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Drum Programming Basics

Creating a solid drum pattern is the backbone of most music tracks. Drums or rhythm instruments should be the FIRST thing you program in your DAW. 1 For this reason, you also notice that I ordered my guide from Drums >> Bass >> Instruments >> Vocals.

Of course, like all art there is no one-size-fits-all solution. You can totally start with a melody or lyrics if that is what you like. In my experience, these are the toughest tracks to arrange.

I rather have a drum and rhythm that sets up the mood of the track, then fill it up with interesting elements.

Creating your first drum track​

Braindead method​

The easy way is to just buy some loops from Cymatics or cut the drum waves from a recording.

This is the fastest way to get started, but I do not recommend this method for the long term:

  • Your tempo and time signature becomes very opinionated (doesn't matter if you just make 4/4 music with constant 120 BPM).
  • Very hard to apply processing the the wave samples (as you will later learn, drums typically sound very bad out of the box, you need to do a lot of processing to make them sound good).
  • Its very hard for you to migrate your drum track to a new song. Chances are every song you make will use the same few drum tracks that gets boring to listen to in the long term.

Slicing individual wave method​

If you seen a typical FL tutorial video on Youtube, or even going through the Demo Projects, you will notice a lot of copy of waves stacked on multiple tracks in the Playlist window.

This is a common way of producing tracks by EDM producers and you will be find doing this forever.

Advantages:

  • You can replace drum samples anytime you want.
  • You can change the tempo and time signature of the drum track without affecting the rest of the song. 2
  • You can apply processing to each individual drum wave sample.
  • PITCH CHANGES allows you to do very creative things.

Disadvantages:

  • Its very hard to migrate your drum track to a new song. Every project requires you to create the rhythm structure from scratch.
  • Not the best use of your time.
  • Visually it is very easy to drag the waves offbeat.
  • No dynamics. Snare sounds equally punchy across the whole track, you dont have something like ghost snares. You notice this problem with the hi-hats in rap tracks that sounds so digital and boring. You can manage the dynamics problem by adding more samples, but your playlist will look like WTF.

Recording drums live​

The most traditional way of recording drums is to record them live. This method is always viable and preferred by professional live band performers, but lets talk about the problems so everyone can be prepared for what's coming.

  • Drumsets are expensive.
  • Drums are loud and sound treating a room is expensive.
  • You need to set up a lot of microphones -- for each percussion.
  • Changing samples means changing your drum physically.
  • No quantized performance. If you make a mistake, you will have to redo the whole thing. (Some people would prefer the "humanized" sound of a slight mistake / offbeat recording). you can always fix this by slicing the wave later so not the biggest problem.

MIDI method​

Best method for drum production (or any score writing) IMO.

You can always drag drop a finished drum recording and edit the beat any time you want.

Cheap, few mistakes. Problem is programming a good drum is also very challenging as you need to memorize the MIDI mappings for each percussion. Everything has a learning curve.

Disadvantages:

  • Percussion mapping is confusing and often different for different drum kits (Which sound does D4 hit?). This means that a direct export of MIDI may not reflect the same drum sounds.
  • Often you still have to do drum processing for each button you hit. (Unlike loops and waves that may already been processed).
  • NO PITCH CHANGES.

Starting IMMEDIATELY​

I recommend 2 free drum plugins for any beginner. You should already have a DAW, understand how to open plugins, and know how to download VST and load VSTs in your DAW.

MIDI Out + Fruity LSD / FL FLEX​

The mappings are standard and match 90% of all drum kits out there. Drum sounds boring, but it is a good place to simulate a drum loop by dragging drum.mid files into the channel and see how its being played.

FLEX is the default plugin FL Studio opens when you open any MIDI file.

MT-PowerDrumKit 2​

This is a professional drum plugin that has a lot of drum sounds that you can get for FREE. I use it all the time and I encourage you donate to the project if you can. Its worth is comparable to $99 in value.

You can build your drum loops from their GUI and its enough for you to create a industrial grade drum pattern.

Footnotes​

  1. There are acoustic tracks that don't use drums, but you will still notice how intentional the composer programs their rhythm through key chords or rhythm guitar strums. ↩

  2. Wave samples can get stretched when tempo is changed, which may affect the sound quality of your drums. Not an issue with transient heavy percussion like kick and snares, but very noticeable with crashes. ↩