> Step by step

Getting real with timing and dynamics

1

Our drum part is currently triggering one of Ableton Live’s bundled drum kits, but you could try any of the third party options we mention in the text above. We experimented with some of the kits in Battery 4 for ours. 4

Dynamics next, and we repeat Step 3 but for velocity rather than timing. Again, our adjustments are small – we want our snare drum hits, for example, to range from loud to slightly less loud, rather than loud to soft. We also want to make our off-beat hi-hats consistently quieter than the on-beat ones, as per the drumming norm.

COMPUTER MUSIC

2

We’ll load up our groove from the previous walkthrough in a moment, but first, here is our not so great attempt to play the same part in on a keyboard – one pass and no edits. Note the natural variations in timing and velocity. Well, we were after a more natural sound, but this might not be the ideal route for you… 5

Shifting the hits back or forwards on the timeline to emulate the push or pull of a real drummer changes the feel of the whole track. Or you could introduce your own delay – apply 12ms of Track Delay to the drums to pull them slightly behind the beat. 3

Let’s go back to our rigid, manually programmed part. The first thing we need to do is inject some human feel into our groove by deactivating snap and moving the hits slightly ‘off the grid’, emulating the intrinsic subtle variations in timing that you get with a real drummer. These edits need to be very subtle in order to work properly. 6

Alternatively, we can give our tune a more driving, energetic vibe by pushing the drums ahead of the beat – dialling in -30ms of Track Delay increases the momentum nicely. Generally, you can push your drums further than you can pull them before things just start to sound out of time.