Delayed Posts

Hey guys,

Sorry I haven't posted recently, night shift at work has been taking its toll. I will definitely have some good stuff for you next week.

Later,
Brian

Making a Roll Sound Realistic

This post explains how to make realistic sounding drum rolls with a drum machine. In order to sound like a drummer, you need to think like one. Firstly, I need to define, for those non-drummers, that there are two main types of rolls:

1. The single-stroke roll: The hand pattern is Right (R), Left (L), Right, Left...and the sticks do not bounce at all. Often heard in Nirvana's songs.
   
2. The multiple-bounce roll: The hand pattern is R,L,R, L...and the sticks bounce several times with each stroke. Often heard at the circus before anything "exciting"* happens. It is also often heard in songs played by any half-decent drummer.
   

* Exciting is in inverted commas because I don't believe much exciting happens at the circus :-)

With that in mind, we can edit the volume of each hit to mimic the movements of the drummers arms. Every drummer has a weaker arm, which will produce a quieter and different sounding hit. It produces a different sound because it has to hit the drum head at a different point to that of the other hand. The easiest way to mimic this with a drum machine is to make the each weaker hand's hit about 1/2 to 3/4 the volume of the stronger hand's. Being a right-handed drummer, I always choose the left hand to be weaker. This means that a single-strike roll will look like the figure below in Hydrogen:

For the multiple-bounce roll, one needs to make the sticks sound like they are bouncing. The first way to do this can be really painstaking and yields rather poor results. For this method, you add each bounce sound in as a snare hit but with a much quieter volume. This is seen below:

A better sounding and easier way of doing this is to use a drumkit which has a drag/ghost note prerecorded (A drag is a drum note which lets the drumstick bounce). The hydrogen kit that I made (available here) has a drag note and produces a simpler multiple-bounce roll seen below.

Here is and mp3 of each of the above rolls: Rolls.mp3 (285 kB). The first roll is a single-stroke roll followed by the two multiple-bounce rolls, the first is uses no drag/ghost hits and the second does.

These are the easiest ways of getting realistic drum rolls out of a machine. Bare in mind that a machine will never sound exactly like a drummer, there are just too many variables. Hydrogen also has a cool humanize dial which makes each beat slightly out of time randomly. This can be useful, but don't overdo it.

Other posts you might find interesting:
How to make a Hydrogen Drumkit
Pimp my Beats
Multiple Outputs for Hydrogen
My Attempt at a Hydrogen Drumkit
Hydrogen Drumkits

New Author

Hey guys,

I'm proud to announce that Brian's Bedroom will now be co-authored by Mike. Mike plays some mean guitar, bass and can hold his own with most instruments which have notes. This is cool for three reasons:

1. You should hopefully see more posts, which should get you through those boring days at work.
2. He should be able to provide a deeper insight into the mysterious world of guitar sounds, effects, recording tips and much, much more.
3. He also happens to be a hardcore programmer, so he could possibly provide some insight into those even more mysterious software related problems.
   

See you around,
Brian

Pimp my Beats

I'm sure many of you that use hydrogen or play drums, have made several beats which just lack spunk. So, in this post, I'm going to show you a very simple way of turning your bland beats into slightly funkier ones.

Here is an .MP3 of a simple beat which is currently unpimped: Plain.mp3 (415kB)

You can pimp this beat by adding what is called a 'drag' at the end of the bar. This is done in Hydrogen by adding two 32nd snare notes just at the end of the bar and one on the first beat (see figure below).

The three 32nd snare notes must be significantly quieter than the other snare notes. Also, each 32nd note should be a slightly different volume to make it sound more human.

Take a listen to the new pimped up version of the previous beat: Drag.mp3 (416 kB)

Real drummers hardly ever play straight ordinary beats. They often add frills and cymbals to the straight forward beats just to spice them up a bit. So I encourage you to use the drag technique on any beat which sounds like it was played by Sony.

Another important tip is to remember that humans have only two arms and two feet (generally). This means that your programmed drum beats should have no more than two hand hits and two foot hits at any one time. Note: this does not apply when recording a cover of one of Def Leppard's songs.

Lastly, and most importantly, drummers typically have a weaker hand. This hand will produce a softer note, so if you are using two hands on a drum, make sure the each alternate note is softer. This will make it sound a hundred times more human.

Other posts you might find interesting:
How to make a Hydrogen Drumkit
Making a Roll Sound Realistic
Multiple Outputs for Hydrogen
My Attempt at a Hydrogen Drumkit
Hydrogen Drumkits