Get 40% off an annual plan with Nebula: go.nebula.tv/12tone Or just go watch the full version of this video: nebula.tv/videos/12tone-write-better-drum-parts Some additional thoughts/corrections: 1) In retrospect I probably could've made it clearer that, when I was talking about how this might help communicate with drummers, I more meant in terms of giving you things to describe, not necessarily in terms of the language itself. This is still very much a theorist/composer's understanding of the instrument, not a drummer's, so it's describing the instrument on a slightly different level. The point is to give you questions to ask, the answers to which you can then give to your drummer and let them work out the technical details. 2) I couldn't actually find _where_ Buddy Rich said that quote at the beginning. It mostly just shows up on inspirational quote websites that don't cite sources, but it's also referenced on his official website, so I'm taking it on a bit of faith that the people in charge of safeguarding his legacy know if he actually said it. If not, I'm sorry, I did try to track it down but these sorts of things often happen in, like, live settings where the primary source gets lost. I did my best to confirm its validity. 3) Obviously my taste in what makes a "good" drum part is biased toward the sorts of rock, pop, and metal I mostly listen to, so grains of salt and whatnot as appropriate, but the principles here do apply across a broad range of popular styles even if the specific approaches taken in the examples I used don't necessarily fit. 4) Yes, the verse of Back In Black does feature a structural drum fill at the end of every phrase, so it's not literally just a basic rock beat but whatever it's such a good example otherwise. 5) I'm slightly oversimplifying my college arranging class experience: We did absolutely talk about orchestration, it was just mostly in the context of pitched instruments. (And, of course, theory class was pretty exclusively focused on pitch as well.) The drums were mostly an afterthought. 6) Geary's work doesn't seem to draw a distinction between the three registers and the three functions: He describes them as low, medium, and high, but then classifies them more based on their purpose, so many drums can cross over to different layers if they're doing different things. I think it's more useful to separate those two questions ("Which drums belong where?" and "Which drums are doing what?") so I added 8-Bit's terminology to distinguish. 7) Apologies for the points where I missed some kick drums in my notation. Didn't happen anywhere where it'd be relevant, but I think maybe the low-end on my headphones is going? Might need new ones 'cause those were some silly transcription errors.
Apologies in advance for my ocd kicking in. At 10:28 when you're transcribing the verse section of Living on a Prayer, the high-hat actually plays 8th notes. The hits on "&" are very subtle and hard to pick up. I promise they're there. Keep up the great content! :)
As a drummer, and as well 12Tone ;-) , how to you like Tipper's 'Big Question Small Head' at about 1:50 : ruclips.net/video/iswAbtsIYNY/видео.htmlfeature=shared ? Especially give the fact that it's probably all done with samples and midi.
I'd be curious to know if the video actually helps you write better parts. It was interesting, but I know a few people who sequence really good beats and they don't think about any of the stuff in this video. I think not settling for generic beats and mucking around in the midi roll (playing with subdivisions, swapping kick and snare hits etc) and listening to the results will get you rhythmically better quicker than watching a youtube video discussing it in general terms. So will dancing, boxing, or anything else with a heavy focus on timing and rhythm.
I understand he’s trying to generalize for a broader audience to understand, by as a drummer there is soooooooo much more to drums/percussion than anyone can easily comprehend
Basic: cymbals are high pitched drums Intermediate: drums are membranophones, and cymbals are suspended struck ideophones, covering more of a white noise spectrum compared to a focused area of pitch Advanced: cymbals are high pitched drums
I (not a drummer) wrote all the drums for my songs via midi. As I was writing I would try to imagine myself sitting at a drum kit and counting all the hits then counting my limbs to make sure I wasn’t writing something that would require an octopus to play.
I encourage you to deviate. Take advantage of the tools we have today. Lead singers can't perform harmonies live yet they're everywhere in recordings. Same can go for drums.
I couldn’t probably play half the stuff I write, but they’re still playable. I check that my parts could be actual drum parts but just played by a really good drummer
I agree with you. I used to just write what I thought sounded good and often it would not leave room for some of the variations described in this video. I now impose that same "octopus" rule (thanks for the term), then run the same patterns for the length of the song. Then when I decide which section will be a build there is room to add or substitute something without crowding the overall composition. And in a breakdown I can remove a part, or lower its dynamics, and let other instruments shine or just create some contrast. One thing I wish he covered more in this piece was transitions...drums do such a great job of connecting different sections and parts, and it's a tough thing to get a feel for.
@@averydossmusic You mean like with autotune and stuff? I think that just sounds super artificial to most people or in the worst case will just make the live performance disappointing.
I'm not. I'm sticking a vox organ preset thru 2 separate slicer fx, and calling it good. I suppose I should change. I do have a drum machine, or 2. Fine. I'll try. Usually, my drum machine beats are too weird to play along to, but I'll try to make some beats I'd play over. I gotta focus on leaving space, I think. Y'all convimced me.
This is great! One thing I’ll add as a drummer is that in my experience, most of us (especially in the marching percussion world) prefer that if an arranger is writing a note that’s just one hit (as opposed to a roll, for example), they don’t use a note value greater than a quarter note. Even if I’m playing a standard backbeat with the kick on 1 and 3, I think of those individual notes as standalone quarter notes, and adding in more note values makes sight reading, which is a massively important skill on drum set, harder than it needs to be.
Thanks for the tip! I compose everything on midi still, and I never pay attention to drum note duration because it never affects the sound of the midi drum, but sometimes the reason I'm writing this stuff is so that other people can actually play it. (Usually not, but sometimes.) I'd like to ask you something else about notation. How do you think a rock drummer would like a tom fill/roll notated? I always make up a fill that sounds like something a drummer might play, but I'd rather have an actual drummer nail down that sort of thing. Should I just not note anything and write "2-beat tom fill" or something? Thanks again!
@@beenaplumber8379 You’re welcome! The answer to your question is context-based. If you don’t have anything in mind and all you want is toms for a specific duration, that’s fine to say, but it’s totally fine and welcome to indicate types of rhythms (or even just 8ths, trips, 16ths, etc.), dynamics, or levels of complexity as well. Depending on what the other instruments are doing at the time, you might also indicate whether you want the fill to be ascending, descending, neither, or focus on one drum. Toms are tonal but not melodic (usually), but they can fit into the big picture more than you might think if orchestrated carefully. That being said, if literally all you have in mind is a fill that goes for a specific duration, just make sure the drummer has access to the rest of the arrangement and let them go to work. Nothing wrong with trusting the musicians if you don’t have a strong preference yourself, just be aware that you run the risk of them writing something that may not necessarily fit your personal style or vision for the track.
@@henryadkisson Thanks! Yeah, usually I have an idea about most of that stuff. What I want is, for example, if a drummer does a descending fill, I love it when they put unexpected stuff in the middle, like snare hits or choked hi hats, whatever fits. That's the creativity I don't do well sitting at my DAW. My tendency is to make the midi drum fills excessively complex and awkward, mostly because I don't want them all to sound the same (as midi drums do). I need a good drummer to be realistic and do creative fills that support the song instead of being a distraction (like my midi fills often are). So, the bottom line I'm getting is yeah, use text in that part of the score, specify direction (if any), complexity, dynamics, & speed, and give the drummer context. Question about context - Does that mean a note in the margin (like, "other instruments rest" or "bass walks down on 8th notes), something like that? I do theatrical music mostly now (themes, transitions, underscoring, etc), and I do appreciate your tips. Right now I'm working on my first rock-based music design in 13 years. The company I work with has their own in-house studio and high standards. You're helping me to up my game before I've found a drummer to bring in, and I am grateful! 🙂 (I think that drummer will be too.)
@@beenaplumber8379 Similar to other instruments, part of what makes individual elements of a drum fill sound cool is that drummers will naturally add those extra flairs you’re talking about ergonomically, maximizing sound quality. That doesn’t really translate very well to MIDI parts made by non-drummers, simply because they don’t have the hands-on experience to know what sounds natural. For those, I would suggest writing out the basic form of the fill you want and adding text saying something to the effect of “add some flair.” For parts you don’t have a real drummer for, I suggest prioritizing making sure that all the fills sound like they’re in the same song. Pure repetition is boring, but there’s no need to reinvent the wheel every 8 measures. Most people don’t actually know what hard drum parts sound like, so don’t worry too much about complexity. If a drummer wants to spice it up a little, that’s a bonus. For your context question, ideally the drummer would just have access to your MIDI recording/demo or a full score, but any text you include giving info on other instruments is welcome. You can also take a tactic from classical and jazz scores and just write in full-on cues. For rock, though, my experience is that you really just need the basic beat structure you want (kick and snare are usually sufficient and they can figure out which cymbal to use), the general feel, where you want fills, and any special requests you may have. I hope your project goes well!
