>Step by step

Programming typical disco drum beats

1 First, let’s nail the beat down with a kick drum hit on every quarter-note of the bar. You can either record these into a click track or draw them into your DAW’s piano roll editor. If you go for the second option, move each hit very slightly off the grid for a touch of human imperfection. 2 Next, the snare drum, playing on beats 2 and 4 – the backbeat. Again, you can record or draw these in, but if you draw them, experiment with small offsets from the grid to humanise the groove. I’ve programmed mine to land a little bit late, giving a slightly lazy feel. 3 The hi-hats are the most important ingredient in any disco beat, and there are several ways to approach them. The simplest is to lay out a series of eighthnote closed hats. With all the hits at the same velocity, it sounds totally unrealistic – lower the velocities of the offbeat hits to remedy this. 4 Eighth-note hats can work well in disco, but really, double-handed 16th-note hi-hats are the hallmark of the genre. Copy the offbeat hits a 16th-note to the left and right, then remove those that coincide with the snare, as two hands are required. Vary the velocities to subtly emphasise the stronger right hand. 5 There’s one more thing I need to fully disco-fy my beat: the essential offbeat open hi-hats. Programming these is as easy as dragging all the offbeat closed hi-hats to an open hat articulation, and you can either keep them short and choked, or remove the immediately following closed hats to stop them choking, for a longer sustain. 6 Now to embellish the beat. It’s important to keep the groove rolling along at all times, though, so keep any fills short and tight. Here, I’ve extended the clip to eight bars long and thrown in a few incidental snares and hi-hat variations, remembering to remove any coinciding snare hits with the latter, of course.