If you don’t have a drum kit or recording setup, creating MIDI drum tracks is your best way of having full drum parts to use.
Using a MIDI track is also a great way of giving you more control over the drums, as you can easily adjust the parts at any stage.
Creating MIDI drum parts can be quite tricky, though. Here’s a quick guide with a few things that you should know.
When you want to program MIDI drums, you need something to input the notes with. You have a few options here. If you don’t have any equipment, you can simply input the notes manually on the piano roll. This will take a lot of time, though, so it’s better to use a MIDI controller.
If you have a MIDI keyboard, you can play the drum notes on the keys. It’s even easier if you have one that has drum pads.
The best option would be to use an electronic drum kit. You can connect it to your computer and then record yourself playing drum parts through a USB cable.
If you play the MIDI notes on a keyboard, or if you input them manually, the drum parts are going to sound very robotic.
To make them sound realistic, you need to change the velocity of all the MIDI notes. They sound robotic when they’re all the same. Moving them up and down will add a more human feel to your drum parts.
This is also very time-consuming, so you could find a plugin that does this for you.
Every DAW has a stock range of drum kits. These are what you’ll hear when you create MIDI drum parts. Some of them are great, but most of them don’t sound incredible.
To get the best possible drum sounds for your drum parts, you should get a drum kit VST. These are plugins that offer higher-quality drum kit sounds that you have a lot more control over.
The best drum VSTs are arguably Superior Drummer 3 and EZDrummer 2.
If you’re using an electronic drum kit as a MIDI controller, you can run these through to the drum kit to get better sounds as you play.
Once you have your MIDI drum parts, you can make them sound a lot better by using a few sound editing tools.
The beauty of MIDI drums is that they already have very high audio quality. However, you can improve on it a bit more by adding a bit of reverb and compression.
It’s a good idea to hear how your MIDI drum parts sound within the context of the music you’re making, and then you can edit the sounds with these tools to make them fit even better.
The key to having realistic MIDI drum parts is to vary the velocity of all the notes. When a drummer plays an acoustic kit, they don’t get the exact same velocity from all their strokes. Having some of them sound a bit louder than others makes the parts sound more human.
You should also change the timing of the notes slightly. When each note is perfectly in time in a grid, it makes the drum parts sound robotic. By rushing and dragging a few notes, your drum part will start sounding more authentic.
Just be careful not to change the timing too much. Otherwise, the drums will start to sound off.
No, drum programming is far from easy. It can be overwhelming at first, but you’ll get better the more you do it.
Every one starts to learn a few tips and shortcuts as they learn, and that makes creating MIDI drum parts a lot easier.
If we were to give one bit of advice on creating MIDI drum parts, it would be to get yourself an electronic drum kit. You can then record the parts as you would with an acoustic kit and then edit them afterward.
You can get a very cheap electronic kit, as long as it can connect to your computer via USB.
Drum Teacher
Brett Clur has a Drum Performance Diploma from Trinity College London has been playing drums for over 20 years. He is passionate about advanced concepts and uses his years of experience to teach his students about them. While he is a full-time drum teacher, he is also working on growing a YouTube channel where shares his insights. You can see him playing there, or on Instagram where he posts daily videos.
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