Top 10 Drum Beats

[Amatista Sheeley]

Adrum machine is an electronic musical instrument that can imitate drum kits and percussion instruments. Some can also produce artificial sound effects. Most drum machines allow users to create their own beats.

A drum machine is commonly used for recording electronic music, often used in house, dance, and hip hop genres. It may also be used as a metronome, as a backing track for practice or as a way to explore a variety of drum rhythms.

Click the squares to create your drum beat. Double click the squares to toggle between the hi-hat and open hi-hat, snare drum and cross stick, and high tom-tom and low tom-tom. Click the instrument names on the left to mute the sound.

Select tempo, time signature and swing at the top. Click "Presets" to see the most common drum beats. You can vary drum beats easily. For example, you can choose the ride cymbal instead of the hi-hat, and cross stick instead of the regular snare drum.

GarageBand's main solution for adding drums and rhythm to songs appears to be through pre-made drum loops and the new session drummers. I desire more customizability with the beats I add to my songs. How can I create custom beats in Garageband?

GarageBand employs loops as one way of creating drums, but you're right, it is very limited especially if your interested in keeping up to date with pop music (trap, EDM, etc). There are a couple of solutions:

Drummer Tracks

This was originally a feature with Logic Pro X and has since migrated to GarageBand (OS X only). As Dave mentioned in the comments below your question, you can select a drummer from a set of styles (R&B, songwriting, etc) and select from several drummers within each style. Each drummer can be further customized by decided how many fills they perform, what sub-set of drums they use and even more. I feel it is a large step above using loops, but can be limiting if you don't use it properly. If you have all of your drummer regions set exactly the same it can be very boring so make sure that for each region it is tweaked to account for the varying dynamics that are part of most songs.

Software Instrument

This by far is the most flexible way to create drums. Create a new software instrument track, select a drum kit and get to it! The one issue with this method is that you need to know how to create a drum beat. I teach a music production course at the high school that I work at here in Toronto and lesson one with drums is that for most styles of music, the most basic drum beat possible is playing the bass drum on beat 1 followed by the snare drum on beats 2 and 4. This is a good starting point.

Another technique that I employ with my students is getting them to copy existing drum beats (bass and snare only) so that they get a feel for how producers put beats together. Of course, there are other aspects to drum like using the hi-hat, toms and cymbals.

Of course, any time you create rules in music there are a ton of examples that break those rules. I think the ultimate rule is that if it sounds good, then go for it (very subjective, I know). Hopefully this gets you started.

EDIT - Extra Info

Beat Grids (Note: Not available in GarageBand)

There are some DAWs (Digital Audio Workstations, which is what GarageBand is) that feature a tool that I call a "beat grid". There may be a more correct term for this. Here's what it looks like in a DAW called FL Studio:

It allows you to toggle on/off each sound of a drum kit. Each row represents a sound in a drum kit and each column represents a point in time in which that sound is triggered. This allows the producer to hear what their beat sounds like in real-time without having to worry if they are playing properly because there is no playing involved, only clicking of the mouse on the grid. If you have the funds, Logic Pro X is almost a carbon copy of GarageBand, but under the hood it's much more powerful. It has an instrument called Ultrabeat that allows you to use a beat grid.

Another tip in GarageBand is to set up the Drummer to play something close to what you want. Then you can copy that track that it creates into a new Software Instrument Track. You can then edit that as you would like. This gives you a lot of flexibility, but also gives you a nice full sound to start off with.

Nowhere are shuffles more recognizable than in traditional blues playing. For an awesome demonstration of various types of slow blues beats and shuffles, check out this lesson by Tony Coleman, longtime drummer for B.B. King:

Every working drummer should have at least a basic knowledge of a few latin drum beats, and the bossa nova is probably the most quintessential latin groove. It typically includes a 3-2 clave (a two measure pattern with the first measure containing three beats and the second containing two) played with a closed hi-hat and rim click on the snare, over a traditional samba ostinato on the kick drum.

