How to Write and Record Drum Parts for Non-Drummers: Programmed or Live?

 

If you aren’t a drummer but want to make full tracks on your own in your home studio, how do you start writing and recording drums?!

Many songwriters, myself included, start their journey writing on an acoustic guitar or piano. But when you start wanting to record tracks you realize that knowledge will only get you so far. We can adapt to most instruments, a bass guitar, for example, is not too much of a leap, and a synth even looks like a piano. But there is one primary instrument present in most songs which seems alien to many musicians and that is the drums. Drums don’t really bear any resemblance to our guitars or pianos and require a completely different skill set.

If we want to get drums on our track do we have to hire a session drummer or go to a studio? That would be a pain and expensive for a musician who just wants to create music at home.

Luckily with the help of modern technologies, we can now get great sounding drum tracks at home, and the best part is you don’t even need to learn how to play the drums!

In this article, I will put forward the argument that in the vast majority of cases when recording at home you should just use programmed drums and loops (phew!). Trying to record a full drum kit will not only take up lots of space and create huge amounts of noise. It will probably not sound great unless you spend a long time working on it. So here is my guide on how to write drum parts and how to record drum parts for non-drummers.

 

What is the importance of drums in music?

 

Drums are one of the oldest instruments appearing as far back as 6000BC. Where they would be used in rituals and ceremonies by ancient tribes.

Each drum does technically have a ‘pitch’ at which it plays. However, unlike a guitar or piano (or most other instruments) playing at different pitches is not the main function of drums. The main function is rhythm and timekeeping.

In order for all music to come together and sound like a complete piece, some element of timekeeping is required. Otherwise, you will end up with a musical mess that sounds awful. The drums, therefore, provide this timekeeping, acting in place of a conductor or metronome.

The importance of the role of the drums varies between different types and genres of music. This ranges from a very simple beat used to keep other musicians in time, all the way to complex patterns where the drums are the centre of attention.

In modern rock and pop music, the drums often team up with bass instruments such as a bass guitar to for the rhythm section of a band. The rhythm section is not only keeping time but is creating the foundation and groove of the track.

Drums are capable of changing the entire feel of a track. Just a simple beat behind a guitar chord progression changes the listener experience entirely. They also have a wide dynamic range and can play softly, perhaps a deep rolling sound, or loudly and energetically such as a marching snare drum. Drums allow you to change how the listener feels perhaps more than any other instrument available.

 

What are the different types of drums?

 

As I said before, drums have been around for 1000’s of years. In their earliest form, they were simply small wooden carvings hit to make a sound. Over time this gradually became more advanced with animal skins being stretched over an open-ended cylinder to produce a louder and deeper sound.

At this early stage, and until fairly recently, drums were an individual instrument. Each member of a tribe (or band) would have a drum and could play them together to create different beats. It wasn’t until the marching bands of the early 20th century that one person could play multiple drums at the same time, with the invention of the Ludwig & Ludwig Co. A foot-operated bass drum allowing other drums to be played at the same time with the hands.

This was the start of the path towards what we now all know as a ‘drum kit’. Drums appearing of all shapes and sizes giving them all sorts of different tones. Now present in some shape or form in every rock band allowing a single person or ‘drummer’ to play a wide variety of different drums from the comfort of a seat. The range of drums and other percussive elements is now vast but there are a few key members of the family that appear regularly:

 

Bass Drum/ Kick Drum

 

 

Usually the largest drum in a drum kit, the bass drum produces a low pitched sound. It is also known as the ‘kick drum’ because in a drum kit it is played using the feet with a beater effectively kicking the drum to make a sound. They are probably the most visible part of the drum kit, serving the handy function of supporting smaller drums.

The size and material of construction will affect the sound produced by the kick drum. The larger the diameter of the drum the deeper the sound produced will be. The drum is played by pressing down on a pedal which activates a beater or striker. The beater (the thing that kits the drum) can be made of different materials to create different sound but it is usually made of a felt like material.

The main purpose of the kick drum is to keep time. Due to its low frequency, it tends to be best for keeping the beat. The low-frequency soundwaves are less likely to be absorbed or stopped by other surfaces. This means the bass drum sound will travel farther and through surfaces and therefore making them very reliable for getting to the other band members allowing them to keep in time.

