# How do you personally write drums ?



## coregod (Dec 13, 2021)

I’m a guitar player and have lots of metal core type songs written in just guitar. I have one song written with drums lol maybe i can share it to get some input ? All I know is that a need double kick, symbols snares and toms ? I’m starting off with the kick drums and symbols and adding in the tom and snare as I go. I just look at the guitar part and try to accentuate the rhythm of the guitar with the drums. Blast beats seem to be the go to for most metal ? any input is appreciated I’m sick of playing guitar instrumentals !!


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## Hollowway (Dec 13, 2021)

coregod said:


> I’m a guitar player and have lots of metal core type songs written in just guitar. I have one song written with drums lol maybe i can share it to get some input ? All I know is that a need double kick, symbols snares and toms ? I’m starting off with the kick drums and symbols and adding in the tom and snare as I go. I just look at the guitar part and try to accentuate the rhythm of the guitar with the drums. Blast beats seem to be the go to for most metal ? any input is appreciated I’m sick of playing guitar instrumentals !!


Got any drummer friends? Actual drummer-made drums usually sound much better than guitarist-made drums, IMO. At this point we’re all pretty used to drums programmed by non-drummers, so we don’t notice it much, but that doesn’t make it a good thing.


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## Stiman (Dec 14, 2021)

Assuming you have a drum VST you like the sound of, and I'm not going to get into mixing them and such. Here is what works for me:

- get a good amount of drum midi grooves, mostly in the genre that you want to write it.
- find a groove for each part of a song that fits as closely as possible to what you have in mind.
- play with the kick and snare hits to make the groove really fit your guitar parts.

The advantage of doing it this way are that assuming the grooves were made by real drummers, they will sound real, the velocities will be realistic, the fills will fit the general feel of the drum parts.

If you use EZdrummer 2 or Superior Drummer 3, there are additional songwriting tools that are really good. I won't get into specifics of this, but if you want, check out videos by Trey at GearGods on YouTube. He has a ton of content on writing metal drums with Toontrack stuff and he goes into all the details of the songwriting specific tools in EZD2/SD3.


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## bostjan (Dec 14, 2021)

Broad topic.

For modern metal, you mostly want to spam the kick drum as much as possible, make sure your snare sounds like someone setting off a firecracker inside of a metal barrel on 2 and 4, leave your hihats sloppily closed, and then you have to have the obligatory slow part with a china cymbal backbeat.


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## Aewrik (Dec 14, 2021)

Left hand, right hand, left foot, left leg. Learn some rudiments from youtube videos (from actual drummers and midi programmers), some hand techniques and start with the groove before adding embellishments (unless the embellishment is your idea)


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## CanserDYI (Dec 14, 2021)

I usually start by mapping out the kick drum, usually accenting the guitar part, but not just mirroring it, I want something that keeps the guitar work in the pocket but also sounds like a beat that can stand alone. After the bass drum beat is down, I'll start adding my "power hands" the right hand usually keeping a steady rhythm. Then the snare, which is easiest last in my experience.

Building it in layers makes it much easier.


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## ekulggats (Jan 14, 2022)

I went through this process in a big way lately. Here's what I did-

-Watch the drummer closely during live shows. See what he's doing, during what parts of the song, try to start thinking like a drummer
-Envision in your head where the core accents will land (snare, kick, even cymbals sometimes) and start with those
-Keep in mind the limitations of a real drummer (Two hands, Two feet) and what this imposes on what you write. Real drummers are creative with these limitations though so don't limit yourself too much
-try to start composing grooves in your head, even without guitar
-Identify drummers you really like listening to, geek out on their stuff then break down what they're doing that's different. Listen to them out of band context as much as possible
-Remember the importance of velocities/dynamics to the feel of a groove


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## chipchappy (Jan 15, 2022)

here's what I do:

tap out the BPM of the song im writing in my head, set my BPM in my daw to that
record a scratch take of the riff i wrote to the click
program drums according to what makes the most sense for the guitar part
delete scratch guitar part, you can now record your guitar to the drums as though it were with a real drummer, pan the takes left and right, add bass, done.

I typically have two versions of the drum VST up in a session: one for shells, one for cymbals. Like someone mentioned before, program drums with people only having 4 limbs in mind, it will make it sound more realistic. Also, if your DAW has a 'humanize' feature, use that to get varied velocities to make the hits sound even more real. Also, if you dont already have one, get a MIDI controller so you can do some of it by taping out the drum parts rather than point-and-click


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## jaguar78 (Jan 23, 2022)

you should learn drum programming first then processing/layering.


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## BMFan30 (Jan 23, 2022)

chipchappy said:


> here's what I do:
> 
> tap out the BPM of the song im writing in my head, set my BPM in my daw to that
> record a scratch take of the riff i wrote to the click
> ...


