Many Students are uncertain about how to use today's amazing palette of loops, patterns, and percussion sounds to create effective drum parts. To address this challenge, I've put together a group of techniques for creating interesting drum and percussion tracks. These techniques will work with many contemporary musical styles and can be used by students who have minimal performance skills. For purposes of clarity, I will use a simple classic rock beat.

Sometimes a song needs the full treatment: a complete drum kit with two bass drums, six toms, shaker, tambourine, cowbell, the works. In other cases, however, an effective drum part can be created by using just a few sounds. Web Example 1 begins with two measures of layered percussion tracks. The next two measures use only three drum sounds: snare, bass drum, and hi-hat.

FIG. 1: Drum sounds can be transposed easily in Propellerhead Reason. This screen shot shows the controller data for the two cymbals in the Redrum module heard in Web Example 3. Similar controller data can easily be created for every other sound in a Redrum kit.

The sparse drum part helps to create a sense of openness and clarity and, in this example, makes it easier to hear the delays on the synth sound. Students often tend to layer additional tracks in order to maintain the listener's interest in a song. Therefore, be sure to tell them to ask themselves not what they should add but what they should delete.

An effective way to maintain interest and shift the listener's focus of attention is to temporarily remove an instrumental part at a specific point. Web Example 2 begins with two measures of a full drum kit. In the next two measures the cymbals are muted, creating space for other high-frequency sounds and giving the song a darker, more bottom-heavy sound.

In the final two measures the cymbals are added, while the toms and bass drum are muted. This top-heavy mix creates a feeling of lightness and weightlessness that can be a refreshing contrast in the middle of a song.

Tuning the drum kit can have a dramatic effect on the impact of a song. The tight, crisp sound of a piccolo snare drum, for example, will produce a sound that's very different from a large snare drum with loose snares. Web Example 3 begins with two measures of a drum kit played at its original pitch. In measures 3 and 4, the drum part is transposed up in pitch. This transposition produces a higher and tighter sound than the original sound and creates a totally different effect. In measures 5 and 6, the drum track is transposed down in pitch. Notice how this sounds bigger and heavier than the original drum kit.

If you are using audio loops for your drum parts, you can easily change the pitch. For example, in Apple GarageBand you can use the Region Pitch command in the Loop Editor to transpose the loop. There are several ways of transposing drum sounds in Propellerhead Reason: you can use the Transpose dial in the Dr:rex loop player or you can use the pitch-bend wheel in the NN-XT sample player. The Redrum drum-computer module offers more-precise control by allowing you to detune each drum sound individually (see Fig. 1). You can also assign the pitch controls for each drum in a kit to any MIDI controller number.

If your drum sounds are produced on a hardware synthesizer, you can transpose all of the sounds by inserting a Pitch Bend controller value at the beginning of the drum track. If you want to change the pitch of a specific drum part, such as a snare drum or tambourine, you can copy that part to a new track, assign the track to a different MIDI channel, and then add the desired Pitch Bend data.

The techniques described here are much more effective when used in the context of a longer song. There are no hard-and-fast rules for applying of these techniques. Your ears and those of your students will best decide what works in a specific song and what doesn't.

These are just a few ways to break up the monotonous, looped drum sounds heard in many students' songs. Several additional simple techniques are available, however, and I'll discuss them in my next column.

Don Muro (www.donmuro.com) is a member of the NYSSMA Technology Committee and the TI:ME Board of Directors.