They can be used as fillers if you're feeling that the beat is sounding lonely AS WELL as to anticipate a high-velocity hit on snare. Ghost notes usually go in between cymbal hits, and rarely over bass drum hits. This is a great way to remove some machine-type of sound from the drum composition too. I'm using Gavin pretty shamelessly as an example, but trust me this is regular stuff to drummers, Gavin just happens to do it quite well and exaggerated.įor snare, he's adding ghost notes to where ever he wants to. On the chorus, he moves to ride and plays it following a simple pattern of: 1th 8th-note bell relatively hard, 2nd 8th-note regular hit played quieter. Here's some playing by 0:00, the beat itself goes in 7/4 (or 6/8, 8/8) but he's still doing this simple dynamic control to add groove to the beat.

That sound add a certain type of depth to the beat already. If that starts to make the composition sound hasty, just lower the velocities of 2nd 4th-note and 4th 4th-note. Good starting points that most drummers do in their playing:Ĭymbals: Not every hit is played at max velocity.ĭepending on the part and how you want it to groove, either add quiet notes to middle of what you have thereįor example: If you have hi-hats going in 4/4, add quiet notes to 2nd 8th-note, 4th 8th-note, 6th 8th-note note and so on). It will not only make your drum compositions sound more natural, but they will also start getting a 'tasty'-factor to them. If that's not a possibility to you, just check out drum solos of people like Gavin Harrisson or similar that have a good dynamic control in their playing, to see how they use each part of the kit.

Tracking with an electric kit (or triggered acoustic kit) would come with that as well. Also, as these two people mentioned, velocity controlling is so important.

Mixing superior drummer 2.0