6/10/2023 0 Comments Groove scribe high hatsDon't go too far or your groove will just sound messy - zoom right in and nudge a number of your hi hats off of the grid by just a fraction. These subtle changes in hit placement are arguably the largest contributing factor to the lazy, laid back feel in certain Hip Hop tracks to the organic, lively vibe of particular Deep House tunes and many styles in between.Īn easy implementation of this technique is to programme in your basic hi hat pattern, quantize it tightly, then push and pull a number of the samples out of position by hand. The second thing we can learn from the playing of acoustic drummers is that micro fluctuations in tempo contribute greatly to the overall feel of the given groove. Once you've established these points of accentuation, you can use the other hits in your pattern to create and dispel momentum, by leading up to or away from them in velocity terms. Next, experiment with accents by choosing certain points to boost in velocity - try accenting 'on' beats (the whole-note beats of 1, 2, 3 and 4) to reinforce your tempo and the stability of the pattern, or 'off' beats (the half-note beats falling in between the on beats) to spice things up and produce a groovier impression. To apply this to your electronic productions, you need to spend a bit of time with your DAW's velocity tool - as a first step, I recommend modifying the velocity of each hit in your hi hat pattern so that each velocity falls within an overall range of between 5 and 10 (assuming your velocity range is the 0 to 127 MIDI standard). This creates internal rhythms and patterns within the overall context of the drum groove. Good drummers also play with accentuation, meaning they focus on particular points in a groove to play louder as well as certain points to play more quietly. There are natural changes in the amount of pressure applied when playing a hi hat or snare drum repeatedly, providing a subtle but noticeable ebb and flow in the volume of the resulting pattern.Ĭheck out this instructional video of legendary Toto drummer Jeff Porcaro explaining and demonstrating exactly this process: Variable Velocityįirstly and most importantly, drummers don't play with a consistent energy or velocity for every single drum hit. Let's examine a small number of only the most crucial of these factors in the paragraphs below, that we can borrow from acoustic playing and apply directly to our electronic rhythms. There are a great number of musical factors at work in even the most basic acoustic drum playing, all of which contribute to the impression of those sought after descriptors 'groove' and 'feel'. What this means in the context of the present discussion is paying attention to how actual drummers play. So, how do we go about improving our robotic, basic hi hat pattern? Well, we do what all clever students do and learn from the best in the business! In a great many other situations however, this approach just sounds plain dull. Now, in certain musical contexts the mechanical impression arising from the repetition of exactly the same sound can work very well, such as with the rolling hi hat patterns heard in Trap beats. The first approach attempted by many a novice producer, simply drawing in some sixteenth notes and hoping for the best, typically results in the kind of stale, mechanical patterns decried by all lovers of truly expressive electronic music. Any producer who has sat down with a sampler and tried to programme a groove knows how tricky it is to create satisfying hi hat patterns.
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