An art form in itself, jazz is often considered the most advanced musical style. Its fundamental drum set rhythm is a triplet-based swing pattern played on the ride cymbal, with a hi-hat foot pattern played on the backbeats of two and four:

JJ Jonesis an internationally-touring drummer, educator and writer currently based in Boulder, CO. She's played with folk-pop darlings Girlyman, comedian Margaret Cho, Egyptian revolutionary Ramy Essam, and alt-pop sensation Heather Mae, among many others. JJ is the Tech and Gear Editor of Tom Tom Magazine, and the founder of EmpowerDrumming.com, a drumming education company for women.

Brandon Toews / Style Guides

The Ultimate Guide To Soul And Funk Drumming

In this detailed chapter from The Drummer's Toolbox, you'll learn how to play ten styles of funk and soul on the drums.

Drumeo Team / Drummers

The 100 Greatest Drummers Of All Time

Each drummer on this list has impacted the drumming world in a significant way. Guess who holds the number one spot.

Drum Beats corporate drumming activities transform and unite groups of people through rhythm! With a drum for each participant, the group is led on an exhilarating rhythmic adventure. Within minutes energy levels are heightened as the participants work together to discover the rhythm of their team.

During the events surprise and fun reign supreme. Participants discover the fabulous percussive ensemble they are able to create through drumming, the use of other percussive instruments and their voices.

Participants in a Drum Beats corporate drumming event experience cooperative group dynamics & communication skills. The events are suitable for small groups of 10 through to larger groups of 5,000 participants.

I am using Pod HD500x..............and I am being questioned by many guitarists who have very low-end effects processors like zoom G 1.1...............and the question they are asking me is "do you have drum beats or metronome in you processor??" .....................

well it depends on what you want them for. If you just want them for practice then you can add a Zoom G1 for about 50 bucks and get 60+ rhythms to work with. You could put that in the FX loop or just run it into the CD/MP3 input to play along with. There is also a cool new pedal coming out called a BeatBuddy that looks promising for $300+. You could put that in line between your POD and your amp.

I like to use EZDrummer2 on my computer. Much wider variety of beats and far better quality and can run as a standalone without loading your DAW.. I can just plug my laptop audio into the CD/MP3 input on the POD for a simple setup but it is not as easy to control as a pedal. I also use an online metronome the same way.

Have you (or the guitarists who are asking about this) considered using phone apps that will do metronomes, drum beats, and/or backing tracks? You can always plug one of those 1/8" - 1/8" cables from the phone headphone jack into the CD/MP3 In on the HD500.

Like The real Zap i also use a Boss RC-30 . its great for adding a simple 4/4 or 3/4 drum beat its around 300$ ive found a clone of it called NuX loopcore. i like the drum beats better in the loopcore it has twice as many drum beat options compared to the Boss RC30.the nux loopcore is about $90 ,the only problem i have with the loopcore is it does not have stereo instrument inputs. i wish it was a TRS jack but its not.

+if you wait a lil bit you can buy a (beatbuddy) . its great for adding drums to a guitar practice session. however im waiting on the new(Digitech Trio band creater). the trio adds drums and a bass line to your chord progression , it actually learns your song and plays with you .

I had a GR55 for awhile, and though I loved the sounds, I couldn't gel with the interface, and got rid of it. I've toyed with getting another one, but doggone... that interface, for me, sucked. Couldn't figure out anything with it as far as setting up scenes and moving patches... not intuitive for me at all! But it had some GREAT sounds.

Hey. If you got a POD HD500X, i have found it to work well with the beat buddy drum machine. Using the midi sync cable to sync the beatbuddy's tempo to your Pod makes looping easy. But the tricky bit is recording the guitar and the drums together.

First off, the folks that are asking you this question apparently don't understand the difference between their effects processors and a modeler. Your POD HD is a production level piece of equipment meant for use in a studio recording environment or stage application. Although it could be used as an effects processor, it's designed to be much more than that. No one in their right mind would suggest a Zoom G1 is anything like that. It's really a pure pure practice rig.

As far as drum beats I think you have some pretty good suggestions here, but it depends on what you need it for. If it's just for personal practice to help you with timing you can use any metronome app on your phone through the MP3 input. If you just want a drummer to practice with then loop or plug in a drum machine. If you want to record your best bet will be a virtual drummer plug-in like an EZDrummer2 so you can develop the specific drum line you want with accents, builds, finishes, etc. where they need to be and they can exists independently on their own track.

3a8082e126