half open hi-hat comes from it's the open hi-hat circle cut in half the final thing i want to add before we listen through our whole part is hits in the drummer's duties rankings just behind dropping fat beats and setting up sections is catching hits these are rhythms that some or all of the rest of the band are playing together either to emphasize part of the melody's rhythm just as a background figure or any other reason really doubling a rhythm like this in the drums will give it extra power and you can do this two main ways by grooving through the hits or filling through the hits grooving through the hits requires that you catch the rhythm of said hits without interrupting the groove depending on the level of intensity putting the rhythm in the crash and kick while leaving the snare in its original pattern is simple but effective or you can sub the crash out for an open hi-hat or ride symbol bell for a softer version of the same effect the important thing is not to mess with the rhythmic engine of your original groove while layering these hits over top filling through the hits is exactly what it sounds like you make sure you catch those hits and then the rest of each bar is yours to go hog wild on [Music] i'm going to treat this emphasized rhythm in the back half of each b section as hits to be caught grooving through them on the first b and filling through them on the second now finally let's put all of that together and hear how it sounds i present to you my sample drum part to pokemon gold and silver's azalea town theme [Music] ah [Music] hey [Music] not too shabby before we go i just want to emphasize that you should definitely steal from songs and drummers that you like like i said there's no copyright on fills there's no copyright on grooves they're made to be stolen you can hear the same drum parts repeated over and over in all kinds of different songs and it's because drums are a very utilitarian instrument no one will give a about the nuanced intricacies of the part except for drummers for everyone else it just has to work thanks for indulging me in the slight step out of my usual content and look forward to more video game music analysis videos coming soon consider checking out my patreon if you liked what you saw and consider buying a notebook over at the musician's notebook if you need something to write all of your new brilliant drum parts down on thanks so much for watching and i'll see you in the next one [Music] you

Channel: 8-bit Music Theory

Views: 596,688

Keywords: drums, how to write drum parts, playing drums, how to groove, outlining form, drum fills, pokemon gold silver, azalea town theme, video game music, 8-bit Music Theory

Id: FoMmVlAvjmM

Length: 18min 51sec (1131 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 29 2021