So i want to improve my drum patterns.

I was curious though, is a single Kick, Snare, Hi Hat combo usually enough for any beat? or do you guys often use more than a single kick,snare, hi hat within your patterns?

I guess in short....

For you is it more about just finding the right pattern with a simple drum kit

or is it about layering drums and using many different drum hits. e.g 3 kicks, 2 snares, 4 hi hats etc?

or a combination of both?

I sometimes use a kick and then resample it, pitch it just a little bit, add reverb and resample the new drum with the old drum to one pad, so 2 kicks at once to one pad. If you dont pitch one the kick, the double sample will sound like a flanger is on it. I do this for kicks and snares, not high hats.

A lot of the time I will use my mpc 1000 and do 16 level on claps, Then I play my claps live with different pad pushes to have multiple layered clap sounds on the track, it sounds more live, every time claps hit they sound a little different.

Hope this helps!

either two snares together or a snare with some other percussion. if its 2 snares, usually they're layered right on top of each other. depends if there's phasing or not. but if it's percussion, i will stagger it a bit so its slightly behind or ahead of the snare.

ultimately the swing and loose feel can be more important than the sounds

I usually like to have 2-3 kicks, 2-3 snares and 2-4 hats for fairly "real" sounding drums. One trick with the kicks is to have your main heavy kick plus a resampled double(or triple) kick on another. Snare sounds vary a lot with velocity so I like to have a hard and soft at least. Hats are usually just various levels of openness.

As far as patterns go don't over think it. All you need is two sounds (usually a kick and a snare) for the Boom and the Bap. Everything else is gravy. Also just listen to you favourite artists and copy their patterns. You may notice that Dilla and Madlib use The boom bap boom boom bap pattern on like every second track....example

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUiKsf8x ... re=related

Thanks for the advice fellas. Im bout to experiment with multiple drum hits

here's a tip - make some basic kick hat snare pattern, loop it, put some randomness into that by playing additional drum hits on top somehow offbeat or random or using an elbow, then delete everything that's not important. also try chopping breaks not into one-shots, but kick+snare, double kick or tom roll or shnare roll+kick. and play with those but not in the original bpm of the break.

MAKE YORESELF A BONGO FROM THE TANNED SKIN OF A DEAD POSSUM, POSSUM.

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..exactly

In response to the thread topic...there has been a lot of good advice given in this thread. I'm on the side of the cats that say use more sounds in your kits...also as far as patterns, it's true that so many producers do mostly standard boom bapp patterns but it's possible to branch out and use patterns that have more variations and swing to them...my advice on that is to really listen to drummers in all types of music in a diff way. Like when you sample don't jus listen for melodies, pay attention to how the drummers lay down the rhythm in combo with the bass, especially in groove heavy soul records and deep funk...look beyond Hip Hop for some drumming/rhythm influences

this

and this


+ LOTS of different sounding snares and kicks on top of each other. kicks have to be somewhat tight on top of each other, otherwise they will cause some noticeable phasing artifacts ( in my experience). also regarding kicks: try to complement them: have a big fat 808 kick coupled with a nice tight funk kick, for example. snares don't require to much tightness and thinking, imo. also record some percussion or noises from every day live (throwing the car door shut, kicking against the trash can, etc.)

SINAPSE EWE A FUCCIN FRUIT.

And you are a huge cornball pretending to be Jamaican with an alias on an internet board...I do enjoy fruit tho, it's quite tasty and it's good for you too...helps you think clearly and not do retarded shit...like say...pretending you are Jamaican thru an alias on an internet forum