Before I start, let me add a disclaimer here. I’m a nonmusician. I play no musical instruments. I have only a very elementary knowledge of music theory and love using this limited knowledge and my imagination on the software application MuseScore to compose sequences of sounds that sometimes may resemble music. I’m an engineer and a mathematician who discovered how interesting music is at a stage in my life much too late to do anything about it. The purpose of this article is to share my thoughts about the drum part of a music composition and to share my approach to creating the drum part of a musical composition.
Introduction
Hey everyone! Thanks to all of you who subscribed to my newsletter! It really helps motivate me to do more posts! Thanks! This is Beymer and I’d like to share what I have learned about the drum part of a musical composition. I hope you read my previous article, which happened to be my first Substack article. Please read! In this article, I wrote about my approach to composing a song based off lyrics. Basically, I began with the lyrics. The lyrics were then broken into phrases and later into syllables, which then formed the basis for the rhythm. The melody was then created from the syllables. Finally, the harmony (chords) was created by one of two methods. The first method chose chords that matched the associated melody notes. The second method first selected a chord progression or sequence and then shifted the melody notes associated with a chord either up or down to match the chord notes. In that article, I also provided the music part (no voice) of a song I had created using this approach. I also provided a link to music I created starting first with a chord progression (harmony part) and then squeezing out a melody from the notes of each chord. I also stated that there was no drum part and that I was actively working of figuring how to create the drum part in a musical composition. However, I did provide a music piece where I did add drums.
Ok, so here it is! This article will present an approach to creating the drum part for a musical composition. But first, I want to share with you what I learned about drums browsing the Internet and playing around with the software application MuseScore. You really can’t begin to create a drums part, if you don’t know what roles the drums play in a musical composition. Also, you need to have at least a rudimentary understanding of the components of a drum set. When composing music, it’s important to carefully choose the instruments that will accomplish the goal of the musical composition. You must understand each instrument’s role in accomplishing this goal. In the previous article, I completely ignored this important consideration in my approach to music composition. In Step 8 of my approach, I suggested starting with either a guitar or piano, which are good choices for the composition. The fairly large chromatic range of the guitar and piano make them ideal for creating music. Once created, other instruments can easily be added to complement or replace portions of the initial composition. One good feature of MuseScore is that it uses colors to indicate the practical chromatic range of the various instruments. In this article, a drum will be defined as a set of components struck by a stick to produce a sound. When I use the term drums, I mean the following devices: the bass drum, a low floor tom, a high floor tom, three high toms, a snare drum, a hi-hat cymbal, a ride cymbal, a splash cymbal and a crash cymbal. These are the drum components available in the software application MuseScore.
The Roles of the Drum Set
I found essentially three roles for the drums. The roles were 1) keeping time for the band, 2) creating “fills” for the musical piece, and 3) creating a background ambience or “musical” atmosphere to complete or augment the music from the other musical instruments. I will discuss each of these roles. This will be followed by a quick description of the drum components. Finally, I will present my approach to adding a drum part to a musical composition.
Every article I saw on the Internet mentioned keeping time for the band as an important role for the drums. The drums act as a master clock that provide a “homing signal” for those who purposely occasionally stray (i.e., the lead guitar) and a clock reference for the non-straying instruments. Back in my Navy days, one of my friends and I went to a night club that had a live band. My friend remarked that the drummer was off time and was causing the band to sound bad. Not sure if it was the beer or the deafening music, but I really couldn’t tell. Of course, unlike me, my friend was in the high school band and knew quite a bit about drumming and music! He stopped them and began to play the drums for them. He was right. The band sounded much better! Ok, that makes sense when you have a band, and all the instruments need to be synchronized to a common beat or clock. However, in my case, there’s no band. I am using the software application MuseScore to simulate the musical instruments and I control exactly when each instrument makes its sounds. I’m the clock that controls the timing of all contributing instruments! My point is that I don’t need drums or any other instrument to control timing because I’m controlling the timing when I put the notes on the staffs associated with each selected instrument. Timing is not a justification for adding drums to my composition, since a band is not playing my music … the software application Musescore is saving the music in a wave or mp3 file that can be played back on any music player. What about the person (hopefully more than one!) who listens to my music? Do I have a responsibility to that person to provide a drum track to help her count the beats? Do people with musical backgrounds do this when they listen to music? Like I said, I’m a nonmusician, so I have no idea! If yes, then this would be a good reason to include a drum track.
Some of the articles mentioned “drum fills”. These fills are bars or measures where the other instruments are quiet for either the whole bar or a portion of the bar. The drummers use this time to signify a transition in the music. This is the fun time for the drummer, letting it all hang out! These fills can also help keep the audience’s attention. I was once told by a mathematics instructor that students had an attention span of only about 5 to 10 minutes. He suggested discussing a topic for 5 minutes, then have the students apply the technique. I guess the attention span is much smaller for audiophiles. Depending on the tempo and time signature, this could be much less than a minute. I bet doing a drum roll on a snare drum at 5-minute intervals would help keep mathematics students awake! Fills, like timing, are not a justification for adding drums to my composition, since I could use any of the existing instruments alone or even a new instrument to create the fills, assuming of course, that fills are really needed! My music tends to be quite short (an average a minute or so) and I cannot believe that the audience would dose off in that short period of time. If it were a 5-minute musical composition, then maybe a fill or two would be good. If I were doing some weird changes of keys, time-signatures, or tempo, then this would be another case where fills would be justified. Again, I could use another instrument for these fills, and I have done so in the past.
Most of the articles mentioned a controlled background ambience of sounds. Ok, not in those words, but in words meaning the same thing. It’s like the difference between having a conversation in the library and having a conversation in a busy cafeteria or in an elevator with Muzak playing in the background. Here’s a simple analogy. Imagine the desert with nothing but miles of sand. Now, let’s create this oasis, one step at a time. Survey out a circular, one-acre section of this desert. Now, plant 10 pine trees, 10 oak trees, 10 cherry trees, and 10 apple trees on this one-acre section. Plant them so they are equally spaced in distance and randomly placed according to type throughout the section. Now, select a particular type of shrub for each type of tree and plant 3 of them for each tree. The trees represent 4 different musical instruments and the shrubs represent the harmonics (or overtones, or partials) that give that instrument its characteristic sound (e.g., the guitar sound, the piano sound, etc…). This budding oasis looks nice and its analogy (the band) sounds nice, but it’s not complete. Something is missing. Let’s add some different types of grass of varying heights and some water puddles. Add a breeze that gently sways the trees, shrubs and grass. Let the breeze produce small ripples or waves moving in random directions along the water surface. We now have a grade A oasis! What is the musical analogy to this grass and water puddles? Well, it could be the drums playing in the background of the music. It could also be the sounds of wind, water, birds, insects, frogs and other creatures. It could be nearby traffic. It could be anything. This grass and water, I believe, completes the musical composition. But what about the voice of the singer? Well, I classify that as a musical instrument that can never be matched by any human designed instrument. Is a drum part the best way to achieve this completeness? I think is some instances it may be, but in other instances I think sounds from nature may be better. In addition to the nature sounds mentioned, there are different ‘colors’ (i.e., the shape and rolloff of the frequency spectrum. There is white noise, pink noise, etc…) of noise that could be this ambience. You could modulate the volume of this background noise to achieve different effects. When you look at the frequency spectrum of drums and compare it to that of the various colors of noise, you’ll see the drum spectrum is more similar to the noise spectrums than to that of the other musical instruments.
Ok. I like drums. I’m not much into dancing, but the drums done slow enough make me wanna dance or at least bob my head. With all the components making up a drum set, you can get all kinds of musical colors to complete your music. In addition, you can use the drums to do those fills and provide some beats to synchronize your head bobbing! My final thoughts about the use of drums in a musical composition are as follows:
If you want your listeners to bob their head or dance, you gotta have some drums or at least something with a pounding sound (persussion device) in your music. This is not the kind of music I usually make.
Drums seem to me to be the easiest way to produce a master clock for your music. I compose my music using Muscore, so all the notes/sounds are automatically synchronized when I enter them on the staff and play them back either in MuseScore or in the MuseScore-generated wave or mp3 file. There are no band members here needing to be synchronized. I don’t need drums for this.
More recently, I have been using the drums to do fills. I haven’t done so in the past. For my compositions, I prefer to use a single instrument to serve this role. I must admit that using an instrument different from the main instruments in the composition is often better for these fills. If your musical piece contains a guitar, a piano and a cello, then using a sax for the fills could be interesting.
With regards to background ambience, the drums seem to be the easiest solution. You need an instrument or device that spreads the sound energy over the audible frequency range and has somewhat of a modulating volume. The drums do this and more (i.e., fills, timing, etc…). I plan to continue experimenting with non-drum solutions, but I will still use drums occasionally.
Creating a Drum Track
All right! Time to share with you my approach to including a drum track in my music compositions. There are two approaches that I use: 1) first create the drum track. Then add the other musical instrument parts. Finally, add the lyrics. 2) first create the music and lyrics. Then add a drum track that captures the “feel of the music”. Whatcha talkin bout Willis (old TV series “Diff’rent Strokes”)? Feel? WTH is that? This article is already bigger than I planned, so I will only present only the first approach for now and present the second approach in my next article.
In the figure below, the components available for the Drum Set instrument are shown. I have labeled the components that I use. Note that the mixer dialogs shown have a setting called Sound. I’ve found that the Orchestra Kit Sound makes the drums (i.e., bass, snare, etc...) sound better and the Jazz Sound make the cymbals sound better. Since you can only set a Drum Set instrument to one of those available from the Sound pull down, I add two drum sets to my score, one for the drums and one for the cymbals. I am not a drummer, and I don’t play one on TV, so I really don’t know what the correct uses are of all these drum components. I have experimented with the different components and done some searches on the Internet. This is the approach I take to using these components in my compositions:
Bass Drum … I use it for the 1st beat and sometimes for the 3rd beat of a bar with a 4/4 time signature. Sometimes I break the 2nd, 3rd and 4th beats into 8th and 16 notes and may insert the Bass Drum note again as one of those notes.
Snare Drum … I use it for the 2nd beat and sometimes for the 4th beats of a bar with a 4/4 time signature. Sometimes I break the 2nd, 3rd and 4th beats into 8th and 16 notes and may insert the Snare Drum note again as one of those notes.
Toms … I use the Toms to create melody-like sound sequences with the drums. There are 5 Toms I use with MuseScore.
Hi-Hat and Ride Cymbal … I sometimes use these cymbals to create melody-like sound sequences. I sometimes use the Side Stick, Cowbell, and Ridebell with these cymbals to create a better sounding melody-like sequence of sounds.
Splash and Crash Cymbal … I sometimes use these cymbals at the end of a phrase or when the music is changing somehow (e.g., change in tempo, key, or the beginning of a solo.)
In the figure shown below, 4 quarter notes are present in the first bar of a 4/4 time signature. The bass drum is used for the first and third quarter notes and the snare for the second and fourth quarter notes. I could just stop right there. It’s perfect for timing: I could break the third and fourth beats into double eighth notes for the fills: I could leave it just as it is for the background ambience: Dancing and head bobbing should be fine with this drum pattern! However, I wanted something more complicated with a “good feel” to it. Sorry for the use of the vague word “feel”! I saw it used several times in Internet articles “explaining” how to match drums to a musical piece. They would say you have to get the “feel” of the musical piece and use this “feel” to create your drum part. WTH??? Apparently, I’m just not one of those touchy-feely kinds of guys. No further explanation of “feel” was given in those articles. What I do in this method is to incrementally make changes to the 2nd, 3rd and 4th beats until I get some drum patterns that sound interesting to me. As you can see here, I went through 9 more bars until I found enough patterns that sounded good to me (my definition of “feel” is it sounds good!). Note that I added a quadruplet in bar 6, added a grace note in bar 11, and added some accents and tremolos in bar 12. If any of these sounded bad, I would have removed them. I now have 12 bars or drum patterns that I can place anywhere in my composition, just cutting and pasting! All of this work was done for Drum Set 2. These are the drums, with the Orchestra Kit Sound setting. Now it’s time to work on Drum Set 1, the cymbals, with the Jazz Sound setting. In bars 16, 17 and 18, the final patterns are shown. I arrived at these patterns through pretty much the same trial and error approach taken for the drums in the earlier bars; however, I only applied the cymbals to the Drum Set 2 patterns I intended to use in the composition. The next step is to arrange these bars in a pleasing pattern to create the final drum track. In this piece, I didn’t do any fills. I did play with the tempo, starting at 90 bpm and ending with 70 bpm. In between, certain sections used 80 bpm.
Here is the final drum track for the composition.
Creating the Bass Part off the Drum Part
For this composition, I used a bass guitar and an electric guitar. Since I had started with drum tracks, it seemed to me that the bass lines should be written next! Afterall, bass guitar and drums are best friends! Now, the weird part about his composition is that even though the piece is in the key of C, the melody and the bass line tend to hover and converge on the A note. Why I did this can only be explained as a senior moment. I began the bass line A notes in the first few bars and then developed a melody that usually converged on the A note. I tried to loosely follow the rhythm established by the drum parts (Drum Kits 1 and 2). Here is what bass guitar and drum tracks sound like. I panned the bass guitar to the left, the cymbals to the right, and centered the drums.
Creating the Lead Guitar Part off the Bass Guitar Part
Ok, time to do the lead guitar part. After playing this rhythm piece several times, I thought the 3rd and 4th bars would work together with some bends and a slide ending with a vibrato. Through trial and error, I came up with some bends in the 3rd bar and did a slide followed by a vibrato in the 4th bar. Another senior moment in this composition resulted in no chords for this piece! Without any chord progression, my only choice was to base the lead guitar on the A-centered notes from the bass line. Essentially, the bass guitar was doing the melody, with the lead guitar “embellishing” the bass guitar melody! Isn’t that crazy? I liked it though! Otherwise, I would have added an instrument to play some chords that matched the bass line. Here is what the lead and bass guitars sound like alone. I put the lead guitar in the center.
Finally, I took the lyrics from a previous song and squeezed them in where they seemed to fit. Haven’t created the voice track yet, so don’t know how well it works. Finally, I played with the chorus and reverb to the drums and the reverb to the lead guitar. Here’s the final sound and the first page of the sheet music. Hope you liked it!