Beautiful reply! I agree with you and everyone else in here for that matter. But I would like to add that there are just a few more edits and re-edits for me using basically the same process you have going here.

1) I lay down the drums I think work best and make is sound as realistic to a real drummer by avoiding doing too much or doing something a real drummer would find impossible. So it's helped me immensely to write midi drum parts due to playing real drums in the past.

If you haven't played drums before then just remember to not put too many overlapping hits over the top of each other by being mindful you have 2 hands and 2 feet cause you aren't an octopus like your drum sampler would allow you to be.

2) Then I record the demo guitar part. There usually is something I don't like about the drums I laid down previously so I go and edit those to compliment the guitars more.

3) Then I delete the old guitar part and re-record to accommodate the new drums. I'm almost never happy with the first or second take of either part. It requires me to edit a few times to get it how I want to which takes a ton of work to get down to my taste.

4) Bass + Vocals

5) ??? Definitely not profit, it's fucking metal.

Another thing you can do is work backwards if you have your lyrics and vocals already. So tap out a BPM you are comfortable with, lay down your vocals then everything else around it as you see fit. No workflow is wrong, just different than someone else.


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## wheresthefbomb (Jan 27, 2022)

1. Give drummer vague directions using few or no technical terms and lots of wild gesticulation. 
2. Drummer punishes me with polka and techno beats. 
3. Become first post rock band to replace marching snare buildup with polka and techno beats.
4. Definitely not profit.


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## AMOS (Jan 27, 2022)

I use EZ Drummer to design beats, in the first step tap in something close to what you're looking for, then the program will give you lots of similar beats you can edit or run with. EZ Drummer has tons of expansions too.


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## Bloody_Inferno (Feb 1, 2022)

I've been fortunate to have jammed with some great drummers, so I've learned to understand at least general concepts as such. That said, I forced myself to learn how to read drum charts so I can notate and transcribe them and convert into midi. 

As for actually writing, I work around kick and snare to dictate the groove. Tap foot/left hand as if an actual drummer than put it onto Sibelius. Notation wise, I just think hi hats as time keeper/metronome with kick and snare handle the groove. With the hats notated, I can get a visualisation on how to write the groove in correct time. 

Also similar to this:


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## bostjan (Feb 1, 2022)

Actually, I cheaped out on my response, sorry.

There's kind of a lot that goes into this, and it'd be very difficult to cover such a broad subject in internet thread format.

I've played around a lot with software to parse guitar audio in and try to recognize the tempo and meter using some crude machine learning, and then have the software generate the backbeat and patterns from the pitch dynamics in the rhythm guitar part.

If you are in quadruple or duple meter, a lot of what I've spent my time screwing around with would be completely unnecessary, so it'd probably be a waste of both our time for me to try to explain it.

In that case, seriously, put the snare on 2 and 4. That's literally the first thing you should do. They might not stay there, but chances are very high that they will. Next, chose what kind of backbeat you want. Sloshy hats on downbeats, tighter hats on eighths, ride on some eighths with bell on some downbeats, china, whatever. If you are doing this digitally, play around with each option. All you have to do is highlight, drag, and listen, so it's cheap.

Next is the bass drum. This is where you have to interpret things like a human being with an independent mind. But, if you are a mindless robot, synch the kick drum up with the rhythm guitar and/or bass. Guitar riff is eighth notes, start with eighth notes. Guitar riff is sixteenths, do sixteenths. Guitar riff is syncopated, match the kick with the syncopated notes. You can play with this all you want, but there's your starting point. All music writing should come from experimentation anyway.

Fills... here's where I'm lazy. I play drums (poorly), so I kind of know the drill, There are great unique fills and there are lazy madlibs fills where you need a fill to queue some sort of change or whatever, so you kickkicksnaresnarehitomhitommidtommidtomlowtomlowtom - you might want to develop a "library" of these. That's what I did with my software drummer. I showed "the drummer" about six dozen different fills and said "these are drum fills of x length," I'll manually flag where to throw in a fill, then just throw in a fill. 3/4 of the time the fill randomly chosen sounds dumb, so I'd reseed it and go again or manually choose a fill. Anyway, on the one of the measure after the fill, place a crash instead of a backbeat cymbal (hihat, ride, china, cowbell, tambourine, whatever). Easy, right?

Then there are general songwriting things, like, if you have a big chorus, try pulling the drums back to double time (half speed) to make everything sound bigger. If there's a big breakdown, you can pull back even more to quarter time or whatever and you can put your snare on one. I know I said always put the snare on two and four, but snare on one sounds gnarly if you have a really aggressive riff.

