Dubstepforum.com

i had the exact same problem for ages, with me it was also about a lack of confidence in what i thought "sounded like dubstep". a few sessions of drum pattern making and some well guided advice from (some) people on here got me a lot more confident with making drums and adding some nice percussion to them - remember along with using different samples for your percussion so it doesnt sound so repetetive your also looking to give each hit different qualities in terms of how loud they are heard, where they are in the stereo mix and also how often they are heard, having the odd sound here and there can make such a difference (in good and bad ways, dont try and chuck the sound of a church bell chiming in the middle of a wobbley fuck-you-tnuc type of tune cos it just sounds like your an arty twat trying to be cool (yes thats exactly what i did) )

As well as doing what is mentioned above I find that my hats get a nice swing if I select nice clear varied samples, dont over clutter, adjust the velocity of each note, add some subtle reverb on some notes or use the same sample but pitched differently.

Ehm, well I am relatively new to production, but ive spent most of my time playing around with percussion, trying to get that bit of shuffle/groove. One thing ive found works quite well is to have 2 (or however many more) different hi hats on the go. One of which is fairly on beat (with not much in the way of effects) keeping the rhythm, while the others I send through a delay and play around with different arrangements of hi hats till you get a nice shuffling background skittering sound.

Its what I did in this track, and I got to say I was dead happy with how it sounded after the on beat hi hat comes in at 1:53.

http://www.divshare.com/download/7011641-9c1

But yeah, I got no idea how orthodox this is, but I think it sounds good!

In fact I got to say I was well chuffed with the percussion after the "drop" at 5:41! Just some junk noises, a seriously phasered snare and a few djembes thrown in.

nowaysj wrote: Fuck your hats, you don't need them.

Try telling that to these people:

listen to a ton of TRG and Benga, for starters. Cosmo absolutely kills w/ the hats.

otherwise, from a drummer's perspective-- the guts of the riddim are in the kick, the soul is in the snare, and the sex and anticipation are in the hats. if your hats are really simple and locked down and never grow or change-- not that sexy. one of the things that always drove me nuts about a lot of house.

from a drumset perspective, nothing offers more variation than the hihat-- the amount of control you have over overtones, volume, etc, really changes your part as a musician and greatly affects how people percieve the song. imagine stevie wonder's "superstition" w/a big, sloshy john bonham hihat in it-- it'd be a completely different tune.

and they're equallly as powerful as when they're not there, from the drop in eastern jam to peter gabriel's early 80s work.

...

anyway w/ hats in dancemusic, it's about volume, sound, rhythm-- everything, really. keep experimenting.

go to a music community like sectionz.com where you can download and learn from other people's music project files.

also go to gigs and watch drummers.

get a few drum lessonslessons.

experiment (with velocities / pitch / echo).

without wishing to state the obvious, are you playing with velocities on your hat lines? Alternating stressed/unstressed hats with the velocity is one of the key elements of getting some movement in your beats.

Karmacazee wrote:

Use loops! High pass and EQ some drum loops accordingly, or find some hi-hat/perc loops you like and chop out the bits that don't fit. Because dubstep is generally in halftime there's a lot of space to play with, and I tend to find that with a few minor adjustments most loops will fit into dubstep grooves. Sometimes the ones that you think 'surely that won't work', tend to have the most satisfying results. It's just a matter of making them fit by slicing them at the right place and careful placement within the groove.

Then, when you're bored of using samples (or generally against using loops and samples, I know a lot of people are) the technique that taught me how to program drums was mimmicing. In fact, mimmicing is the same way you learn any instrument really.

1.Find a sample or beat you like - be it a nice loop you have or a tune you admire, whatever.

2.Load it into your daw of choice and loop four or eight bars.

3. Listen Razz

4. Find some drum samples/synths/ROMPLERS (whatever you use to make drums) that sound similar.

5. zoom in onto the loop and try and place your drums in the midi editor in the same places that the hits in the loop land.

Once you've done that you might get a better understanding of what's going on and how to get a better flow, then you can take what you've learned and apply it creatively to your own stuff Wink

Oh, and assuming you've got a MIDI keyboard, try MPC style drum programming too - i.e. loop the region, hit record, bash out some rhythms and drop in some samples - don't worry if it's not in time because that's why they invented quantization and delete!

Man, that's a long ass post...
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Yeah, just make sure you don't start copying people drums patterns...

I think of each hi-hat line/percussion line as a seperate rhythm.

What I do is solo each hat/percussion and make each line sound 'good'. If you do this with all your percussion/hi-hats, they should sound nice and shuffled when played together.

Also it might help to swing your beats a little - just to give it that natural shuffle.

ThinKing wrote:without wishing to state the obvious, are you playing with velocities on your hat lines? Alternating stressed/unstressed hats with the velocity is one of the key elements of getting some movement in your beats.

that.

I'll make a tutorial about it, when I sober up, been meaning to a long time.

shift every 2nd hat forward a bit, FL even has an awesome function to do that, then it sounds like a dog with 3 legs, then layer up more patterns like that or whatever.

Caeraphym wrote:Open wide, here comes the hi-hat triplet train! Choo-choo!

Try learning something about music & rhythm first maybe?

Take a night class in basic druming 101 maybe, or listen to tracks with drums you really dig, funk, blues, rock, house, dubstep, techno, whatever, just try and get those down first off and in the process i bet you'd nail many more drum tracks along the way as you learn hte ones you admire.

Music isn't a gift that's downloaded with the latest cracked DAW/VST bundles and the super spec PC/Mac you just blagged off your old dear for doing a weeks worth of washing up. Christ on a bike1111

Forgive me harshness, I'm pissed.

WTF? what is with this attitude??? When someone asks a question they basically get told to "fuck off" instead of being encouraged and taught. I cant respect someone as an artist as talented and/or skilled as they may be, if they dont promote and share creativity...

double post sorry

alot of the things i thought of suggesting have already been said in some way or another
BUT
perhaps getting some midi pads will help take the stiffness out of your beats
i dunno how good they are but the korg nano pads are only like £40-£50 and they'll probably do the job.

Good luck!