Resuscitate Your Drum Tracks

As electronic musicians, it's a simple fact that by the nature of the software we use to sequence our music, we are trained to think in terms of patterns.  With the rise of loop-based software such as Ableton Live or Sony Acid, this mindset may have become even more prevalent.  And there's nothing wrong with that per se.  

The trouble is, it often restricts the way we think when we're programming drums.  Instead of seeing the 'big picture' of the song as a whole, we may see it as a series of shorter patterns.  The temptation can sometimes be to simply cut and paste these various patterns to the different parts of the song and call it a day.  This can lead to the dreaded Lazy Drum Programming Syndrome (or LDPS - we're planning a benefit telethon next year...).

A technique I have been using in recent years to avoid this is to instead think of the entire song as one linear piece and program my drums accordingly.  Here's what I mean...

When I am writing a track, I usually put a 'dummy' drum track in place to write the music around.  This is not, as the name might suggest, a mentally deficient rhythm track, it just means that it's just there to keep the beat while I write the song.  This can be a drum loop, a simple 4 on the floor pattern, or something similar.

Once I have the basic structure of the song laid out, it's time to get in and work out the details.  It's at this point that I begin to replace the dummy drum track.  But instead of doing this on a pattern per pattern basis, I'll take each part (such as the snare, for example) and play it live along with the track for the entire length of the track... essentially 'jamming' with the sequencer as a real drummer might.  (A set of drum pads can be really useful for this.)

This lets you 'feel' the music a bit and respond accordingly with your playing of fills and the like, but better yet, since you are human (presumably) you're not going to play every part exactly the same, so your track ends up having more variation and is a lot more interesting to listen to.  Now, that whole 'human' thing also means you're going to screw up and that some of your ideas will be completely crappy.  That's what editing is for. 

Go through your track, and figure out which parts work, and which just don't.  Cut out the bad stuff, and either play that part again, or replace it with something from elsewhere on your track.  In fact, it's not a bad idea to record several 'takes' of yourself playing the track the whole way through and using that to build a composite of the best bits.

Of course, you can take this idea too far.  You want your drum track to have some sort of consistency and logic to it as well (unless you're Aphex Twin or something, and if you can play THAT live, hats off to you!).  Start out just trying it with the snare part.  Keep in mind that some drum sounds, such as the kick & snare or the open & closed hihats work by interacting together, so consider, for example, recording your kick and snare part at the same time, so they make sense together.  Oftentimes all it takes is a more 'live' snare part, and perhaps hihat parts to make a HUGE difference in the energy and feel of your drum tracks.

So give it a try.  It might not be the right choice for everyone, but actually playing your beats instead of just programming them can lead to whole new ideas you might not have come up with otherwise, and that's never a bad thing.  Escape the tyranny of the grid!