Snare Drum

 

 

A snare drum is another drum present on almost every modern drum kit. At the complete other end of the sound spectrum to the kick drum, the snare drum produces a much sharper and higher pitched sound when struck. You may know the snare drum sound best from drum rolls or a marching band.

Possibly the most useful characteristic of a snare drum, and why it is used so frequently, is its large dynamic range. You can create completely different sounds ranging from gently tapping or even stroking of the drum skin, to hitting hard for a loud resonating crack. For this reason, you will see snares played with various implements, the most common being a stick but it could also be a brush.

The word ‘snare’ comes from a band of metal wires attached across the base of the drum called ‘snares’.

As with the kick drum, a snare drum can be constructed from a variety of materials. Nowadays they can be made of wood to metal to modern materials such as fibreglass and acrylic.

 

Tom-toms

 

 

Tom-tom drums make up the rest of the drums found in a standard drum kit. They are played with sticks similar to the snare drum but do not have any snares attached to them. They tend to produce a booming sound more similar in tone to that of the kick drum than the crack of a snare drum.

On a standard kit, tom-tom drums can be divided into two categories. The rack toms, so named because they are attached above the tom on a sort of ‘rack’ and the floor tom which is….usually stood on the floor as the name suggests. The rack toms come in a variety of sizes with diameters ranging from 15 to 50cm (although more likely at the lower end of this range), whereas the floor tom is much larger between 40 and 60cm in diameter.

 

Due to the larger diameter, the floor tom produces a much deeper sound than the rack toms but all can vary in sound massively depending on size and how tightly the skins are attached to the casing.

 

Other types of drum:

 

 

On top of the drums associated with a drum kit mentioned above, there are hundreds of different types of drums, as they have been present in all sorts of musical genres all across the world. All of these drums bring different sounds and character which may or may not be appropriate for the music you are creating.

One of the great things about modern music production is that you can download a sample of virtually any type of drum that was ever made. You can then enter it into a song without having to spend all your money and fill your studio with them.

 

What are the different types of cymbals?

 

Technically not drums but lumped often lumped together in the same category as they are a form of percussion and are included in most drum kits. So for the purposes of this article, I will include cymbals too and therefore it is also going to be useful to quickly highlight the main types you are likely to use.

Cymbals are usually circular shaped brass-plates that can be struck to produce a resonating ringing sound. On a drum kit, cymbals are mounted on stands to allow them to resonate for a long duration.

The general rule is that a large thick cymbal will be louder with longer sustain, whilst a smaller thinner cymbal will be quieter with less sustain.

 

Hi-Hat

 

 

On a drum kit, the hi-hat is probably one of the most commonly used cymbals. The cymbal comes as a pair sitting together on top of a stand.

The hi-hat also comes with a foot pedal attached. This foot pedal is used to bring the two cymbals together, with the bottom cymbal remaining fixed and the top cymbal moving up and down. A sound is then created when the two cymbals are brought together. It can also be held down permanently by the player and played with a stick to create a less resonant sound. You will therefore hear the hi-hat referred to as open or closed, depending on the position of the foot pedal.

Hi-hats are useful in creating a rhythmic pattern alongside the kick drum and snare.

 

Crash Cymbal

 

 

The crash cymbal is quite self-explanatory. It is used to produce a usually loud, crashing sound, reminding you of thunder. The crash makes this sound due to being quite large in size which gives it the loud volume but also quite thin which gives it the ‘crashing’ resonance.

A crash cymbal can range in size but are usually somewhere between 36 and 46cm in diameter.

The function of the crash cymbal varies with the size. Smaller crash cymbals can be used as accents, the shorter sharper sound used along with the rest of the band to highlight certain sections. A large crash cymbal, on the other hand, is used more like an explosion or exclamation mark.

 

Ride Cymbal

 

 

The next ‘standard’ cymbal to mention is the ride cymbal. Usually slightly larger than a crash cymbal at 46 to 56cm and as with the crash the sound produced will vary dependent on the size and thickness but is often described as ‘shimmering’.

The name again is quite fitting as you tend to ‘ride’ on in creating a more constant pattern rather than the big less frequent explosions of the crash. The ride is used for more rhythmic parts in a similar way to the hi-hat.

 

Splash Cymbal

 

Used in a similar way to the crash but usually smaller and very thin producing a splashy sound.

