Building a beat

This walks a drum pattern from an empty grid to something you would keep. It gives step numbers, because "put the kick early" does not tell you where to click. What each control does is in the drum editor page.

The grid is sixteen steps, four to a beat, so the four beats of the bar are steps 1, 5, 9 and 13.

Lay the kick down first

The kick is the foundation, and it decides the feel before anything else does.

Steps 1 and 9 give a half-time feel, one kick on beat 1 and one on beat 3, with plenty of room between them. Steps 1, 5, 9 and 13 give four-on-the-floor, the driving pulse behind house and most dance music. Steps 1, 4, 9 and 13 keep the same skeleton but pull one hit a sixteenth early, and that single displaced hit is what makes a pattern groove rather than march.

Play each of the three before you choose. They are different songs.

Add the snare

The snare goes on the backbeats, steps 5 and 13. With the kick under it, that is the basic rock and pop groove and you are already most of the way to a beat.

For a half-time feel, put the snare only on step 9. The bar then has one answer instead of two, which is what makes hip-hop and trap feel slower than their tempo.

For funk, keep the backbeats and add ghost notes around them: extra snare hits on the sixteenths either side of steps 5 and 13, pulled right down in velocity so they are felt rather than heard. Around a quarter of the main hit's velocity is a good starting point.

Add the hi-hat

The hat sets the subdivision, which is how busy the bar feels.

Every other step, 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13 and 15, gives eighth notes: steady and driving, and the safe default. Every step gives sixteenths, fast and energetic, and it suits dance music but crowds anything with a busy melody. Offbeats only, steps 3, 7, 11 and 15, gives the reggae and ska feel, where the hat answers the beat instead of marking it.

Use the closed hat for most hits. Add the open hat sparingly, most often on step 15, the "and" of beat 4, so it rings into the downbeat of the next bar.

Then pull the velocity down on the hat steps that land with the snare, steps 5 and 13. They are competing with a much louder hit, and letting the snare have those moments cleans the whole bar up.

Make it stop repeating

You now have one bar that plays identically forever. Three controls fix that, and they are the difference between a loop and a part.

Chance on a few hats. Scatter three or four hits somewhere between half and three-quarters likely, and the line varies bar to bar without you drawing another grid. A quarter-likely ghost snare on an off-beat only occasionally answers the backbeat, which is exactly what a drummer does.

Micro-timing on the snare. Nudge it slightly late while the kick stays dead on, and the groove leans back. This is the single most effective thing on this page and it takes one drag.

A rule on an accent. Put a ride bell or an extra kick on "every few passes, pass 3 of 4", and a one-bar loop becomes a four-bar phrase. Unlike chance, this is deliberate: it lands in the same place every time round.

Mark the sections

Add a crash on step 1 of the first bar of each new section. It is the clearest signal in a mix that something has changed, and it costs one click.

Use toms for fills rather than for grooves, and keep them to the last two beats before a section change.

Then add a fill layer for the last bar of the section. It starts as a copy of your groove, so the job is deleting what should not be there rather than building something new.

Vary it per section

Drum patterns are per-section. Clone the verse pattern for the chorus and make small changes rather than starting again: an extra kick, a busier hat, the crash on the downbeat. A chorus that is a slightly bigger version of the verse sounds like the same band playing harder, which is what you want.

Three starting grids

Copy any of these and change one thing at a time. A filled square is an active step.

Basic rock and pop

Kick     x . . . . . . . x . . . . . . .
Snare    . . . . x . . . . . . . x . . .
Hat      x . x . x . x . x . x . x . x .

Four-on-the-floor

Kick     x . . . x . . . x . . . x . . .
Snare    . . . . x . . . . . . . x . . .
Hat      . . x . . . x . . . x . . . x .
Open hat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . x .

Half-time

Kick     x . . . . . x . . . . . . . . .
Snare    . . . . . . . . x . . . . . . .
Hat      x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x

On the last one, vary the hat velocities. Sixteen identical sixteenths is the most machine-like thing you can put in a bar.