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Create Soul‐Destroying Drum Beats For Heavily Palm‐Muted Riffs, date: october 30, 2013

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Create Soul‐Destroying Drum Beats for Heavily Palm‐MutedRiffs

author: Jahan Honma date: 10/30/2013 category: songwriting & lyrics

Learn a method of writing drums for yourheavy metal songs.

Perfect for song­writers who do not play thedrums.

Listen to this very simple and fun palm­mutedmetal riff:

Heavy Palm­Muted Riff.MP3

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LESSONS

It is very repetitive and the perfect type of riff to sing or play a guitar solo over. In my case,I wrote this riff to have death vocals sung over. There are tons of possibilities but whateveryou do, you will probably want an awesome drum beat to accompany it. Am I right? Sinceyou are such a great guitarist and composer, you have probably got a ton of these kinds ofsweet, bouncy riffs lying around all over the place. If you do not have a drummer to writebeats for you, your next best option is to use drum samples to write the beats yourself. As aguitarist there is always the possibility that you have no idea how to write a drum beat. Iknow I did not when I first started. I wrote crazy nonsense for drum beats back in the day.When I finally got a drummer and let him listen to my songs, he told me that he would needfive arms and unbelievable penile control to play those beats. I have been playing in mycurrent band (Zoltan) for many years now and I often hear people tell my drummer howimpressive his drum work is. Since I write all the drum parts for my band, I feel like they areactually complimenting me and now I want you to get the same results. So let us get to it!

The first thing that I like to do when writing a beat for this type of riff is have the bass drum(also known as a kick drum) play along with all of the palm­muted guitar notes. A riff likethis is really all about the rhythm. Having the kick drum in perfect synchronization with theguitars is an excellent way to accentuate that rhythm. Here is the result:

Kick Drum.MP3

The sweet thing about having the kick drum play in sync with the guitars is that it makes iteasier to hear what the guitars are playing. In other words you are getting heaviness andclarity at the same time. You cannot beat that!

Now let us add in some snare and hi­hat. It is common for the hi­hat to play once on everybeat and the snare on whichever beats you want to accent. An example would be to hit thesnare on every second and fourth beat. This would sound like "tss­pah­tss­pah." You could

do this and it would sound just fine with the riff we are using but I personally want to makeit into a slow brutal riff, so instead I am going to play the hi­hat on only half of the beats(the first and third beats only) and have the snare hit only once per bar on the third beat.

Hihat & Snare.MP3

The x­shaped notes at the top are the hi­hats. The snare is the note on the third space(counting from the bottom, as is the usual practice in music theory). The hi­hat and snareusually work together to create the overall feeling of the drum beat, which is why I add themtogether instead of one at a time. If you do not feel that you are ready to think of two thingsat once, then think about just using the snare on the spots you want to accent and then addin the hi­hat in a very straight pattern. You will definitely get the hang of it over time.

So now we actually have a complete beat but it is far from sounding soul­destroying.Everything else you might do from here onward could be considered simple tweaking. Thereare countless ways you could go about tweaking this very basic beat to sound the way youwant it to. I will show you how I went about it but remember that there is no wrong way towrite a drum beat. This is just one method that I like to use when it comes to these types ofheavily muted riffs. The first thing I would like to do is make it sound heavier overall. The hi­hat is just not doing it for me so let us replace it with crash cymbals.

Crash Cymbals.MP3

You can see at the top that the old hi­hats are gone. Those new x­shaped notes you see areboth crash cymbals.

Next, I am thinking of adding variety by completely changing up the feeling in the secondhalf. Instead of continuing on with the crash cymbals I am going to revert back to the hi­hatand I am going to have it and the snare play twice as fast. So there will be hi­hats on everybeat and snares on every second and fourth beat. Below is what the second half of the beatlooks like in notation. The old hats are back but there are twice as many of them now andtwice as many snares now accompany them.