Drummer here with nearly 25 years of experience! Everything here is absolutely correct at least for recording. For live music there are additional arrangement concerns, mostly revolving around keeping everyone together rhythmically. 1) Drum fills should be designed to lead into the next section on time and error free. Imagine you are playing a wind instrument or singing, a fill needs to deliver an expectation of: breath in NOW! and continue with the next phrase NOW! Not just a mechanism for delivering energy into the next section. Be careful with syncopated fills, odd numbers of beats, starting a fill on the e's or a's and playing all the way through the last beat of a measure. Imagine rhythmically imitating the wide sweeping gestures a conductor would make to indicate where the down beat is at the beginning of a new phrase. 2) The drummer should be informed of what everyone else is supposed to be playing. This helps in 2 ways. First It will help them create a complementary or counterpoint rhythm without micromanaging. Second, even the best performs sometimes get lost, behind or ahead and a competent, informed drummer is a huge stabilizing force. I've had many, many cases where I have prevented complete catastrophe by sensing this impending doom and simply parodying the rhythm another performer is supposed to be playing until we are all back on track. 3) Options. Most drummers, when given the chance, will naturally come up with many (3 or more) different variations for each section of a song depending on the live energy feedback from the other band members and the crowd. The arranger should request to hear how the arrangement changes with energy level.
At 5:30, no, we actually do exactly that-we don't think of the drum kit as a whole when discussing dynamics. We consider each individual instrument (cymbal, hi-hat, ride) separately because a ride, for instance, can have different dynamics like 'crash' and 'wave' that vary not just in overall volume but in how the material responds. In this sense, drummers must constantly adjust different levels depending on the moment, the part of the kit, the other instruments (and how much spectrum they’re filling), and so on.
I've been drawn recently to bands that have a primary drummer focus like Twenty One Pilots and Thirty Seconds to Mars. Really interesting music can come when you let drummers do their thing. I'm also reminded of a story of how King Crimson was writing a song by jamming, the drummer listened for a bit, listened a bit more, then put his drumsticks down. And they credited him on the Songwriting for that piece because he knew that the song didn't need drums, so he didn't unnecessarily add them.
Hearing the band version of "My Immortal" punched me in the face with nostalgia. Seriously, though, this is such a helpful video for me as a budding composer who knows very little about drums. Although I am proud of myself for having correctly identified the blast beats in Periphery's "The Way the News Goes" years ago.
As a drummer, spot on with the progression. One thing worth mentioning is the use of slashes and cues in drum notation which leaves it up to the percussionist, but gives enough details to what the rest of the ensemble is doing to stay join in key rhythmic motifs that are played in unison, without being over prescriptive and boring throughout the main phrases.
Sharing this with the PICO-8 Discord *immediately* - it's even easier than usual to write a generic repetitive drum part when you have the size restrictions PICO-8's tracker does, and that makes this kind of arranging info super valuable. Thanks!
5:57 This can be applied to any creative project you're a lead on. I'm like this whenever I do film work, it's allot easier to tell the cameraman to do something if I'm speaking the language of camera people and same with the actors, or the prop people. Being the Director / head creative of a project requires you to be multi-lingual, able to effectively communicate your ideas into the words that your fellow creatives best understand.
What really changed my programmed drums is having access to good sounds. The same basic backbeat drum can sound absolutely lifeless, and pumping depending on the timbre. I had a tendency to overcomplicate rhythms untill I bought some sampled drum kits that I really liked (in my case: the Abbey Road collection from Native Instruments), which really helps me to keep things simple while thinking: yes, this is it!
Abby Road collection has it all. Complicated programmed drums can be very cool though, if they are kind of playing melodies. Like Aphex Twin's 'Vordhosbn'. Or Tipper's 'Big Question Small Head' at about 1:50 : ruclips.net/video/iswAbtsIYNY/видео.htmlfeature=shared What do you think if you here one of those? Tipper does use fantastic drum and percussion samples though, and knows just what fx fit when and where. Mixing the Dub tradition of Lee Scratch Perry and the Glitch tradition of Autreche.
As a drummer, I think the main thing to remember when you're writing a drum part is that you're not writing a beat, you're writing a part. You CAN just write a looping 1 bar beat, the same way you can write a 4-chord loop with no variation. But keep in mind that what's true for every other instrument is also true for the drums. The bass CAN just play the root. The guitar CAN just play the chords. The singer CAN just sing the scale. But the mind rewards a part that seeks to be clever, cohesive, involved. One of my favorite drum parts is Geek USA by the Smashing Pumpkins. Right away, the drums and the rhythms of the guitar riff are either in harmony or in counterpoint. And as the song expands and you become familiar with these rhythms and textures, the drums develop and mutate the motifs, deploy them independently of the guitar, or, for example, juxtapose a rhythm the guitar had used earlier *against* the riff it's playing now. The drums remember. The drums listen. They can't hold a pitch, but they can still harmonize. Don't forget that.
What helped a lot for me is to put a random pitch variation on each drum hit (except the bass drum), just a verrrry small variation, makes it sound a lot more organic!
In the beginning I did too. It takes time and trial and error. Also ask yourself: What kind of drum/progression do I want for this particular song? Sometimes challenging yourself to notate/write the MIDI of a song that inspires you just by ear and study what variations make it so great. A good example of how drums and percussion can play "quesion and answer" even with samples is Tipper's 'Big Question Small Head' at about 1:50 : ruclips.net/video/iswAbtsIYNY/видео.htmlfeature=shared
Quick tip: If you're working in a DAW and are struggling to get differentiate different sections, percussion wise, a quick and dirty shortcut is to just bring in a different virtual kit and have it play the same part, then add small variations to taste.
Drummer here, awesome video! One thing I think you kinda missed though is how drums drive songs into new sections. You can create anticipation that a new section is coming by slowly opening the high-hat (think The Middle by Jimmy Eat World), with drum fills (think Breed by Nirvana), and/or with dynamics by increasing the power (think Plug-In Baby by Muse). All of these things are usually done on the last measure before a new section, and in my experience are almost always driven by the drummer. It's also a great cue for when you want to change sections if you're just improv jamming with other musicians.
I think that you need to group snare separately from toms rather than lump it all in "medium drums". The snare is the accent drum and it generally does a fundamentally different job to the toms. Indeed it's actually more common that you can swap out a cymbal "engine" part to the toms for a dynamic change than swap for example a snare hit with a tom and that is because generally the snare drum and kick drum are performing very specific roles with respect to accent.
Hard truth: as a non-drummer, you will probably never do any better than "fine" with your drum writing. There are drum parts that make drummers ooo and ahh, and they are written by drummers. The steps outlined here, as true and important as they are, help you avoid bad drum parts more than they help you achieve greatness. Pleasant truth: drumming on your leg totally counts, and the listen-practice-play method is as available to you as it is anyone, and will slowly but surely help you to think drummerly. If you go right now and jam on a bongo with a song you like, I can almost guarantee you will learn something fundamental about rhythm.
100% stealing the term “drummerly” Also, totally agree with your assessment. As a percussionist and instructor for some marching bands, I am baffled at some of the drum parts that get written by arrangers who clearly had no guidance. Hopefully this video helps steer them more toward legible, practical parts that can then be adjusted by drummers to actually be engaging and contribute to the music.
There are a few electronic musicians though, that have done stunning drum parts. Like Aphex Twin's 'Vordhosbn'. Or Tipper's 'Big Question Small Head' at about 1:50 : ruclips.net/video/iswAbtsIYNY/видео.htmlfeature=shared What do you think if you here one of those?
@@The_Accuser okay firstly, thanks for the dank music recs, I've been listening to a lot of venetian snares etc. recently. secondly, I would say Aphex Twin etc. has done enough listening, reproducing, and creating of rhythms not to be a "non-drummer". it's really more about having exposure to and experience with the concepts to me than it is about studying an instrument (to the point that I think a DAW is definitely instrument enough for stretching your drummer muscles). drummer/non-drummer feel like insufficient words, but I don't have better ones.
@@jkid1134 Sorry for coming across as dank. I'm pleasantly surprised someone here listens to Venetian Snares. On channels like Rick Beato and also 12tone, I just never hear anything about IDM, Glitchhop, or experimental electronic underground music in general. Yeah. Getting a feel for swing, accents and phrasing in a DAW plus just jamming with hands and fingers does eventually lead to a 'drummerly' way of thinking. 😄
@@The_Accuser dank is definitely a compliment here :) a lot of the stuff I listen to is impacted pretty directly by the experimental electronic stuff, whether it's also experimental like a.g.cook, more structurally pop like slayyyter, or drummers like louis cole. not to mention, like, music I found from rhythm games like t+pazolite. even on the DAW, and even in "simpler" music, there are cool and boring choices, yknow what I mean? like, listening to valentino khan, I find myself thinking "woah that's the rhythm from the vocal sample on the snare drum as a fill" or "damn that hi hat is really nestled in there" or so on.
I only ever fought with the drummer over what a rest is, how to count a song in, how to count to four, how to avoid replacing whole notes with fermatas, and what to do while he was counting to four; aside from that he was free to do whatever he wanted.
song where the dynamics change by hitting the drums harder: Race for the Prize by the Flaming Lips from the verses to the choruses. They also go from close mic’ed drums to a single overhead to emphasize the shift
6:08 You just perfectly described the career of David Bowie and his ability to make so many great albums across so many genres. He selected musicians with the specific skill set and approach to music he needed to actualise his vision, and communicated his vision to them effectively.