Then, after you try everything everyone (including me) tells you, throw all of that advice right into the toilet, and just do whatever. I know this is the 21st century and music is supposed to follow the formula of whatever genre, but fuck that, seriously. Music has gotten too predictable, so do something that everyone told you would never work, and prove them all wrong. Make music someone loves not music everyone just sort of tolerates.


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## Spaced Out Ace (Feb 1, 2022)

I'm not a drummer, but I write stuff in GP7 for my own personal enjoyment. I start with guitar riffs, add bass, then add the drums. I'll typically start with how I want the snare to be for that riff, which I'll do in voicing 1 on GP. Whether I want the snare to fall on 2 and 4, or 2 and & four, etc., I get that placed first. Then I add in where I want the kick drums to fall in voicing 2; I probably get most creative with this. Lastly, I add cymbals. Honestly, I'm a bit boring with cymbals, but I've been messing around with most interesting cymbal work the last year or so. If I decide I want a fill somewhere, I'll work that out and replace the drum part for that bar or bars.

Probably not how a drummer would go about it, but whatever.


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## Drew (Feb 2, 2022)

This is such a huge topic... A couple quick hit pointers though. 

1) Programming drums is mostly a matter of learning how to think like a drummer. 
2) What helped me do this the most is sitting down and trying to recreate the drum performance from existing songs. 
3) What helped me the second most is sitting down behind a kit and having a drummer show me some of the fundamentals. 
4) Remember that you have two feet and two hands, and accordingly there are limits to not just how many parts of the kit you can hit at once, but also what parts you can hit at the same time. If you program two cymbals and a snare all being hit at once, that's not something that a drummer can do. Likewise with a fast double-bass groove and a hi-hat motif that's something other than wide open. 
5) think about where the paerts of the kit are and how realistic it is for someone to hit one thing and then another. Think about dominant hands. Think about how hard you could realistically play a sequence of hits. Not every hit can be 127. 
6) Once you've got some basic ability to program fills and whatnot down, get off the grid. Start intentionally rushing or lagging fills, not by so much it's extremewly obvious, but by enough that you can kinda feel it. This makes a surprisinglu large difference. 
7) I've found that different kit presets, like the actual drum components, in something like Superior or EzDrummer, respond differently at different parts of your dynamic curve. If you program a drum performance with one kit, and then change out the snare, odds are you'll have to do some adjustment.


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## CovertSovietBear (Feb 4, 2022)

Like the others have said the method varies and you can either have them sound human or robotic - what I usually start with is the bass drum, usually goes along with whatever chuggy motif in the background. I then move on to snare, the first hit usually lands on 3 if you're in 4/4 and that's where I usually start. Once I've determined my bass and snare hits I add little ghost notes here and there and then sprinkle in some cymbals, hats, and add a filler every once in a while. 

TLDR: Start with bass drum then add snare hits to accent

I also write everything out on TuxGuitar (better than Guitar Pro IMO) then export MIDI into EZdrummer and make further adjustments from there. I would have no idea where to start if I were to input MIDI on my DAW as I've always done it this way.


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## andyrocks (Aug 8, 2022)

I’m a big fan of Guitar Pro. I write melody, rhythm with simple solo kick beat and after that I add snare. It’s easy to add more parts later when u can repeat a part in a loop. In typical way I always hear where to add cymbals just by listening to guitar rhythmic parts. I use Logic Pro and I always had problem with exporting MIDI from GP to DAW. Now I use Hertz Drums drum plugin with extra MIDI GP preset downloaded from their FB group and it sounds fantastic. I use it also for other GP tabs just to have natural sounding drums in my guitar exercises. When everything sounds good, I add some natural vibe with this tutorial (I’m not a drummer so I find it very important):


Good luck!


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## cowboystring (Aug 9, 2022)

I use Tuxguitar, a freeware version of Guitar Pro. Basically you set a track to percussion and type in a bunch of notes (36 is bass drum, 40 is snare ) and using the proper note length when needed.


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## TonyFlyingSquirrel (Aug 14, 2022)

Aewrik said:


> Left hand, right hand, left foot, left leg. Learn some rudiments from youtube videos (from actual drummers and midi programmers), some hand techniques and start with the groove before adding embellishments (unless the embellishment is your idea)



Want to learn to program drums, learn to think like a drummer. This is spot on council. Subscribe to an instruction channel like Drumeo or something equivalent. I can't physically play drums because my body doesn't have that degree of independence, but I think like that because I have a lot of good drum counsel and instruction. You'll never have more that 4 physical strikes to a drum instrument simultaneously in light of the above counsel, and even that would be rare. The average would be 3, ie; Kick, Snare, Crash, etc... Think in these terms, map out your riff in midi and determine a tempo/time signature, then you can play around with it and get it precise, proper placement of your triplets, accents, etc... These are just the basics, but having a fundamental knowledge of this will help your through process to translate realistically.


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