Latter Half Variation.MP3

Nice. There is still one problem with this beat. Where there are no muted heavy chords, thedrum beat just kind of stops. We can fill that in with some simple snare and cymbal hits.There they are at the end of every fourth bar.

Sustained Note Hits.MP3

The beat actually sounds quite complete now but even with the second half changed up, itstill sounds boring to me. The last step to make your beat really rock is to add decorations.It is up to you how and where to add decorations. It will vary for each person and each song.Decorations are a completely free­style process but they often contain well­known structures

such as drum rolls and fills. This is the time to go crazy with your imagination and write stuffthat makes you say, "That's insane!" Before going too crazy, here are a few guidelines tohelp make sure your beat is actually playable by a human drummer.

1. Most drummers are limited to the use of one drum stick per arm and only two arms. Makecertain your beat never requires more than two drums (not including the kick drum) orcymbals being hit simultaneously.

2. Do not write a machine­gun kick drum beat that is any faster than the speed you candrum your palms on your lap.

3. If you want to have an opening and closing hi­hat, you will only have one foot availablefor the kick drum.

Here are the additions I made.

The top staff is the slow first part of the drum beat while the bottom staff is the fastersecond part. During the slow section, the first addition I made was a bunch of ride cymbalhits played at the same time as the kick drum. Right after that I threw in a quick hi­hat.That's all that is contained in the first red circle in the fourth bar. Right after the first redcircle comes the snare and cymbal hits that accompany the sustained guitar notes. You cansee that there is a single kick drum note in between the two hits. In the faster section, thechanges occur right before the snare and cymbal hits where I placed a kick drum to lead intothem. The first hit after that is usually a snare and a crash. Look closely and you will noticethat the cymbal has moved to the third space above the staff. That is not a crash cymbal buta china cymbal. It is a small change but it goes a long way in eliminating a repetitive sound.Before the second snare hit are three rapid kick drums and then another kick at the very

end.

Final Beat.MP3

You are now ready to create soul­destroying drum beats for most heavy palm­muted riffssuch as this one. I hope you found this article of great use. If you have any questions, feelfree to contact me.

Bonus.MP3

About the Author:Jahan Zoltan Honma is a recording artist and freelance composer based in Niigata City,Japan. You can learn more about Jahan at TheLegendaryZoltan.com and listen to some freemusic at Zoltan's SoundCloud.

comments policy 54 comments posted

A great article to demonstrate how drums can really spice up a simple riff, nice stuff!

posted on Oct 30, 2013 09:53 am # +8Hippedkille

A little overstated saying it is "soul­destroying" when it is more or less quite straightforward and plain. It'ssimple and easy to construct something basic from these rules certainly. That may be the reason why itsounds somewhat generic like most nouncore music.

posted on Oct 30, 2013 10:01 am # +12Prostheta

Yeah, I'm pretty much in the same boat as this ­ the way I see it is that this article is great IF youwant to only write a very specific style of drum pattern over a specific style of riff (e.g. metalcorebreakdowns, basically). Other than that, it doesn't really teach you anything.

We have more in­depth resources in the Recordings forum if users search for them, no offence tothe author of the article!

m posted on Nov 02, 2013 03:59 am # +2DisarmGoliath

its also far, far away from being heavy...

posted on Nov 13, 2013 06:59 am # +1xlonexwolvesx

Bonus doesnt work

posted on Oct 30, 2013 10:10 am # ­6xlog

Tried it a second time and it did work for me.

posted on Oct 30, 2013 11:43 am # +1dralithi

Kick Drum.MP3 reminds me of Fear Factory... nice.

posted on Oct 30, 2013 10:35 am # +1Pepitohammett

way too boring imo, it's exactly what every *core band does

posted on Oct 30, 2013 12:47 pm # +26theoriginalhe

if you're writing drums for metal, take wise note of what chris says in the first few moments and find a wayto spice it up without detracting from the song

typically, the way to do this, and the way to make an interesting drum track, is not by layering the bassdrum over the same rhythm as the guitar

"It's pretty simple. It's doubles over triples."