There's an hidden writing rule when it comes to voices. When it's 16th notes, and you play both of your hands on hi-hat, the snare is in the same voice as the hi-hat. When it's 8th notes and you only use your dominant hand for the hi-hat, the snare is on the second voice, the same as the kick.
I have accidentally written so many drum parts that would require you to have three hands to play it, because of that exact thing you describe! Thankfully, the drummers I worked with almost expect this kind of stuff in notation
@@jaydenjbryant8665 in a typical 8th note beat ( like the basic rock one) a drummer would play the snare with one hand and the hihat with another, and so they are played and thought of as 2 separate "voices". however, sometimes when playing 16th note beats (like a trap beat) a drummer will use both hands to play the hihat, and add a few snare hits, and in this mode the hihats and snare parts can't be separated, they are played in the same "voice".
@@_okedata i mean I disagree that doesnt really make any sense you are still hitting a different voice, just because you are playing more notes on the hi hat doesnt mean its the same voice i dont get it lol. Ive been a drummer for 12 years😂
@@jaydenjbryant8665 idk, i just tried to explain what the commenter said. Its more like they're both being played by the same pair of hands, so certain grooves/rhythms are harder/less natural. obviously you can still play 16th notes with one hand.
One of the best things I did whilst studying music in college was to learn “Jazz Percussion”. 1) It fulfilled my individual performance requirement and 2) it was an opportunity to be familiar with an instrument that could be useful in my own work.
After about 12 years of programming drums and ignoring conventions in the beginning, I *slowly* start to feel like I know how drum programming works (and feels right). This video is very useful in finding more tools to think less and vibe more, thank you!
Love this, a classic "over-thinking out loud" exercise that is exactly what I do in a mental loop on the cusp of showing a band a new song I wrote. WHAT EVEN IS THIS AMAZING INSTRUMENT
When you talk about beat, engine, and constant in drums and then use Bleed as your example, I immediately know you know what you're talking about. I love it.
Good ideas here, and there’s the whole interaction of drum parts with singing and other instruments - leaving and filling space to emphasize and support everything else that’s going on - that makes a song’s drums truly wonderful
I was so excited when I got the Sneak Peak email! I dabble in EDM production (is that even a thing anymore?), and am always interested in ways to take a 90-second “doodle” up to a longer song. This is wonderful - keep up the great work!!
Have you ever checked out a Japanese rock band called Band-Maid? Their drummer is quite amazing at really creative patterns, especially incorporating double kick, and the guitar player/composer often writes drum parts that would require an extra arm or two for her to play them, so she comes back with 2 or 3 more playable options, but are still innovative and evolve through the song as they never copy/paste any segment of their songs. Their songs like "Blooming", "Rinne", "Dice" or "I Still Seek Revenge" are just a few of many mind bending percussion songs.
I've worked on improving my drums over the years and have used some of this and other elements of your analysis are great additional ways for me to think about the process. Thanks for another useful and insightful video.
Rhythms are *so* important! Besides all the things you mention here, there are a number of songs I can identify just from the opening drum riff and a bunch more where the impact of the song (for me anyway) is tied directly to the rhythmic choices that were made. Like, "Life is a highway" even though that's quite a bit more than just the drums going on there.
Oh there are a bunch of those songs in classic rock. Just from memory: Something - Beatles Jamie's Crying, Hot for Teacher - Van Halen Slow Ride - Foghat (Just a beat, not really a riff, but it serves the function) Rock & Roll - Led Zeppelin YYZ - Rush Gimme All Your Lovin - ZZ-Top Back in Black - AC/DC Take the Money & Run, Swingtown - Steve Miller Life's Been Good - Joe Walsh Walk This Way - Aerosmith Livin After Midnight - Judas Priest Don't Bring Me Down - ELO Engineers - Gary Numan Jools and Jim - Pete Townshend Okay those last two weren't huge contributions to the classic rock canon, but I do love them! I'm sure there are a ton more, and a lot of them I'll be embarrassed to have missed. A list like this could get insanely long. (I couldn't think of anything from 2 of my favorite drummers, Keith Moon and Stewart Copeland. Synchronicity 2 starts with a single hit, but I don't think that counts...)
Thinking low, mid and high drums is ok, but there is much more to it when you're writing drum parts. Think more of open and close sounds, like open and closed hi-hats, tip and cone of a cymbal, hi and low tuned snare and toms, tight or loose kick, rimshot vs hitting the center, close up and far miking, riding vs. crashing a cymbal, ghost rolls vs. flams vs. a single hit, etc. Also half time and double time, on the overall section as well as on an individual drum or cymbal, like double time on a closed hi-hat, half time on an open hi-hat or ride. Swing, shuffle and groove vs mechanical beats without these. Time displacement of a kick or snare beat. Placing the kick on beat one vs on beat two. Less fills or more fills. Dense vs. simpler parts. Pumping the hi-hats for energy (changing the foot pedal position while hitting). These all define the pulse, backbeat and the energy of a drum track and its sections.
A friend recently reminded me of the 8bitmusictheory drum video, so it was on the top of my mind, and seeing this it felt like it was a bit of a sassy comeback lol. but of course not, this is a continuation, and a great one at that (from a drummer herself). Thanks for making this, it really helps put into words the things I already feel when I write drum parts
5:34 An example I can think of a drum beat that uses straight up dynamics (it might be something else but it really just feels like they’re playing the drums harder), is the drum beat from “Another Space Song” by Failure. I think they were definitely going for a metronomic, machine like feel and the only difference between verse and chorus is the drummer plays a little louder
This is amazing, just what I needed now. To be honest, I already hooked on the 8bit stuff you mentioned recently, and found his actual vid that got me going by explaining the beat-engine-constant concept... This one further develops that idea nicely! Thanks
I would say, as a former drummer, that your time and money would be well-spent if you bought a basic drum machine like a TR-08 (hard to program, but a faithful 808 stand in and funky AF) or a TR-6S (more drum machine than most people will ever need) and learned its functions completely. Learn how to do “weak beats”, accents, flams, double strokes, triple strokes, voice layering, etc. learn how to use the time scale and how to run different time signatures. Learn the LFOs to get different sound design options and effects. Then do what all of us did. Listen to Bonham, Jeff Porcaro, Neil Peart, Clyde Stubblefield, Max Roach, Stewart Copeland, Steve Smith, Al Jackson, Jr. , Lenny White, J.R. Robinson, Steve Gadd, Carlito Mendoza, on and on and on. Listen to it, then try to program it out. Doesn’t need to be exact, but just try to get the overall feel. The subtleties are what really make or break a good drum part. Back in Black is very sparse and wide open, but it swings like crazy. If he tried to play something busy in there, it wouldn’t sound as good. “50 Ways” is very syncopated and unusually accented for a pop song, but it complements the quiet vocal and bare bones instrumentation perfectly.
Love the call out on one pattern over a whole track. Feel like it's been way overused and maybe moreso lately. Anyways, love the video because I've been itching to get into production and needed a video just like this. You're the best!
I honestly think western music hasn't developed drums or percussion in general as other traditions, some years ago I felt stuck in my drumming because drums have basicaly the same role in many different generes, I noticed that when I started studing latin american, african and indian traditions, where percussions while having the same rithmic responsability as in western, they have developed more complex basis that are still basic but definetly more flavory. In some african traditions percussions are based on the sounds of language or patterns found in nature or labor, wich allow to get complex sincopation and accenting in an intuitive and easy way. here is an example ruclips.net/video/BdBRuHuUhJo/видео.html Latin american and indian traditions have so many basic patterns that cover a lot of polyrithmia and layering that is hard to find in western aproaches where that kind of work is common in the melodic instruments but rare on percussions. Cumbia and salsa are good examples in latin american music, tabla music and konakkol for indian tradition.
First of all, this is great - these approaches are going straight into my composition toolbox. Second, a silly question - why the ant at 11:42? I've seen that ant in several 12tone videos and have been going moderately mad trying and failing to identify its meaning. I'd love to know if it has any special significance.
As a 20+ year beatmaker/sequencer/bassist and 2 year actual drummer, this was still useful as a top level view of "what am I actually trying to do?" On a personal basis, the whole point of moving to live drum was to break up all the monotony of a straight 2 or 4 bar drum loop (I used to do 4-6 similar patterns in 8 bars, usually), so I just throw in extra, or remove one or two hits from one or more of the three drum registers; maybe for a full section, maybe for just that bar. Depends on how it sounded that first time. Of course repeatability is a huge issue when you do that 'live jauntiness'.
Oh wow Lemonworld, that's such a good song. The National have some amazing drum parts, always super unique and interesting. Squalor Victoria and Sea of Love are two favourites of mine
Interesting video, as usual. The three layers angle is definitely a valid one, though I want to add an alternate angle too: in jazz and funk drumming particularly, but in fills in other genres too, we can also think in melodies, or licks if you will, where the different layers and sounds are integrated into one figure, rather than thinking of separate rhythms for each of them. One example is linear drumming, for which I strongly recommend David Garibaldi's book "Future Sounds". It also outlines various other concepts, such as permutations, where you repeatedely move over one of the layers a certain amount to 'the right' or 'the left' in consecutive bars.
