Drumming Without a Drummer

Don't have a drummer? Or any drums? Use MIDI drums! The issue with this is that it’s not quite as simple as putting the hits onto a grid and being done, because it sounds too ‘perfect’. When trying to create songs with convincing drum parts, it has to sound as if a drummer has played it, otherwise it can start feeling robotic and lifeless. What I am going to discuss today is how to get rid of these issues, while still only using MIDI drums.

What is important to state first is that the rigid, robotic sound that perfect MIDI drums have is not always a bad thing, it can be exactly what some tracks require for different effects and different genres of music. However what I’m looking at today is creating drum tracks which are better suited for rock/pop music, which feel organic and sound as if they could have been played live by a real drummer. This is difficult because, as Levine (2014) writes in an article concerning drum-track creation; “It’s very difficult to simulate the subtleties, ghost notes, dynamics and rhythmic techniques of a real drummer when you’re trying to “play in” your MIDI parts from your keyboard”. The simple fact that drumming is an art form, and these musicians spend years developing their skills to add musical interest to their performances, means that creating convincing performances as a non-drummer is no easy task. Another issue, besides the subtlety of the performance that this raises, is that MIDI drums are (unless purposefully changed) perfectly in time, all of the time. Cesarz (2020) describes the subsequent problem saying; “quantizing parts often leads to a lack of feel, leading to music sounding robotic and inhuman”. These two components seem to be the most prominent obstacles to overcome when programming convincing drums.

Waller (2021) presents five ways to tackle these two issues. The first is very simple, it is to “Know Where The Drums Are”, meaning a drum programmer should be aware of the physical limitations of a drummer. It is impossible, for example, to play the hi-hat, snare and floor tom all at the same time, and therefore programming this will feel unnatural to the listener. By ensuring that all programmed drums are physically possible to play, you can also ensure that it is possible to make the drum pattern sound as if it is played live.

The second piece of advice given is to “Vary Your Velocity” (Waller 2021). Dow (2010) explains the need for changing the velocity of the strikes after programming by stating “Real drummers aren’t perfect, so they will never hit a drum in exactly the same way twice”. Varying the velocity of MIDI notes is incredibly simple using the velocity automation pictured below, and the effect of doing this mimics the way a drummer will slightly change the force used for each hit. Drummers also emphasise different strikes in a bar, with the most common strikes emphasised in rock and pop music being the 1 and 3 of each four-beat bar. Incorporating this technique with the velocity slider instantly provides the drum track with more ‘life’, and increases the expressiveness.

After changing some of the velocities to accentuate certain strikes, the next candidate for change is when those strikes are played. MIDI automatically locks everything to the grid (as seen in the previous image), however keeping everything perfectly lined up with that grid will not provide the sound of a real performance, and the performance is what creates the strong sense of rhythm, or as Waller (2021) puts it “sometimes it’s the imperfections that add groove and feel to a performance and you can program those in”. In many DAW’s there is an automated function to move the beats slightly off the axis (in Logic Pro X this is called ‘humanize’), however this has a random nature to it, which is indiscriminate of each beat’s importance. Changing the position of the strikes by hand will allow the programmer to decide which beats are pushed or pulled slightly, allowing the creation of a more natural groove. The moves only have to be subtle, as too much movement can simply pull the drums out of time, but a small amount of manipulation (pictured below) can add a more natural feel to the track.

The penultimate factor to incorporate is the addition of ghost notes. Ghost notes are the much quieter strikes of a drum which a drummer may implement between louder strikes in order to enhance the groove of a beat, a good example of these being used effectively are in the song ‘Rosanna’ by Toto (1982). They can be heard throughout the song being played on the snare drum, however are most clearly heard in the intro before the bass and piano come in. These are a very commonly overlooked technique by those who aren’t drummers, however they are incredibly important to drummers such as Todd Sucherman (2021) who described mastering them as “where you go from being a beginner drummer to an advanced drummer.” going on to say “ghost notes can have a major impact on your overall musicality and can drastically open up a whole new set of options when constructing drum parts.”. Clearly the use of them can drastically improve the complexity and interest of a drum part, and luckily for drum programmers, they’re much more simple to program than play, as they can be introduced by simply adding very low velocity snare hits in between other strikes (pictured below – The blue blocks being the ghost notes).

The last piece of advice Waller (2021) gives is simply to practice, but not just to continue creating more tracks. He advises listening to real drummers, and trying to replicate their performances inside a DAW. This seems to be the most obvious way to get programmed drums to sound live, using real live drums as a reference track, the same way one would use reference tracks to make tweaks in a full mix or to find guitar tones. It also seems to me that it could be beneficial to listen to examples of songs which have convincing and effective programmed drums such as ‘Sharp Dressed Man’ (1983) by ZZ Top.

There are other methods for having drums in a track without using a live drummer or programming them yourself, and that is by using software such as Logic drummer (which can create adjustable beats with only a few clicks), or downloading drum loops. However they simply do not allow the same level of creativity that programming them all yourself provides. The fact that it is often impossible to change out drum sounds for others, or slightly change one or two strikes in a full beat, means that it is often impossible to have full creative control over the most important rhythm section of a song, and this (to me) makes them unusable for anything other than demos.

All of these programming techniques, when combined together create a much more convincing result rather than simply leaving the MIDI notes untouched. I have found that the introduction of ghost notes especially help give the beat more life and bounce, even more so when not locked to the grid, but played with a midi controller by hand.

References:

CESARZ, N. (2020). Quantizing Drums: Should We Align to the Grid Always?. [Online]. Available at: https://drummingreview.com/quantizing-drums/ . [Accessed: 10th December 2021].

DOW, R. (2010). Programming Realistic Drum Parts. [Online]. Available at: https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/programming-realistic-drum-parts . [Accessed: 10th December 2021].

LEVINE, M. (2014). Comparing Two Approaches to Drum-Track Creation. [Online]. Available at: https://en.audiofanzine.com/virtual-drum-percussion/editorial/articles/midi-drums-vs-audio-drum-loops.html . [Accessed: 10th December 2021].

SUCHERMAN, T. (2021). The Mystery Of Ghost Notes. [Online]. Available at: https://www.drumeo.com/beat/the-mystery-of-ghost-notes/ . [Accessed: 10th December 2021].

PAICH, D. (1982). Rosanna [CD] USA: Columbia Recordings.

WALLER, G. (2021). How To Program Realistic Sounding Drums. [Online]. Available at: https://audient.com/tutorial/programming-realistic-drums/ . [Accessed: 10th December 2021].

ZZ TOP. (1983). Sharp Dressed Man. [CD] USA: Warner Bros..å