Jazz and Blues Hydrogen Drum Beat Templates

Why do guitarists put drumsticks on the dash of their cars?

… So they can park in the Handicapped spot!

Lame, I know - but I kind of started a theme here with these drum beat templates and I didn’t want to let you down. So seriously now… I’ve working on another beat template which uses Jazz and Blues rhythms. But I tried something new this time - I noticed that in my beat templates a lot of the beats had similar characteristics and it made things really bulky. So with this template, I’ve made patterns for both the right and left hands as well as for the right foot (i.e. the kick drum). This means that you are able to make many different beats by just playing the any R-hand, L-hand and R-foot combination simultaneously...

For more, read the full post at the new home of Brian's Bedroom at: http://briansbedroom.org/

Funk Hydrogen Beat Templates

What are the last words a drummer says in a band?

..."Hey guys, why don't we try one of my songs?"

As you should know if you read my previous beat templates post, Hydrogen Drumbeat Templates - A Non-drummer's Best Friend, I have been creating beat templates in order to help non-drummers write better songs in Hydrogen. The basic idea is that you download the Hydrogen song which has many different patterns in it and rearrange these patterns until it suits your song.

In this post I present you with my second ever beat template which focuses around the funk genre. These beats, however, can be used in most genres such as rock, hip-hop, pop and even metal at times. You can download this template from the link below.

The actual template: BriansBeatsFUNK.h2song (235 kB)
Note: These songs require the YamahaVintageKit available for download from here.

A MP3 sample of the template: FUNKBeatsExample.mp3 (837 kB)
The Hydrogen song of the MP3: FUNKBeatsExample.h2song (235 kB)

Once again, I have only used a closed hi-hat for the right-hand rhythm, however it is easy enough to interchange this with whatever suits you, like the ride, open hats, or crash. Just copy the same pattern on the ride, or crash and then delete the notes from the hi-hat. I hope you enjoy creating new beats!

Other posts you might find interesting:
Hydrogen Drumbeat Templates - A Non-drummer's Best Friend
Hydrogen Drumkits
My Attempt at a Hydrogen Drumkit
Pimp my Hydrogen Beats
Making a Roll Sound Realistic
Sunday Bloody Sunday Hydrogen Beat

Hydrogen Drumbeat Templates - A Non-drummer's Best Friend

How do you know the stage is level?

...the drummer is drooling out of both sides of his mouth.

Yeah, yeah... I've heard them all. I know as a non-drummer it is very difficult to think like a drummer. Especially when most non-drummers reckon that drummers don't have the capability of thinking much :). However, to make a decent sounding drumbeat from a drum machine, you need to "think" like a drummer.

This can be quite a task, but don't fear! I, as a drummer, have done the thinking for you and made a bunch of Hydrogen beat templates which you can simply piece together to make a drumbeat. The concept is simple - all I have done is made a Hydrogen Song using various rock patterns. You can download this song and simply rearrange the patterns to suit you. Below is a link to the first beat template I have made:

BriansBeatsROCK.h2song (217 kB)
Note: These songs require the YamahaVintageKit available for download from here.

It consists of several basic 4/4 rock beats with a few fills. There is also a crash and drag pattern which can be overlaid on any of the pieces in order to pimp them. This sounds a bit weird but I have made an example song which shows just how easily these beat templates can be used. This can be downloaded from the link below:

ROCKBeatsExample.h2song (217 kB)
ROCKBeatsExample.mp3 (747 kB)

I have only used a closed hi-hat for the right-hand rhythm, however it is easy enough to interchange this with whatever suits you, like the ride, open hats, or crash. This is just my first attempt at beat templates. If I feel they are successful I will make more templates to suite the various genres such as Punk, Metal, Jazz, Funk, Latin and Pop. So please let me know by means of commenting on this post if you find these templates useful.

Other posts you might find interesting:
Hydrogen Drumbeat Templates: FUNK Beats
Hydrogen Drumkits
My Attempt at a Hydrogen Drumkit
Pimp my Hydrogen Beats
Making a Roll Sound Realistic
Sunday Bloody Sunday Hydrogen Beat

Sunday Bloody Sunday Hydrogen Drumbeat

U2's song, Sunday Bloody Sunday has quite a complicated drumbeat, so I decided to make a Hydrogen song out of it. I have done this for three reasons:

1. So that drummers can look at the Hydrogen drumbeat patterns and work out how to play it.
2. So that guitarists can play along to a decent drumbeat without getting their hands dirty.
3. Because its just too cool.

I used the YamahaVintageKit by ArtemioLabs (Downloadable from here). Note that you will need this drumkit to play the Hydrogen song (.h2song format). The song is available from the links below:

• Hydrogen Song (.h2song.zip) (3.9 KB)
• Short drumbeat sample (.mp3) (388 KB)
• Full length drumbeat (.mp3) (4.2 MB)

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

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

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