Good Day! I always enjoy your content, but I particularly enjoy these - I guess I'll call them General Pop Theory videos? They provide a kind a horizontal continuity to tie together the thoughts you share in the more vertical Let's Take It Apart videos. More please! This kind of thing is extremely helpful. I typically say things to my drummers like "Boom chuck boom chuck," or "Blang spangalang spangalang..." Now I have a whole new vocabulary to use. Also (piano player here) I can't tell you how many times I've heard variations on "Play a better thing." :) My "favorite" was a reggae band where I could never find the middle path between "To hip for the room," and "Too white..." Toxic reggae...whoda thunk! Thanks for everything you bring to this crazy world. And Peace! Kenny
It's clear that you need to coordinate the "intrumental" elements of a song with the percussion elements. The most obvious example is between bass instruments and the low drums. You could think of a bass player that is playing primarily down beats as functioning as a low drum function. This opens up multiple ways for them to work together. You could have one drop out, you could have them playing different parts of the beat, you could take the opportunity of leaving out the low drums to include additional mid or high drum parts. Similar things could happen with other aspects of the collaboration.
Id recommend using PAS (Percussive Arts Society) notation when writing for a percussionist to play. Most notation software defaults to that, but using in pretty much guarantees that the drummer will know what instrument you want them to play without a key.
Something for non-percussionists to keep in mind when writing drum parts that wasn’t addressed (and kind of unfortunately reinforced) in this video: Unless you’re writing a drum roll or cymbal swell or something else that goes in for several beats, please don’t use half/whole notes in your notation. It might seem strange to folks who play other instruments, but common drum notation practices avoid long note values for sounds that basically are just an attack/“articulation.” In the drumset groove written around 3:00, the kick drum is shown as a whole note. A quarter note will suffice. Cheers!
One of my favorite drum takes on a song is "One Headlight" by The Wallflowers. It's nothing but kick, snare, and high hat, and it's compelling the entire way through. If you're remembering a crash cymbal hit in that song, you're remembering a cover version or a live version, because the album version is nothing but some of THE tightest stick work, and I think it's underappreciated.
Sometimes I wonder if the toms were arranged in descending order on the kit do purposefully create a sort of decrescendo. Especially as drumming evolved they do that in so many fills, going downward until ending on a crash, imitating a falling object before it finally collides with the ground.
I'm a guitarist/ bassist and just bought an electronic drum kit because I want to finally be able to make songs with full instrumentation from my bedroom; I've been having a ton of fun, but my drumming skills definitely need some work. thanks for the video good sir 👍🏾
I thought this was going to be on how to effectively notate drum parts for your drummer to read. Either way you made the video well. I would say some good advice for writing better drum parts is just learn a little about how to actually play the drums if you can. Also, I come from a jazz background and I learned that when writing parts for actual drummers to read, you want to use as little direct notation as possible. If you really need them to play an exact rhythm, then write it and put measures with slashes after it saying "repeat" or "continue simile". In jazz drumming, you typically learn several types of "feels" (e.g. two-feel, samba), and any one song will simply use one of those at a time, so measures filled with slashes and the feel indicated by text is sufficient for the majority of the song. Where specific notation comes in is for "hits" - times when the drummer should accent the band's accented rhythms, e.g. with the snare or cymbal. For that, you simply put small notes above the top line of the staff indicating the important rhythm the band is playing. These two elements - measures filled with slashes and hits notated above - is what a good drum part looks like for a lot of music. The style is simply conveyed via text. Steve Gadd, an impeccable reader and player, reportedly often asked to simply read the bassist's chart instead because it had all the rhythmic information he needed to play the song effectively.
This was a very interesting watch. I would love a follow-up video discussing how to convey 'feel' into programmed drum parts, i.e. how a rock beat differs in feel from a jazz beat. Believe me, it's a thing...
my aproach: click the piano roll till it works jk i usually just make the kick follow the guitar big chords, the snare gives the" tempo feel" of the song you can double or half it depending on the part , and the cymbals for pulse and separation
"You can make a section seem bigger by just hitting the drums harder..." On the Hell Freezes Over version of Hotel California, during the intro, the sustain on the low drum sound is cavernous. It is unlike anything else I've ever heard.
Thanks for the informative video. A slight critique on the writing, though. At 5:43 you bring up the three kinds of changes you can make to a drum part. Then you don't tell us what these 3 changes are for the next 45 seconds and instead go off on several tangents. That made me think I missed something on the first listen and I had to go back to listen to the last minute again. That could have been structured better, imho.
I have always written my drum parts like a dance. where many rock songs would have a 4 bar loop of the same with with a an extra hit in the last bar and only do fills after 16 bars, I always took an A-B-A-C structure to my writing, where everything was a constantly evolving variation on a theme, instead of A-A-A-B-A-A-A-B-A-A-A-B-A-A-A-Fill I would constantly shift and evolve with A-B-A-C-A-D-A-E-A-F-A-C-A-G-A-Fill instead. almost like a improv jazz session, but with rock.
I normally have a strong deeply internalized refusal of my own understanding and ability, but then sometimes I watch something like this hoping to learn something new and find myself saying "wait isn't this completely intuitive..."
If you’re a vocalist, would you kindly make a short video or video series on the steps of learning vocals? In my experience it’s much more confusing then learning guitar or something
Drummer here of 35 years and counting 😉. You've covered a lot of ground there at what felt like 300bpm! For those who are new to thinking about drum parts, the most important starting point I would put forward is to avoid the trap of thinking about drums as keeping time. The pulse is present regardless of whether the drummer is playing. The drums add mood, vibe, dynamics, excitement, anticipation, tension and release. Playing a standard pattern creates certainty and confidence for example. Displacing a beat adds tension that can be resolved either in that phrase or later in the song. A drummer with a wide vocabulary should have hundreds of options to select from. Far too many to cover in a 20 min video. That's why studio greats like Hal Blaine and Steve Gadd are so highly respected - they had the knowledge, imagination and skill to create 'the perfect part' on the spot and nail it in one take (usually). One last point (I could go on for weeks here!) Is that drummers don't consciously think in terms of low notes, mid notes and high notes. We normally think about the placement of bass (refered to as kick drum in recording studios to avoid confusion with the bass guitar) drum and snare drum parts in terms of a 'call and response' relationship, then how these are tied together by way of sub divisions. The sub divisions are 90% these days in the form of 8th notes or 16th notes on the hi-hat. The rest of the kit (Tom's and cymbals) are there for fills that are used to create the extra tension / release etc. Those are the true basics imo just to try and support the sentiment of the video. Hope that helps
I kept thinking about Tyler Coburn, drummer in Yautja, while watching this video. Being a grind/sludge band, changing the "high drums" is important to give the fast parts their own individual flair, together with playing sparser arrangements when the band's sludge sensibilities come in. Playing the Think break and immediately saying "and break it up" made me go yeah, it has been broken up every conceivable way Also didn't expect the Dem Bow to show up. I bet there's already a couple comments blasting reggaeton like many electronic genres also don't change their drum patterns at all
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Or just go watch the full version of this video: nebula.tv/videos/12tone-write-better-drum-parts
Some additional thoughts/corrections:
1) In retrospect I probably could've made it clearer that, when I was talking about how this might help communicate with drummers, I more meant in terms of giving you things to describe, not necessarily in terms of the language itself. This is still very much a theorist/composer's understanding of the instrument, not a drummer's, so it's describing the instrument on a slightly different level. The point is to give you questions to ask, the answers to which you can then give to your drummer and let them work out the technical details.
2) I couldn't actually find _where_ Buddy Rich said that quote at the beginning. It mostly just shows up on inspirational quote websites that don't cite sources, but it's also referenced on his official website, so I'm taking it on a bit of faith that the people in charge of safeguarding his legacy know if he actually said it. If not, I'm sorry, I did try to track it down but these sorts of things often happen in, like, live settings where the primary source gets lost. I did my best to confirm its validity.
3) Obviously my taste in what makes a "good" drum part is biased toward the sorts of rock, pop, and metal I mostly listen to, so grains of salt and whatnot as appropriate, but the principles here do apply across a broad range of popular styles even if the specific approaches taken in the examples I used don't necessarily fit.
4) Yes, the verse of Back In Black does feature a structural drum fill at the end of every phrase, so it's not literally just a basic rock beat but whatever it's such a good example otherwise.
5) I'm slightly oversimplifying my college arranging class experience: We did absolutely talk about orchestration, it was just mostly in the context of pitched instruments. (And, of course, theory class was pretty exclusively focused on pitch as well.) The drums were mostly an afterthought.
6) Geary's work doesn't seem to draw a distinction between the three registers and the three functions: He describes them as low, medium, and high, but then classifies them more based on their purpose, so many drums can cross over to different layers if they're doing different things. I think it's more useful to separate those two questions ("Which drums belong where?" and "Which drums are doing what?") so I added 8-Bit's terminology to distinguish.
7) Apologies for the points where I missed some kick drums in my notation. Didn't happen anywhere where it'd be relevant, but I think maybe the low-end on my headphones is going? Might need new ones 'cause those were some silly transcription errors.