 

How to write a drum part for beginners

 

Now you know the main parts of a drum kit how do we actually write them into a musical composition?

For a non-drummer, this can be daunting, to say the least. Most of us can keep a beat, but anything more complicated is going to require a bit more thought.

One way would be to get an experienced drummer to play along to your ideas until you get something that sounds good, but we don’t always have this luxury. So if you can’t play the drums yourself the best place to go to write your part is in your Digital Audio Workstation (DAW). Even if you end up recording with a live kit in the end (I’ll come on to those options shortly), writing in a DAW will allow you to try out different ideas easily and visualize what is happening.

 

Listen to other tracks for inspiration

 

As a non-drummer, the most important thing you can do is study lots of songs that you like or that inspire you. As non-drummers, we probably have a tendency to focus on the guitars or vocals and just let the drum part wash over us. But now is your chance to listen carefully to the drums. What do they do in the verse? How do they build towards the chorus? Is there a lot more energy coming through in the chorus? What is the reason for this?

Make sure you are listening through good headphones or speakers, and perhaps turn the bass up so you can really hear the kick drum. Pay attention to what each individual drum is doing.

You will notice in most songs there is a very close relationship between the bass and the drums. They work together to form the foundation of the music and give the rhythm and the groove. So if you have already written a bass part for the song it is important that you write your drum part to work well with that.

You will also notice that in verses the drums tend to be steadier and more subdued. This is because, most of the time, the purpose of a verse is to tell the story through the lyrical content. So you probably don’t want loud crashing cymbals and constant complex fills at this point.

Take some time to write some ideas down and see what patterns you notice between songs. You may also get some inspiration of bits for your own songs. People might realize if you steal other peoples guitar riffs or even basslines, but they are never going to know if you steal their drum beat……not that I advocate stealing.

 

Start thinking in terms of bars/ measures

 

Depending on how experienced you are, you may or may not be familiar with bars in music. Before you start writing any parts it is key to get the concept clear in your head.

Most rock and pop music is written in 4/4 timing which means that each ‘bar’ is composed of 4 quarter notes. As you can see the top number (4) is the number of counts per bar and the bottom number is which type of note receives a single count. Or to put it another way one ‘whole note’ lasts for 4 beats. So if you were to tap out a steady beat of 1,2,3,4 1,2,3,4 etc. You are counting each quarter note.  Check out the video below if that is still unclear.

 

 

Because some drum parts, such as the hi-hat, are often played quite quickly you will often hear them referred to as 8th notes or 16th notes. I.e if they were playing constantly they would be played 8 or 16 times per bar. For 8th notes, you may recognize the counting:

1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and.

The ‘and’ here is used in place of a number so you are actually counting up to 8. And for 16th notes, you count

1 e and a 2 e and a 3 e and a 4 e and a

I know that looks ridiculous written down.

 

What is the difference between downbeats and upbeats?

 

Now you have a basic idea of what bars and measures are and how they apply to drumming, it’s time for some slightly more advanced terminology.

The beats within the measure can be divided into 3 different categories. These are downbeats, upbeats and backbeats.

These terms are often defined differently depending on context and between different genres of music so apologies if you see them described differently elsewhere.

The word downbeat is typically used to refer to the ‘strongest’ beat within a particular measure. In rock music in 4/4 timing played with 8th notes the downbeats are usually the numbers with the ‘ands’ being the upbeats:

1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and

Listen to most rock songs and see how you tap your foot or want to clap along. Also, notice how when the first beat of the measure is a downbeat the last beat is an upbeat which leads back to the start in a loop.

In some genres such as jazz, for example, this is flipped so the downbeats are the ‘ands’ and upbeats are the numbers

1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and

In rock music, the bass drum and snare are often hit on the downbeat with the beater or stick being pulled away on the upbeat. This makes sense as the stick is ‘down’ for the downbeat and ‘up’ for the upbeat, making it easy to remember.

Remember that is for eighth notes. If you are using quarter notes then the downbeats would be 1 and 3 with 2 and 4 being the upbeats.

 

What are backbeats?

 

In most rock and pop music the standard backbeat usually appears on notes 2 and 4 as follows and is usually played on the snare drum in a classic rock beat:

1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and

Changing the backbeat position will completely change the ‘groove’ and feel of the beat.