Yeah, okay, Chris...

posted on Nov 04, 2013 08:28 pm # +1Sumlover41

Definitely one of my favorite metal drummers (I'm a guitarist btw). It's not often that you stopand think "man, that drum riff was so original." Also, I like his super tight snare sound, becauseyou're able to hear every little stroke so clearly.

posted on Nov 06, 2013 09:54 pm #eatfresh1736

No matter what others say, i belive that this could turn into a great help for any guitarist that needs to writehis own drums, so it would be aprecciated if there could be more lessons. For example, about breaks,different rhtyms etc etc.

posted on Oct 30, 2013 02:13 pm # +12aelkeris

agreed with aelkeris. as a recording guitarist who doesnt play the drums, i find that dragging anddropping drum riffs for Superior Drummer and random midi maps i found online can be stale. idont THINK like a drummer, so its hard for me to come up with interesting drum tracks like this.

posted on Oct 30, 2013 02:29 pm # +4westley23j

I'm in the same position.

Besides, this is a very simple example. You could easily change up things. The point is,HOW TO THINK like a drummer. In other words, what parts should be rhythmicallyemphasized and what should keep pushing the song forward as a steady beat? That'snot easy for a guitar player to grasp without some help.

posted on Nov 01, 2013 02:28 pm # +3crazysam23_Atax

well then if youre not a drummer, then thats the challenge. is trying to write interstingrhythms maybe the way a drummer wouldnt't necessarily play it. i didnt enjoy thisarticle at all i think the last thing this world needs is more kids coming up and sayingkicks that do nothing but follow heavy chugs are awesome

posted on Nov 01, 2013 02:30 pm # +3K!!LsWiTcH

sick breakdown

posted on Oct 30, 2013 10:02 pm # +1Russcool

As a drummer first then guitarist, this was pretty generic sounding. Not to dump on you or anything, I justfind it really boring.

posted on Oct 30, 2013 11:50 pm # +10Renegade24

It works for some genres, not for others, imo

posted on Oct 31, 2013 03:55 am # +2K33nbl4d3

Doesn't work. This would be useable for 4/4 timesignature, but since your riff is 15/16, and mostly thedrums are too (they're 4/4 at some points and just 13/16 at others). For prog you don't use drum patternsthis simple.PS. Maybe you should learn the basics, like how time signatures works, before posting a lesson.

posted on Oct 31, 2013 02:55 am # ­14henrihell

What are you talking about? Listen to the accents and look at the number of beats in the bar; it'sa 4/4 riff... which, in case you missed it, is denoted by the time signature written at the beginningof the staff.

posted on Oct 31, 2013 06:06 am # +5Lodhas

when i copy that exact riff to guitar pro, the bar is incomplete. It says 4/4, but it reallyisn't if you count carefully. You have 5 16th notes, then 2 8th notes and finally 6 16thnotes. that makes a 15/16 time signature.

posted on Oct 31, 2013 10:59 am # ­11henrihell

You missed the dotted 8th rest after the five 16th notes. Just listen to thesong. Does it sound like 15/16? Or just use your brains. If you can readrhythms well, you can see where the beats are. At first I didn't see that dotin the dotted 8th rest but I knew it had to be there. And after looking at itmore carefully, you can see that there is a dot.

posted on Oct 31, 2013 12:32 pm # +7MaggaraMarine

OK, it's light gray, almost white. In other words the program usedto create those is crap. Dots should be the same color as

posted on Nov 01, 2013 03:03 am # ­10henrihell

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everything else, not so light that you barely see them.

In other words, you're blaming the writer, because you didn'tread it properly. Good job, man.

posted on Nov 01, 2013 02:30 pm # +5crazysam23_Atax

in other words he mentioned a failure because the notation iscrap. simple is that

posted on Nov 02, 2013 01:29 pm # ­3jesus_sucks

It is wrong it's 15/16 not 4/4.And the notation is terrible.

posted on Oct 31, 2013 12:11 pm # ­9jesus_sucks

B I U :)