It also needs to provide syncopation using fills to emphasize off-beat hits. For the rim we used ‘4WD_Snare_21’ from Loopmasters’ Fourward – Drum & Bass Pressure pack and for the acoustic snare we used ‘SD_Snr Flam (16)_01’ from Industrial Strength’s Lenny Dee – Snare pack.Īs with traditional d’n’b or even breakbeat, the snare needs to form a call and response relationship with the kick. We’ve added a metronome for context:įor the snare parts we’re going to add one rim-like main hit and an acoustic-sounding flammed snare hit. We’re not going to add reverb to the other drum parts but a little bit of reverb on hi-hats works for us.! We used Live’s default Reverb with a 600 ms Decay Time, 24% Dry/Wet and some internal chorus. We’ve inserted a reverb on the hat to make the part wider. It will make each note slightly different in volume and ultimately make it sound more “live”. Add Live’s Velocity MIDI device and increase Random to something between 15-20. The hi-hat is also working to stabilise the rhythm by every single eighth note. In the second bar, it plays on 3-and as well as 4-and. The pattern is a two-bar, loop and in the first bar, it plays on the “ 3 and“. The second use of the kick is adding syncopation, via eighth-note hits.
The first of these is hitting at the first beat of every bar. The kick is doing two things in this pattern. The eighth notes sit between these and you can count them “1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 5 and”. The quarter notes are the five notes in the bar that hit at the same time as the metronome or 1-2-3-4-5 every bar. With the kick, eighth notes are key for the groove.