The Importance of Drums

Hip Hop is a very rhythm orientated music, the drums are very very important, debatably the most important ingredient in a hip hop beat.
Just an observation I have made, but I feel many people could put a lot more effort into their drums. To my ears I'm hearing a drum loop thrown on a beat and there is hardly any variation in the basic drum loop. Even subtle changes in a drum loops pattern can keep it interesting throughout, adding fills, well timed drop outs, as well as other variation like some toms as a fill, or sometimes a doubled up snare here and there keeps things interesting for the listener.

Also some well timed drum variation on a track with vocals or a remix can really enhance certain words and make them stand out.
My recommendation to the newer beatmakers out there is to chop up your drum loops and play around and have some fun with them, make them change a little, even if its subtle.
The process of chopping up a loop and reprogramming it is a great learning tool. Changing the swing on it to fit a sample and some subtle variation or well timed and interesting variation can make a hell of a lot of difference to capturing the listeners attention. It will make you a much more versatile beatmaker, it will improve your chopping game so you get better at dealing with clicks and accurate chopping, which also helps beat timing.

Even for the more experienced beatmakers, sometimes we can get a bit lazy as we just go through the motions of throwing the parts of a beat together that we forget, or just cant be bothered to make a basic drum loop more interesting, I include myself in that as I'm guilty of it from time to time myself.

Always pay attention to the details.

Beats are a fine balance between hypnotic repetition and changes that keep the listener interested throughout.
Having a great loop that an emcee can rap over is one thing, but why not go a little extra mile and make it amazing.
The devil is in the details, get your hands dirty and go in on those drums, you will learn a hell of a lot from it and your beats will be much more interesting.
Could be the deciding factor in winning or losing a battle too. Also it allows you to put the kick on its own channel and use it for sidechaining to the bassline, which in turn can prevent over-compression when it comes to the final limiting stage and allow for louder less distorted mixes where the kick and bass can both equally shine.
After many years of chopping up drum loops and reprogramming them, it went a long way towards making me a better beatmaker and I think every beatmaker could learn a lot from the process and be better as a result.

Great post.

I'm definitely guilty of just slapping a stock drum break on a beat, or throw together something simple to write on, then never go back and add change ups.

I started working on a faux "live" drummer being sampled break last night. This post motivated me to go in and create several variations and little changes!

Good post.

I've mentioned many times over the years about how important the drums are because they're the backbone. I've actually just been making drum loops recently for fun, but also trying to come up with some sort of variation and get out of my comfort zone.

My advice is to look back at how it used to be done and work with that. For example, the Funky Drummer loop is so well known and it's a great place to start, so use that and then add your own drum sounds over it. Even if it's just a kick - just something.

Damu the Fudgemunk always comes correct with his drums. Check this out:



A great breakdown to study is Marley Marl's recreation of Mama Said Knock You Out because of how he uses different drum breaks and layers them:

Personally I haven't used a drum loop in hip hop for years, I always program my own drums simply because variations are a lot easier that way.
I will use drum loops in drum n bass as a foundation or extra layer under my main programmed drums.
Diamond D was my main inspiration for drum variation and Damu's track is a perfect example of the Diamond D SP style of subtle variation. I could easily mistake that for a Diamond beat with the drums and little vocal chops, classic Diamond style.

2GooD Productions said:

Personally I haven't used a drum loop in hip hop for years, I always program my own drums simply because variations are a lot easier that way.
I will use drum loops in drum n bass as a foundation or extra layer under my main programmed drums.
Diamond D was my main inspiration for drum variation and Damu's track is a perfect example of the Diamond D SP style of subtle variation. I could easily mistake that for a Diamond beat with the drums and little vocal chops, classic Diamond style.

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Yeah I don't use loops too much but for those struggling it's a great way to get something going. It can even just be used as a reference track where they can try to emulate it.

Drums are always interesting because I think we all get lazy with them but they're so important, like you mentioned. The patterns don't have to be complex, but the drums just have to hit nicely. Just having that "MPC swing" on a drum track makes a big difference.

I agree, a basic drum loop is like scaffolding for building a beat, I often leave beat changeups as one of the last things I do to a beat, and can sometimes forget, especially if my composition is doing a lot of the variation work, or if I get lazy or bored. Swing is so important in boom bap, not so much in modern what they call "hip hop" these days. I made this post because of my observations in the Warzone, I noticed a few drum loops with little to no variation, one track was like a long intro and I was left waiting for the beat to drop. I don't know if its a consequence of the loop pack era or newbie beatmakers or what it could be, just an observation worthy of discussion. A lot can be learned from studying classic drum loops, how they are constructed, their swing and groove, and the velocities of the drums themselves in relation to each other. But we as beatmakers, for the sake of versatility and adding to our own skillset need to learn how to make them ourselves.

That's the thing - I know that today the drums are done differently but by studying how it was done years ago it can make a big difference. Maybe today they drag & drop a drum loop, or maybe they program their own drums, but at least do something to it. Not just that, but make the drums stand out, whether it's compression or just running it through some sort of plugin.

Exactly, I use soft clipping to make my drums stand out up front without peaking too hard so that when it comes to the final limiter it's hardly doing any heavy lifting and it doesn't over compress the life out of the beat making what sounded dope before fall to pieces at the last hurdle. My beat in this war zone I pushed to an LUFS of -8db. I know I said I'd stop doing that but I'm only human and can't help myself lol, if it's not distorting at that level then fuck it, I'm pushing it as far as I can.