Programming Extreme Metal Drums | Mendel Bij De Leij on Mixing for Metal

hey what's up guys Mendel here so today we're gonna check out how to program extreme metal drums so here we go [Music] alright so here we are in Cubase and that I recorded some scratch guitar so we can program some drums underneath that so let's take a listen to those first [Music] okay sounding pretty cool so let's go into the media editor and let's program some drums okay so let's first program some drums to the guitars and then we'll go more into depth on making them a bit more human and some notes about beats so I'm first gonna follow that so typical metal thing would be following with the kicks and cymbals then the snare fill here and then let's end on the Tom's right before we go into the blast beat let's take a listen okay that sounds cool so maybe you've noticed that the snare sounds kind of bit robotic so you could do select them and with hand like make sure everything sounds human but I found a way that works for me and hopefully it works for you so in Cubase we have a logical editor right here so what you can do you can basically do like anything you can come up with MIDI wise is something you could apply to it but here's the cool thing I noted so what I did I made a random value setting between 122 and 125 so I'll slow it down a bit and show you what this does so when I select these notes and I connected to a key command I'm gonna press that and when you watch this part right here you can see it randomizes the value of the selected MIDI notes which is very handy to have like randomize notes especially when you have like a snare full hit because like no snare head will always sound the same so if you want to assimilate that the program drums you have to have random notes right here so how I did that is a press MIDI click logical editor and I'll show you the preset I have which is as follows fill the target type is condition equal to parameter note then here we have action target value two and then operation set random values between and then you can do whatever you want can do low values high values most of the times drummers hit pretty hard during their fast fills so it's 120 to 125 which makes it random between that so let's take a listen to that so that sounds a bit less robotic but there's also another issue with programs young because if you program everything exactly to the grid no drummer can play exactly to the grid so so to solve that what I did is I made a macro and I'll show it right here go to key commands edit key commands go to show macros and here is humanize drums so here is my logical editor preset the random velocities there and then I did quantize so what this means if I use a key command for that it does the randomized value but it also goes through the quantized settings and this is where the randomized ticks comes in handy so I have it set to four ticks so I'll zoom in so you can watch these notes right here so when I use that those values are used in command you can see it not only randomizes the value but it also randomizes the timing of where it is in time the on the grid which adds another let's say a human element to it so now it already sounds better and to my ears I could lower this a bit that sounds better than the than this one I prefer this okay so now we're gonna program a blast beat so one thing you should notice and this is a lot of mistakes a lot of guitar players who try to program drums make is even though it's possible and maybe some drummers do it most death metal drummers start a blast beat on the kick drum so basically you could see it as like a thrash beat which is 1 - 2 - oof - oof - oof - how germs like to say it twice as fast so I'll show you so instead of starting on the snare right here I'm gonna start on the kick so I got it now on setting eighth notes just drag it all over and select these notes then I press control D then I go to sixteenth notes because I'm regular blast beat the snare hits are between the kicks so it drag that over to between the kicks so we have this that's the blast beat and then we need some cymbals so let's started on crash and then have a certain pattern on the Hayate let's take a listen okay so that's the blast beat but again it sounds like a bigger body because these are all maximum value hits and the metal drummer or a death metal drummer doesn't hit rimshots playing a blast beat it's to my knowledge it's almost impossible so I'm gonna use the randomizer again and then I'm gonna drag it a bit down so we have those softer blast speed hits that's a bit too soft [Music] that's better so let's duplicate the whole thing and then remove this crash and put it on like that let's take a listen so cool thing death metal drummers like to do like Campbell Denny for some of you who may know I play seven years in the death metal band called aborted with a drummer Kemba Denny and a lot of death metal drummers like - axe and riffs on the cymbals [Music] cool so now we have our our blast beat let's duplicate it again and then there's a turnarounds in the riff and I'm gonna do a hammer blast over there which is double kick double kicks 16 notes with eighth note the snares on it so let's see where that part comes in [Music] it's over there now we're gonna do 16 notes kicks and then I'm gonna do eighth notes of the snares again since it's pretty fast let's soften the hits let's randomize it let's put the ticks on four there we go that should be good and let's play it to make it more aggressive let's play it on a crash on China so let's take a listen to this beat cool so maybe would be cool to round it off following the riff [Music] maybe small fill then I hit with the kick okay so now we're going to program a trash slash gang beat so the kick is playing quarter notes and this snare is in between those hits that sounds pretty cool so you can either choose to do the hi-hat on the kicks around the snare I like to do it on the snare because that's what most trash drummers do so let's duplicate is duplicate this a couple of times now let's take a listen [Music] let's repeat it so it could be cool is to now have double kicks on those on a Thresh beater mode to make it a bit more extreme dare I say it so let's do a small fill before that that's what a randomized thing again since we're going to transition into the second riff let's use the first when this transition drum part again okay listen to the whole thing [Music] cool okay so let's go to the second riff okay since we have a busy intro with blasts beast gang beasts and transitions in transit and transitions and stuff let's do something more groovy so more like with that one two three four pulse but with double kicks because we're gonna stay extreme okay so I'm gonna do the kick dragging over all the 16s then put a snare in the middle I think there that sounds cool and now to make it more groovy with the height instead of doing like babies could like one and two and one and two and three and four the kind of stuff so I'm gonna program the Hyatts here and every hit on the two and on the sorry on the two yet on the two and the four let's make it a bit softer okay let's duplicate this whole thing [Music] okay so let's to make it more interesting let's follow the rhythms of the the change of the guitar notes with symbols the to repair a dead [Music] and then these two measures let's do it on the ride I'm gonna do it almost like a Derrick variety version which is the tenth that attempted that I don't want to determine that the ten to the tenth let us see what we have here to make even more interesting more extreme let's put the other ride in between at the end so we have there we go now let's duplicate that whole thing alright so let's take a listen to the whole thing [Music] cool all right so those are some basics from for programming extreme metal drums if you have any questions leave him a comment below so we can talk about programming extreme metal drums and see you next time [Music]

Channel: Cubase

Views: 37,218

Keywords: programming drums, drums, drums for metal, metal drums, programming extreme, metal recording, producing metal, programming metal drums in Cubase, how to record metal drums, metal drums production, heavy metal, dead metal, speed metal, extreme metal, humanizing drums, natural sounding drums, Cubase, the Cubase collective

Id: gewcXFuirG8

Length: 15min 26sec (926 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 13 2020