Apologies in advance for my ocd kicking in.
At 10:28 when you're transcribing the verse section of Living on a Prayer, the high-hat actually plays 8th notes. The hits on "&" are very subtle and hard to pick up. I promise they're there.
Keep up the great content! :)
As a drummer, and as well 12Tone ;-) , how to you like Tipper's 'Big Question Small Head' at about 1:50 : ruclips.net/video/iswAbtsIYNY/видео.htmlfeature=shared
? Especially give the fact that it's probably all done with samples and midi.
"I wish i knew how to do good drum parts" 12tone, uploading the video i wanted 3 seconds ago:
this happened to me too
literally
Brooo, same, it even feels a bit scary
Same! I was just writing a song where I wanted to make better drum parts
I'd be curious to know if the video actually helps you write better parts. It was interesting, but I know a few people who sequence really good beats and they don't think about any of the stuff in this video.
I think not settling for generic beats and mucking around in the midi roll (playing with subdivisions, swapping kick and snare hits etc) and listening to the results will get you rhythmically better quicker than watching a youtube video discussing it in general terms.
So will dancing, boxing, or anything else with a heavy focus on timing and rhythm.
_classifies a cymbal as a "high drum"_
Drummers: *internal screaming*
just speaking as one having recorded/mixed full kits, crash cymbals are quite chesty
I understand he’s trying to generalize for a broader audience to understand, by as a drummer there is soooooooo much more to drums/percussion than anyone can easily comprehend
Basic: cymbals are high pitched drums
Intermediate: drums are membranophones, and cymbals are suspended struck ideophones, covering more of a white noise spectrum compared to a focused area of pitch
Advanced: cymbals are high pitched drums
Obv, high-drums are the ones at chest level.
Duh.
I (not a drummer) wrote all the drums for my songs via midi. As I was writing I would try to imagine myself sitting at a drum kit and counting all the hits then counting my limbs to make sure I wasn’t writing something that would require an octopus to play.
Yeah, but except for in all-octopus bands, the octopus is ALWAYS the drummer...
I encourage you to deviate. Take advantage of the tools we have today. Lead singers can't perform harmonies live yet they're everywhere in recordings. Same can go for drums.
I couldn’t probably play half the stuff I write, but they’re still playable. I check that my parts could be actual drum parts but just played by a really good drummer
I agree with you. I used to just write what I thought sounded good and often it would not leave room for some of the variations described in this video. I now impose that same "octopus" rule (thanks for the term), then run the same patterns for the length of the song. Then when I decide which section will be a build there is room to add or substitute something without crowding the overall composition. And in a breakdown I can remove a part, or lower its dynamics, and let other instruments shine or just create some contrast.
One thing I wish he covered more in this piece was transitions...drums do such a great job of connecting different sections and parts, and it's a tough thing to get a feel for.
@@averydossmusic You mean like with autotune and stuff? I think that just sounds super artificial to most people or in the worst case will just make the live performance disappointing.
IM TRYING, 12TONE
I also am
He’s too good tho. If you’re trying, you’re gaining so much
I'm not. I'm sticking a vox organ preset thru 2 separate slicer fx, and calling it good. I suppose I should change. I do have a drum machine, or 2. Fine. I'll try.
Usually, my drum machine beats are too weird to play along to, but I'll try to make some beats I'd play over. I gotta focus on leaving space, I think. Y'all convimced me.
This is great! One thing I’ll add as a drummer is that in my experience, most of us (especially in the marching percussion world) prefer that if an arranger is writing a note that’s just one hit (as opposed to a roll, for example), they don’t use a note value greater than a quarter note. Even if I’m playing a standard backbeat with the kick on 1 and 3, I think of those individual notes as standalone quarter notes, and adding in more note values makes sight reading, which is a massively important skill on drum set, harder than it needs to be.
Nice. Noted.
Thanks for the tip! I compose everything on midi still, and I never pay attention to drum note duration because it never affects the sound of the midi drum, but sometimes the reason I'm writing this stuff is so that other people can actually play it. (Usually not, but sometimes.)
I'd like to ask you something else about notation. How do you think a rock drummer would like a tom fill/roll notated? I always make up a fill that sounds like something a drummer might play, but I'd rather have an actual drummer nail down that sort of thing. Should I just not note anything and write "2-beat tom fill" or something? Thanks again!
@@beenaplumber8379 You’re welcome! The answer to your question is context-based. If you don’t have anything in mind and all you want is toms for a specific duration, that’s fine to say, but it’s totally fine and welcome to indicate types of rhythms (or even just 8ths, trips, 16ths, etc.), dynamics, or levels of complexity as well. Depending on what the other instruments are doing at the time, you might also indicate whether you want the fill to be ascending, descending, neither, or focus on one drum. Toms are tonal but not melodic (usually), but they can fit into the big picture more than you might think if orchestrated carefully.
That being said, if literally all you have in mind is a fill that goes for a specific duration, just make sure the drummer has access to the rest of the arrangement and let them go to work. Nothing wrong with trusting the musicians if you don’t have a strong preference yourself, just be aware that you run the risk of them writing something that may not necessarily fit your personal style or vision for the track.
@@henryadkisson Thanks! Yeah, usually I have an idea about most of that stuff. What I want is, for example, if a drummer does a descending fill, I love it when they put unexpected stuff in the middle, like snare hits or choked hi hats, whatever fits. That's the creativity I don't do well sitting at my DAW. My tendency is to make the midi drum fills excessively complex and awkward, mostly because I don't want them all to sound the same (as midi drums do). I need a good drummer to be realistic and do creative fills that support the song instead of being a distraction (like my midi fills often are).
So, the bottom line I'm getting is yeah, use text in that part of the score, specify direction (if any), complexity, dynamics, & speed, and give the drummer context.
Question about context - Does that mean a note in the margin (like, "other instruments rest" or "bass walks down on 8th notes), something like that?
I do theatrical music mostly now (themes, transitions, underscoring, etc), and I do appreciate your tips. Right now I'm working on my first rock-based music design in 13 years. The company I work with has their own in-house studio and high standards. You're helping me to up my game before I've found a drummer to bring in, and I am grateful! 🙂 (I think that drummer will be too.)
@@beenaplumber8379 Similar to other instruments, part of what makes individual elements of a drum fill sound cool is that drummers will naturally add those extra flairs you’re talking about ergonomically, maximizing sound quality. That doesn’t really translate very well to MIDI parts made by non-drummers, simply because they don’t have the hands-on experience to know what sounds natural. For those, I would suggest writing out the basic form of the fill you want and adding text saying something to the effect of “add some flair.” For parts you don’t have a real drummer for, I suggest prioritizing making sure that all the fills sound like they’re in the same song. Pure repetition is boring, but there’s no need to reinvent the wheel every 8 measures. Most people don’t actually know what hard drum parts sound like, so don’t worry too much about complexity. If a drummer wants to spice it up a little, that’s a bonus.
For your context question, ideally the drummer would just have access to your MIDI recording/demo or a full score, but any text you include giving info on other instruments is welcome. You can also take a tactic from classical and jazz scores and just write in full-on cues. For rock, though, my experience is that you really just need the basic beat structure you want (kick and snare are usually sufficient and they can figure out which cymbal to use), the general feel, where you want fills, and any special requests you may have. I hope your project goes well!
Drummer here with nearly 25 years of experience! Everything here is absolutely correct at least for recording. For live music there are additional arrangement concerns, mostly revolving around keeping everyone together rhythmically.
1) Drum fills should be designed to lead into the next section on time and error free. Imagine you are playing a wind instrument or singing, a fill needs to deliver an expectation of: breath in NOW! and continue with the next phrase NOW! Not just a mechanism for delivering energy into the next section. Be careful with syncopated fills, odd numbers of beats, starting a fill on the e's or a's and playing all the way through the last beat of a measure. Imagine rhythmically imitating the wide sweeping gestures a conductor would make to indicate where the down beat is at the beginning of a new phrase.
2) The drummer should be informed of what everyone else is supposed to be playing. This helps in 2 ways. First It will help them create a complementary or counterpoint rhythm without micromanaging. Second, even the best performs sometimes get lost, behind or ahead and a competent, informed drummer is a huge stabilizing force. I've had many, many cases where I have prevented complete catastrophe by sensing this impending doom and simply parodying the rhythm another performer is supposed to be playing until we are all back on track.
3) Options. Most drummers, when given the chance, will naturally come up with many (3 or more) different variations for each section of a song depending on the live energy feedback from the other band members and the crowd. The arranger should request to hear how the arrangement changes with energy level.
At 5:30, no, we actually do exactly that-we don't think of the drum kit as a whole when discussing dynamics. We consider each individual instrument (cymbal, hi-hat, ride) separately because a ride, for instance, can have different dynamics like 'crash' and 'wave' that vary not just in overall volume but in how the material responds. In this sense, drummers must constantly adjust different levels depending on the moment, the part of the kit, the other instruments (and how much spectrum they’re filling), and so on.
And a competent drummer, particularly the live performer, will self balance across the kit to fit a venue.
