In Article Two we looked at snare and kick programming, so now we should concentrate on cymbals. How you programme your hi-hat, ride, crashes etc is very important to the overall feel of a drum track and to the song in general. We could chat all day about what’s most important having a superb kick/snare pattern having a great groove going on the hi-hat. They are both important! I suppose you can say they have to talk to each other. The placing of the open hats and crashes in curtain places can make a great difference to the feel of a pattern.

As mentioned before the velocities of each note are important even with hi-hats, maybe more so if you are intending to have the hats take on the main groove. Open the midi file and take a look at the hi-hats. If your using Cubase you’ll see I’ve put the cymbals on a different track so it’s easier to see what’s happening. In the first eight bars I’ve kept the hi-hats simple (notice where I’ve put the open hats). You can have hours of fun changing the position of the open hats, placing them on different kick or snare positions. Listen to the ride in the next eight bars. All I’ve done is change the hats to a ride keeping the same velocities and note positions. This is a simple procedure but very effective. It can change the feel of a part straight away with out much thought and it gives you a starting point if you want to work on the ride a bit more, and take into account the fact that a drummer would not play a hat or ride at the same time as a crash.

In the next eight bars I’ve beefed up the hi-hat pattern a bit. If you remember in the last article, I talked about different snare sounds for grace notes etc. Have a go at changing this hat pattern to a snare (don’t forget to copy the pattern first!) changing snare sounds where appropriate and programme in a very basic foot hat on the beat because when a drummer is playing an intricate snare pattern he/she won’t be able to do much on the hi-hat, unless the person has two pairs of arms of course! In the last eight bars I’ve mucked about with the kick and snare positions. Once you’ve got the basic notes in you can play around with it forever, changing kick and snare notes into toms or whatever you want.

Playing around with note velocities and positions in this way can give you a better insight into what goes on and a great way of finding out what you actually like yourself, also of course the more you do it the better you get. If you use the same procedure on your own drum patterns you will now have a few different ones to work with, placing them behind solos, vocal parts etc to see what sound best to you. That’s it for now peeps, have fun.

Again..Every thing I've written in this article is purely my opinion and again, REMEMBER If sitting there playing the chord of G for 2hrs gives you immense pleasure then so be it that’s what music’s all about.

DC Cornelius

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