> Step by step

6. Designing bespoke drums when remixing

1 Fresh drums can instantly change the vibe of a track, so we’ll start our remix by creating a new drum pattern. Load in all the stems from the CM-80 folder into a 119bpm session and make sure all the files are set to 119bpm and playing in time – see our earlier tutorials to find out how. We’re using Bitwig Studio 2 here, but the same techniques will work in any DAW. 2 The first thing to do is to discard the original drums, so locate the drum stem and mute (or delete) it. The original track had an 80s pop feel to it, so we’ll transform it into a different genre with a fresh drum groove. First off, we’ll look for a good loop in the song – bars 33-35 sound good to us! 3 When creating a new drum pattern to match stems, it’s a good idea to strip the track back to its core rhythmic parts, so mute everything except the bass channel for now. Speed things up a touch by timestretching everything up to 123bpm; then use your DAW’s pitchshifting function to transpose all clips down by 2 semitones for a deeper, weightier vibe. 4 Our new loop cycles well, so a straight-up four-to-the-floor beat might be suitable. We’re building our drums in Bitwig Studio 2’s Drum Machine sampler, but any sampler will do. Load in kick.wav and hat.wav onto two drum pads. For starters, place a kick on every beat and a hat on every offbeat. 5 Now drop clap.wav onto a new drum pad and place a hit on every second beat to trigger the sample. By default, Bitwig Studio 2 will only play the sample for the duration of the MIDI note triggering it. This clap sample has reverb already baked in, so extend the MIDI notes to one beat in length to reveal the lush reverb tail. 6 Unmute the Guitar channel. The guitar pattern has a few rhythmic accents, but right now there’s nothing in our drum groove that highlights them. To solve this, load in percussion.wav onto a new drum pad. Set your grid size to 1/16 and enter notes on the 5th, 10th, 12th, 16th, 18th, 27th, 30th and 32nd positions, triggering the percussion sample so it complements the guitar rhythm. 7 The percussion sound is playing along nicely with the accents, but it’s in need of some effects. Pushing it to the sides with a chorus and into the background with a reverb will free up mix space for our main groove. For chorus, we’ve dropped in the free OSL Chorus ( oblivionsoundlab.com) and pulled the Dry level down to 0%. For reverb, drop in Acon Digital CM Verb and select the Medium Chamber preset. 8 Unmute the Chorus Arp channel. This 16th-note arpeggio pattern could match up well with a simple shaker – so load shaker.wav into a new audio channel. We’ve now built a basic groove which fits the stems. By complementing the rhythms in the stems with fresh hits and loops, you’ll build up a series of drum patterns that can be brought in and out as the remix progresses.