Thank you, on behalf of all percussion illiterate people
Trust me as a drummer this is just as important to me lol
Yes , just what I've been looking for too. Even if 12tones' approach means having to put in more work to appreciate what is going on.
I've been drawn recently to bands that have a primary drummer focus like Twenty One Pilots and Thirty Seconds to Mars. Really interesting music can come when you let drummers do their thing.
I'm also reminded of a story of how King Crimson was writing a song by jamming, the drummer listened for a bit, listened a bit more, then put his drumsticks down. And they credited him on the Songwriting for that piece because he knew that the song didn't need drums, so he didn't unnecessarily add them.
Hearing the band version of "My Immortal" punched me in the face with nostalgia.
Seriously, though, this is such a helpful video for me as a budding composer who knows very little about drums. Although I am proud of myself for having correctly identified the blast beats in Periphery's "The Way the News Goes" years ago.
As a drummer, spot on with the progression. One thing worth mentioning is the use of slashes and cues in drum notation which leaves it up to the percussionist, but gives enough details to what the rest of the ensemble is doing to stay join in key rhythmic motifs that are played in unison, without being over prescriptive and boring throughout the main phrases.
Sharing this with the PICO-8 Discord *immediately* - it's even easier than usual to write a generic repetitive drum part when you have the size restrictions PICO-8's tracker does, and that makes this kind of arranging info super valuable. Thanks!
5:57
This can be applied to any creative project you're a lead on. I'm like this whenever I do film work, it's allot easier to tell the cameraman to do something if I'm speaking the language of camera people and same with the actors, or the prop people. Being the Director / head creative of a project requires you to be multi-lingual, able to effectively communicate your ideas into the words that your fellow creatives best understand.
What really changed my programmed drums is having access to good sounds. The same basic backbeat drum can sound absolutely lifeless, and pumping depending on the timbre. I had a tendency to overcomplicate rhythms untill I bought some sampled drum kits that I really liked (in my case: the Abbey Road collection from Native Instruments), which really helps me to keep things simple while thinking: yes, this is it!
Abby Road collection has it all. Complicated programmed drums can be very cool though, if they are kind of playing melodies. Like Aphex Twin's 'Vordhosbn'. Or Tipper's 'Big Question Small Head' at about 1:50 : ruclips.net/video/iswAbtsIYNY/видео.htmlfeature=shared
What do you think if you here one of those?
Tipper does use fantastic drum and percussion samples though, and knows just what fx fit when and where. Mixing the Dub tradition of Lee Scratch Perry and the Glitch tradition of Autreche.
As a drummer, I think the main thing to remember when you're writing a drum part is that you're not writing a beat, you're writing a part. You CAN just write a looping 1 bar beat, the same way you can write a 4-chord loop with no variation. But keep in mind that what's true for every other instrument is also true for the drums. The bass CAN just play the root. The guitar CAN just play the chords. The singer CAN just sing the scale. But the mind rewards a part that seeks to be clever, cohesive, involved.
One of my favorite drum parts is Geek USA by the Smashing Pumpkins. Right away, the drums and the rhythms of the guitar riff are either in harmony or in counterpoint. And as the song expands and you become familiar with these rhythms and textures, the drums develop and mutate the motifs, deploy them independently of the guitar, or, for example, juxtapose a rhythm the guitar had used earlier *against* the riff it's playing now. The drums remember. The drums listen. They can't hold a pitch, but they can still harmonize. Don't forget that.
This is something I've always struggled with. Making drum parts not sound robotic.
What helped a lot for me is to put a random pitch variation on each drum hit (except the bass drum), just a verrrry small variation, makes it sound a lot more organic!
In the beginning I did too. It takes time and trial and error. Also ask yourself: What kind of drum/progression do I want for this particular song? Sometimes challenging yourself to notate/write the MIDI of a song that inspires you just by ear and study what variations make it so great.
A good example of how drums and percussion can play "quesion and answer" even with samples is Tipper's 'Big Question Small Head' at about 1:50 : ruclips.net/video/iswAbtsIYNY/видео.htmlfeature=shared
Quick tip: If you're working in a DAW and are struggling to get differentiate different sections, percussion wise, a quick and dirty shortcut is to just bring in a different virtual kit and have it play the same part, then add small variations to taste.
Drummer here, awesome video! One thing I think you kinda missed though is how drums drive songs into new sections. You can create anticipation that a new section is coming by slowly opening the high-hat (think The Middle by Jimmy Eat World), with drum fills (think Breed by Nirvana), and/or with dynamics by increasing the power (think Plug-In Baby by Muse). All of these things are usually done on the last measure before a new section, and in my experience are almost always driven by the drummer. It's also a great cue for when you want to change sections if you're just improv jamming with other musicians.
I think that you need to group snare separately from toms rather than lump it all in "medium drums". The snare is the accent drum and it generally does a fundamentally different job to the toms. Indeed it's actually more common that you can swap out a cymbal "engine" part to the toms for a dynamic change than swap for example a snare hit with a tom and that is because generally the snare drum and kick drum are performing very specific roles with respect to accent.
Hard truth: as a non-drummer, you will probably never do any better than "fine" with your drum writing. There are drum parts that make drummers ooo and ahh, and they are written by drummers. The steps outlined here, as true and important as they are, help you avoid bad drum parts more than they help you achieve greatness.
Pleasant truth: drumming on your leg totally counts, and the listen-practice-play method is as available to you as it is anyone, and will slowly but surely help you to think drummerly. If you go right now and jam on a bongo with a song you like, I can almost guarantee you will learn something fundamental about rhythm.
100% stealing the term “drummerly”
Also, totally agree with your assessment. As a percussionist and instructor for some marching bands, I am baffled at some of the drum parts that get written by arrangers who clearly had no guidance. Hopefully this video helps steer them more toward legible, practical parts that can then be adjusted by drummers to actually be engaging and contribute to the music.
There are a few electronic musicians though, that have done stunning drum parts. Like Aphex Twin's 'Vordhosbn'. Or Tipper's 'Big Question Small Head' at about 1:50 : ruclips.net/video/iswAbtsIYNY/видео.htmlfeature=shared
What do you think if you here one of those?
@@The_Accuser okay firstly, thanks for the dank music recs, I've been listening to a lot of venetian snares etc. recently. secondly, I would say Aphex Twin etc. has done enough listening, reproducing, and creating of rhythms not to be a "non-drummer". it's really more about having exposure to and experience with the concepts to me than it is about studying an instrument (to the point that I think a DAW is definitely instrument enough for stretching your drummer muscles). drummer/non-drummer feel like insufficient words, but I don't have better ones.
@@jkid1134 Sorry for coming across as dank. I'm pleasantly surprised someone here listens to Venetian Snares. On channels like Rick Beato and also 12tone, I just never hear anything about IDM, Glitchhop, or experimental electronic underground music in general.
Yeah. Getting a feel for swing, accents and phrasing in a DAW plus just jamming with hands and fingers does eventually lead to a 'drummerly' way of thinking. 😄
@@The_Accuser dank is definitely a compliment here :)
a lot of the stuff I listen to is impacted pretty directly by the experimental electronic stuff, whether it's also experimental like a.g.cook, more structurally pop like slayyyter, or drummers like louis cole. not to mention, like, music I found from rhythm games like t+pazolite.
even on the DAW, and even in "simpler" music, there are cool and boring choices, yknow what I mean? like, listening to valentino khan, I find myself thinking "woah that's the rhythm from the vocal sample on the snare drum as a fill" or "damn that hi hat is really nestled in there" or so on.
I only ever fought with the drummer over what a rest is, how to count a song in, how to count to four, how to avoid replacing whole notes with fermatas, and what to do while he was counting to four; aside from that he was free to do whatever he wanted.
song where the dynamics change by hitting the drums harder: Race for the Prize by the Flaming Lips from the verses to the choruses. They also go from close mic’ed drums to a single overhead to emphasize the shift
That's what makes it so good to play guitar, piano, bass and drums all myself.
@@Willam_Joh trust me I still will be 😂
Yes brother! You are not alone.
bleed mentioned by 12tone, as a drummer my life has been fulfilled
As he was talking about the ususal functions of the different drums I thought "that's not how Meshuggah does it!" right before he brought it up.
6:08 You just perfectly described the career of David Bowie and his ability to make so many great albums across so many genres. He selected musicians with the specific skill set and approach to music he needed to actualise his vision, and communicated his vision to them effectively.
There's an hidden writing rule when it comes to voices. When it's 16th notes, and you play both of your hands on hi-hat, the snare is in the same voice as the hi-hat. When it's 8th notes and you only use your dominant hand for the hi-hat, the snare is on the second voice, the same as the kick.
I have no idea what you just said
I have accidentally written so many drum parts that would require you to have three hands to play it, because of that exact thing you describe!
Thankfully, the drummers I worked with almost expect this kind of stuff in notation
@@jaydenjbryant8665 in a typical 8th note beat ( like the basic rock one) a drummer would play the snare with one hand and the hihat with another, and so they are played and thought of as 2 separate "voices".
however, sometimes when playing 16th note beats (like a trap beat) a drummer will use both hands to play the hihat, and add a few snare hits, and in this mode the hihats and snare parts can't be separated, they are played in the same "voice".