 

What does this look like in a DAW?

 

If you are up to speed on music theory then you are probably ok picturing drum beats as they would appear in sheet music, with crotchets, minims and semi-breves etc. But for anyone who doesn’t read sheet music, it is probably easier to start visualizing the beat in your DAW.

I also thoroughly recommend when starting out making your own music that you record your drums this way too as getting a decent sound on a real drum kit at home is really difficult. But more on that later in the article.

 

A quick introduction into the MIDI piano roll

 

Thanks to modern day technology we can now programme drum beats within most pieces of DAW software. This saves us non-drummers in many ways:

1. We don’t have to learn to play drums
2. We don’t have to buy a drum kit
3. We don’t have to mic up and get that drum kit sounding good
4. We don’t anger the neighbors!

Within the DAW we have what is known as a ‘piano roll’. It is a graphical representation of musical notes in MIDI format (if you want to learn more about MIDI check out this article). It looks a bit like an excel spreadsheet and is used to ‘map’ either MIDI instrument tracks or in our case here programmed drum sounds.

In Ableton Live it looks like this:

 

 

It is a bit like a graph with the piano on the left acting as the y-axis and in this case telling us the note played and the x-axis being time. On the above example, I have programmed a piano to play G, C, E and D (the number 3 means 3 octaves higher than a middle C).

The small sticks and circles at the bottom represent the velocity (volume) of each note and can be set between 0 and 127, with 127 being the maximum velocity each note can have. It is referred to as velocity as it would be the speed in which a key is pressed down on a piano or keyboard.

 

 

The track shown in this image is in 4/4 timing and each whole number is a bar. If we were to count this as eighth notes it would look like this which each of the lines on the chart representing one eighth note:

 

 

When programming a drum track the layout is the same but instead of piano notes on the Y-Axis you get different elements of a drum kit, which can be altered and added to with any drum or sound effect you wish:

 

 

Currently, this track has no drums and so you would hear silence. The drums can then be added in a number of ways.

In Ableton Live, you can switch between a drawing cursor (that looks like a pencil) to add new notes, or to click on existing ones to remove them. Or you can switch to an edit cursor which will allow you to lengthen, shorten or change notes.

 

If you want to get a little bit more musical than drawing, then you can input these notes using a MIDI instrument. This could be a MIDI drum machine or a MIDI keyboard. The MIDI signal sent in will record the drum type, timing, and velocity that you press so you will probably get a more realistic sound.

For example, because we are human and not perfect you will end up with beats being ‘off-grid’. But this is fine (unless you are way off) and will make it sound less robotic. Having everything perfectly in time and ‘on-grid’ is known as quantization and should usually be avoided in most musical genres.

 

 

Start with some classic beats

 

Now I’ve introduced you to the piano roll format present within most DAW software the best place to start when writing is to learn some classic beats that are common in certain genres. You can then build and experiment around these.

The drums really do affect the entire feel of the track so it is good to have a strong idea before you start writing. Do you want the song to have a driving feel? Do you want it to be slower and more groovy? Or do you want it to be dancy?

The main thing to remember when you start writing drum parts is that they are just one part of the ‘rhythm section’. So they have to fit alongside the bassline to really make a groove. This is often easier in a rock track where the bass may be playing long single notes. But when you start getting into other genres like funk and hip-hop where the basslines can be much more complex, the drum parts are going to require a lot more thought.

So bear that in mind when you see the basic beats below, these are just some ideas to get you started and won’t work on every song you write.

 

Classic rock beat

 

A classic rock beat which you will probably be more than familiar with is 4/4 with eighth notes as described in the above section with the hi-hat playing on all the downbeats, and the kick and snare playing on alternate beats. In Ableton this looks like this:

 

 

Although in reality most hi-hat parts will add a softer note on the ‘and’ also sometimes known as ghost notes to get more of a groove to the beat.

Here is what it looks like in the Ableton piano roll, you can see at the bottom of the piano roll the levels of the hi-hats with the softer notes on the ‘and’ beats:

 

 

Basic funk beat

 

By simply playing with the position of the hi-hat and snare in our track we can move the feel of the drums to a funkier sound.

In the basic beat below the kick drum stays on the beat but the hi-hat starts playing on the ‘and’ notes. So if you start with this as the foundation: