HOW TO MAKE YOUR DRUMS BOUNCE

✍️ 🥁🥁🥁This week I wanna go through a few things I consider essential when starting a beat. The first thing you want to focus on is the BPM (beats per minute), why?

⏱ BPM: This is what's going to set the feel for the track you're creating. Most old-school HIP-HOP tends to swing between the tempo of 80 - 100 and since I am a dusty drum head Id like to range my bpm in the 90's, it's not to slow and not too fast either. So I would suggest you listen to some music that has that type of tempo, that way you can get a feel for time signatures, which will help you in the long run.

📊 VELOCITY: Whether or not you use quantization, another trick to know is using velocity. Even if you end up having to quantize your tracks, Velocity can help soothe and create feeling or "bounce to your drums" by adjusting the different volume points of each note. The volume you hit each note at will have a different impact and more natural feel then just thumping every note at its same velocity. For example, the hi-hats, sifting the velocity between each note WILL give you a swing of its own. Same goes for snares and kick drums.

🏌️‍♂️ SWING: Swing also comes down to the way you play and how you adjust each note inside your tempo. If you want more bounce to your drums I would suggest you try following these steps. Listen to your preferred music to get you inspired, try to figure out what tempo it's at. Then pick a BPM of you own that you're comfortable with, play notes at a different velocity, doing so will create a swing and feel of its own. don't worry too much about quantizing because it depends, for everyone it's different. Last but not least have fun!!

👉 LINKS :

BPM COUNTER  >>>>  https://www.all8.com/tools/bpm.htm

🤔 QUANTISATION: Now that you have the BPM down, the second question is whether or not you want to quantize your tracks. What does quantization mean? well in laymen's terms it means that anything processed and recorded on a software will stay 'on time' of the tempo it is at. This is helpful if you are dealing with faster tempos such as 120 bpm or more so that you don't go "off rhythm". But if you are looking to make your drums swing and have more of a natural feel quantization is NOT the answer. You're drumming will end up being a bit rigid and more robotic then they should be.