@@_okedata i mean I disagree that doesnt really make any sense you are still hitting a different voice, just because you are playing more notes on the hi hat doesnt mean its the same voice i dont get it lol. Ive been a drummer for 12 years😂
@@jaydenjbryant8665 idk, i just tried to explain what the commenter said.
Its more like they're both being played by the same pair of hands, so certain grooves/rhythms are harder/less natural.
obviously you can still play 16th notes with one hand.
One of the best things I did whilst studying music in college was to learn “Jazz Percussion”. 1) It fulfilled my individual performance requirement and 2) it was an opportunity to be familiar with an instrument that could be useful in my own work.
After about 12 years of programming drums and ignoring conventions in the beginning, I *slowly* start to feel like I know how drum programming works (and feels right). This video is very useful in finding more tools to think less and vibe more, thank you!
Love this, a classic "over-thinking out loud" exercise that is exactly what I do in a mental loop on the cusp of showing a band a new song I wrote. WHAT EVEN IS THIS AMAZING INSTRUMENT
When you talk about beat, engine, and constant in drums and then use Bleed as your example, I immediately know you know what you're talking about. I love it.
Good ideas here, and there’s the whole interaction of drum parts with singing and other instruments - leaving and filling space to emphasize and support everything else that’s going on - that makes a song’s drums truly wonderful
I was so excited when I got the Sneak Peak email! I dabble in EDM production (is that even a thing anymore?), and am always interested in ways to take a 90-second “doodle” up to a longer song. This is wonderful - keep up the great work!!
Have you ever checked out a Japanese rock band called Band-Maid? Their drummer is quite amazing at really creative patterns, especially incorporating double kick, and the guitar player/composer often writes drum parts that would require an extra arm or two for her to play them, so she comes back with 2 or 3 more playable options, but are still innovative and evolve through the song as they never copy/paste any segment of their songs. Their songs like "Blooming", "Rinne", "Dice" or "I Still Seek Revenge" are just a few of many mind bending percussion songs.
I've worked on improving my drums over the years and have used some of this and other elements of your analysis are great additional ways for me to think about the process. Thanks for another useful and insightful video.
The late drummer for 90’s alt-rock nerds HUM had the most expressive cymbal wash ever. Underrated band.
Obscure 10,000 maniacs album track was not on my bingo card. That was a nice surprise
I was not expecting Planet Rock
What’s the song called?
@@Steveofthejungle8 Gun Shy
@@herschoolcolors thank you!
i caught that
Rhythms are *so* important! Besides all the things you mention here, there are a number of songs I can identify just from the opening drum riff and a bunch more where the impact of the song (for me anyway) is tied directly to the rhythmic choices that were made. Like, "Life is a highway" even though that's quite a bit more than just the drums going on there.
Oh there are a bunch of those songs in classic rock. Just from memory:
Something - Beatles
Jamie's Crying, Hot for Teacher - Van Halen
Slow Ride - Foghat (Just a beat, not really a riff, but it serves the function)
Rock & Roll - Led Zeppelin
YYZ - Rush
Gimme All Your Lovin - ZZ-Top
Back in Black - AC/DC
Take the Money & Run, Swingtown - Steve Miller
Life's Been Good - Joe Walsh
Walk This Way - Aerosmith
Livin After Midnight - Judas Priest
Don't Bring Me Down - ELO
Engineers - Gary Numan
Jools and Jim - Pete Townshend
Okay those last two weren't huge contributions to the classic rock canon, but I do love them! I'm sure there are a ton more, and a lot of them I'll be embarrassed to have missed. A list like this could get insanely long. (I couldn't think of anything from 2 of my favorite drummers, Keith Moon and Stewart Copeland. Synchronicity 2 starts with a single hit, but I don't think that counts...)
Thinking low, mid and high drums is ok, but there is much more to it when you're writing drum parts. Think more of open and close sounds, like open and closed hi-hats, tip and cone of a cymbal, hi and low tuned snare and toms, tight or loose kick, rimshot vs hitting the center, close up and far miking, riding vs. crashing a cymbal, ghost rolls vs. flams vs. a single hit, etc. Also half time and double time, on the overall section as well as on an individual drum or cymbal, like double time on a closed hi-hat, half time on an open hi-hat or ride. Swing, shuffle and groove vs mechanical beats without these. Time displacement of a kick or snare beat. Placing the kick on beat one vs on beat two. Less fills or more fills. Dense vs. simpler parts. Pumping the hi-hats for energy (changing the foot pedal position while hitting). These all define the pulse, backbeat and the energy of a drum track and its sections.
3:23 OMG I’ve been wondering what the opening song for Rhythm X 2018 was for literal years XD Thanks 12tone!
I've been thinking I needed a 'music theory' lesson for percussion, and you delivered. Bravo.
Thank you for this! My senior music students are composing at the moment and I can’t wait to show them this on Monday.
A friend recently reminded me of the 8bitmusictheory drum video, so it was on the top of my mind, and seeing this it felt like it was a bit of a sassy comeback lol. but of course not, this is a continuation, and a great one at that (from a drummer herself). Thanks for making this, it really helps put into words the things I already feel when I write drum parts
5:34 An example I can think of a drum beat that uses straight up dynamics (it might be something else but it really just feels like they’re playing the drums harder), is the drum beat from “Another Space Song” by Failure. I think they were definitely going for a metronomic, machine like feel and the only difference between verse and chorus is the drummer plays a little louder
Please make this a series tackling other instrument parts too! This was super helpful and I'd love to watch more videos like this 🤩
One thing I had trouble with arranging music was making drum parts. Thank you so much for making this video! Helps a ton!
This is amazing, just what I needed now. To be honest, I already hooked on the 8bit stuff you mentioned recently, and found his actual vid that got me going by explaining the beat-engine-constant concept...
This one further develops that idea nicely! Thanks
I would say, as a former drummer, that your time and money would be well-spent if you bought a basic drum machine like a TR-08 (hard to program, but a faithful 808 stand in and funky AF) or a TR-6S (more drum machine than most people will ever need) and learned its functions completely. Learn how to do “weak beats”, accents, flams, double strokes, triple strokes, voice layering, etc. learn how to use the time scale and how to run different time signatures. Learn the LFOs to get different sound design options and effects.
Then do what all of us did. Listen to Bonham, Jeff Porcaro, Neil Peart, Clyde Stubblefield, Max Roach, Stewart Copeland, Steve Smith, Al Jackson, Jr. , Lenny White, J.R. Robinson, Steve Gadd, Carlito Mendoza, on and on and on. Listen to it, then try to program it out. Doesn’t need to be exact, but just try to get the overall feel. The subtleties are what really make or break a good drum part. Back in Black is very sparse and wide open, but it swings like crazy. If he tried to play something busy in there, it wouldn’t sound as good. “50 Ways” is very syncopated and unusually accented for a pop song, but it complements the quiet vocal and bare bones instrumentation perfectly.
Love the call out on one pattern over a whole track. Feel like it's been way overused and maybe moreso lately. Anyways, love the video because I've been itching to get into production and needed a video just like this. You're the best!
I honestly think western music hasn't developed drums or percussion in general as other traditions, some years ago I felt stuck in my drumming because drums have basicaly the same role in many different generes, I noticed that when I started studing latin american, african and indian traditions, where percussions while having the same rithmic responsability as in western, they have developed more complex basis that are still basic but definetly more flavory.
In some african traditions percussions are based on the sounds of language or patterns found in nature or labor, wich allow to get complex sincopation and accenting in an intuitive and easy way. here is an example ruclips.net/video/BdBRuHuUhJo/видео.html
Latin american and indian traditions have so many basic patterns that cover a lot of polyrithmia and layering that is hard to find in western aproaches where that kind of work is common in the melodic instruments but rare on percussions.
Cumbia and salsa are good examples in latin american music, tabla music and konakkol for indian tradition.
First of all, this is great - these approaches are going straight into my composition toolbox.
Second, a silly question - why the ant at 11:42? I've seen that ant in several 12tone videos and have been going moderately mad trying and failing to identify its meaning. I'd love to know if it has any special significance.
As a 20+ year beatmaker/sequencer/bassist and 2 year actual drummer, this was still useful as a top level view of "what am I actually trying to do?"
On a personal basis, the whole point of moving to live drum was to break up all the monotony of a straight 2 or 4 bar drum loop (I used to do 4-6 similar patterns in 8 bars, usually), so I just throw in extra, or remove one or two hits from one or more of the three drum registers; maybe for a full section, maybe for just that bar. Depends on how it sounded that first time.
Of course repeatability is a huge issue when you do that 'live jauntiness'.
Oh wow Lemonworld, that's such a good song. The National have some amazing drum parts, always super unique and interesting. Squalor Victoria and Sea of Love are two favourites of mine
Interesting video, as usual. The three layers angle is definitely a valid one, though I want to add an alternate angle too: in jazz and funk drumming particularly, but in fills in other genres too, we can also think in melodies, or licks if you will, where the different layers and sounds are integrated into one figure, rather than thinking of separate rhythms for each of them. One example is linear drumming, for which I strongly recommend David Garibaldi's book "Future Sounds". It also outlines various other concepts, such as permutations, where you repeatedely move over one of the layers a certain amount to 'the right' or 'the left' in consecutive bars.
