How can I program (or do what I have to do to get)realistic drum rolls?

R

Rick Deckard

New member
I want to program, or do whatever is needed, to get a realistic drum roll like those that El P use in his songs. I know that he is not a drummer so my guess, from my very limited knowledge, is that he uses quantization or directly programs them. My questions are: how does he does it? What's the music theory behind it? Am I wrong and he's doing it with other technique? If so, what does he does? Or is a collab with live drummers? I know he has connections so that may be the case.
 
I'm using Ableton 9 and here's what I'm talking about:



I want to do drum rolls like the one in that song before the beat drops.
Or the one in this song, at the end of the drum pattern.

 
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add an arpeggiator to the desired sound you want to roll and you can set how frequently you want the sound to be triggered
 
Should your drum rolls be on the beat or mixed a little off beat when your programming to add a little realistic feel?
 
so the first one is a sequence of 8th notes and 16th notes played hand to hand (aka single stroke rolls)

the second one is a simple 5 stroke roll using 4 32nds on the and of the 4th beat and finishing on the downbeat of the next bar (beat 1)

the third one also uses a 5 stroke roll but this time it is 4 16ths on beat 4 finishing on beat 1 of the next bar

you might want to check out Rudiments Online and Rudiments Sound FIles and http://www.pas.org/Libraries/PASIC_Archives/rudiment_1.sflb.ashx (last one is a pdf to download and print)

you may also need to obtain samples of both left and right hand strokes of your snare drum and toms to better emulate this type of roll playing. velocity is all important here

lastly check my tutorials (see siglnk) for more ideas on drum patterns and rolls
 
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