DR BEAT

Our drum technician works rolls into a drum kit pattern

Part 2 of Ronan Macdonald’s exploration of drum rolls

In last issue’s DrBeat, I showed you how to program a ‘classical’ drum roll of the kind you’d hear accompanying a circus act or leading into a national anthem. That was all well and good, of course, but hardly essential information for the producer of actual, you know, music. Really, though, part 1 was just a primer for this month’s main event, in which I’ll show you how to apply what you learnt to your programmed drum kit grooves.

As mentioned last time, a deeply multisampled virtual snare – ideally at the heart of an equally deeply multisampled kit! – is critical to the successful programming of any drum roll. I’m using Toontrack’s incredible Superior Drummer 3, but other equally viable options include FXpansion BFD3, XLN Audio Addictive Drums, and numerous libraries for Native Instruments’ Kontakt.

To recap briefly on part 1, when programming any roll, remember to turn snap off in your MIDI editor when placing the hits for human timing variation; and alternate the velocity slightly between pairs of hits, representing the doublestrokes in each successive hand that string together to constitute the final percussive ‘blur’. And if your virtual drum kit has any humanising features of its own – such as SD3’s Use Adjacent Layers option and Smoothing control – be sure to give them a try.