Good Day! I always enjoy your content, but I particularly enjoy these - I guess I'll call them General Pop Theory videos? They provide a kind a horizontal continuity to tie together the thoughts you share in the more vertical Let's Take It Apart videos. More please! This kind of thing is extremely helpful. I typically say things to my drummers like "Boom chuck boom chuck," or "Blang spangalang spangalang..." Now I have a whole new vocabulary to use.
Also (piano player here) I can't tell you how many times I've heard variations on "Play a better thing." :) My "favorite" was a reggae band where I could never find the middle path between "To hip for the room," and "Too white..." Toxic reggae...whoda thunk!
Thanks for everything you bring to this crazy world.
And Peace!
Kenny
Awsome video 12tone! your videos always put me in the mood of writing music and experiment :)
It's clear that you need to coordinate the "intrumental" elements of a song with the percussion elements. The most obvious example is between bass instruments and the low drums. You could think of a bass player that is playing primarily down beats as functioning as a low drum function. This opens up multiple ways for them to work together. You could have one drop out, you could have them playing different parts of the beat, you could take the opportunity of leaving out the low drums to include additional mid or high drum parts.
Similar things could happen with other aspects of the collaboration.
Thank you, I haven't been able to musick much in the past two weeks but this is exactly what I need before i get back into it.
Id recommend using PAS (Percussive Arts Society) notation when writing for a percussionist to play. Most notation software defaults to that, but using in pretty much guarantees that the drummer will know what instrument you want them to play without a key.
Something for non-percussionists to keep in mind when writing drum parts that wasn’t addressed (and kind of unfortunately reinforced) in this video:
Unless you’re writing a drum roll or cymbal swell or something else that goes in for several beats, please don’t use half/whole notes in your notation. It might seem strange to folks who play other instruments, but common drum notation practices avoid long note values for sounds that basically are just an attack/“articulation.”
In the drumset groove written around 3:00, the kick drum is shown as a whole note. A quarter note will suffice.
Cheers!
As a drummer of going on 10 years, I loved this video
One of my favorite drum takes on a song is "One Headlight" by The Wallflowers. It's nothing but kick, snare, and high hat, and it's compelling the entire way through. If you're remembering a crash cymbal hit in that song, you're remembering a cover version or a live version, because the album version is nothing but some of THE tightest stick work, and I think it's underappreciated.
I am loving all the not crazily popular songs that you are including!
PERIPHERY MENTION LETS GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
So many of my favorite metal bands finally getting mentioned on this channel!
5:30 one example of this could be race for the prize by the flaming lips
Could you do an analysis of Kashmir by Led Zeppelin?
I reckon it would be an hour long
“Bleed” mention ❤
19:35 it is so cool that Warren Huart follows you, I've been watching him and SpecterSoundStudios almost as long as I've been playing guitar
Sometimes I wonder if the toms were arranged in descending order on the kit do purposefully create a sort of decrescendo. Especially as drumming evolved they do that in so many fills, going downward until ending on a crash, imitating a falling object before it finally collides with the ground.
Mike Portnoy, while playing Dance of Eternity: *smiles and nods fatherly*
2:29 is so iconic, you’re a real one if you recognize the song
I'm a guitarist/ bassist and just bought an electronic drum kit because I want to finally be able to make songs with full instrumentation from my bedroom; I've been having a ton of fun, but my drumming skills definitely need some work. thanks for the video good sir 👍🏾
I thought this was going to be on how to effectively notate drum parts for your drummer to read. Either way you made the video well. I would say some good advice for writing better drum parts is just learn a little about how to actually play the drums if you can.
Also, I come from a jazz background and I learned that when writing parts for actual drummers to read, you want to use as little direct notation as possible. If you really need them to play an exact rhythm, then write it and put measures with slashes after it saying "repeat" or "continue simile". In jazz drumming, you typically learn several types of "feels" (e.g. two-feel, samba), and any one song will simply use one of those at a time, so measures filled with slashes and the feel indicated by text is sufficient for the majority of the song. Where specific notation comes in is for "hits" - times when the drummer should accent the band's accented rhythms, e.g. with the snare or cymbal. For that, you simply put small notes above the top line of the staff indicating the important rhythm the band is playing. These two elements - measures filled with slashes and hits notated above - is what a good drum part looks like for a lot of music. The style is simply conveyed via text.
Steve Gadd, an impeccable reader and player, reportedly often asked to simply read the bassist's chart instead because it had all the rhythmic information he needed to play the song effectively.
This was a very interesting watch. I would love a follow-up video discussing how to convey 'feel' into programmed drum parts, i.e. how a rock beat differs in feel from a jazz beat. Believe me, it's a thing...
Dude the 50 ways to leave your lover beat. So frigging good
Is there any chance you could publish which songs you’re using as examples? I’d like to listen to them “properly” but i can’t identify some of them.
9:16 it's worth noting that the guitar is filling the role of the constant in that song
my aproach: click the piano roll till it works
jk i usually just make the kick follow the guitar big chords, the snare gives the" tempo feel" of the song you can double or half it depending on the part , and the cymbals for pulse and separation
Love your work bro
I love the drums on Majestic by Wax Fang is a great example of the things you're talking about
"You can make a section seem bigger by just hitting the drums harder..."
On the Hell Freezes Over version of Hotel California, during the intro, the sustain on the low drum sound is cavernous. It is unlike anything else I've ever heard.
Thanks for the informative video. A slight critique on the writing, though. At 5:43 you bring up the three kinds of changes you can make to a drum part. Then you don't tell us what these 3 changes are for the next 45 seconds and instead go off on several tangents. That made me think I missed something on the first listen and I had to go back to listen to the last minute again. That could have been structured better, imho.
Great explanation!
I have always written my drum parts like a dance. where many rock songs would have a 4 bar loop of the same with with a an extra hit in the last bar and only do fills after 16 bars, I always took an A-B-A-C structure to my writing, where everything was a constantly evolving variation on a theme, instead of A-A-A-B-A-A-A-B-A-A-A-B-A-A-A-Fill I would constantly shift and evolve with A-B-A-C-A-D-A-E-A-F-A-C-A-G-A-Fill instead. almost like a improv jazz session, but with rock.
Maybe a follow-up video on grooves vs fills?
I normally have a strong deeply internalized refusal of my own understanding and ability, but then sometimes I watch something like this hoping to learn something new and find myself saying "wait isn't this completely intuitive..."
If you’re a vocalist, would you kindly make a short video or video series on the steps of learning vocals? In my experience it’s much more confusing then learning guitar or something
When in doubt, sample the Amen Break.
Drummer here of 35 years and counting 😉. You've covered a lot of ground there at what felt like 300bpm! For those who are new to thinking about drum parts, the most important starting point I would put forward is to avoid the trap of thinking about drums as keeping time. The pulse is present regardless of whether the drummer is playing. The drums add mood, vibe, dynamics, excitement, anticipation, tension and release. Playing a standard pattern creates certainty and confidence for example. Displacing a beat adds tension that can be resolved either in that phrase or later in the song. A drummer with a wide vocabulary should have hundreds of options to select from. Far too many to cover in a 20 min video. That's why studio greats like Hal Blaine and Steve Gadd are so highly respected - they had the knowledge, imagination and skill to create 'the perfect part' on the spot and nail it in one take (usually). One last point (I could go on for weeks here!) Is that drummers don't consciously think in terms of low notes, mid notes and high notes. We normally think about the placement of bass (refered to as kick drum in recording studios to avoid confusion with the bass guitar) drum and snare drum parts in terms of a 'call and response' relationship, then how these are tied together by way of sub divisions. The sub divisions are 90% these days in the form of 8th notes or 16th notes on the hi-hat. The rest of the kit (Tom's and cymbals) are there for fills that are used to create the extra tension / release etc. Those are the true basics imo just to try and support the sentiment of the video. Hope that helps
Great analysis. Plenty of food for drum programming thought.
Haha love that Tom example from The National. I know that clip anywhere!
I was so mad the music classes I took were solely focused on pitch and completely ignored rhythm
really cool visual aesthetic
HOLY DIVER MENTIONED WOOOOOOOOO
Damn, I'm a drummer and I even learned something from this. Like I knew how to play a tresillo and where to use it, but did not know the word.
This is very useful. Thank you!
Did you ever listen to "Slagerij van Kampen"? I wonder what you think of that.
Also: 9:00 Yay! A tardigrade!
love the Bleed reference! \m/
right out the gates with Bleed!
I kept thinking about Tyler Coburn, drummer in Yautja, while watching this video. Being a grind/sludge band, changing the "high drums" is important to give the fast parts their own individual flair, together with playing sparser arrangements when the band's sludge sensibilities come in.
Playing the Think break and immediately saying "and break it up" made me go yeah, it has been broken up every conceivable way
Also didn't expect the Dem Bow to show up. I bet there's already a couple comments blasting reggaeton like many electronic genres also don't change their drum patterns at all