

If you're using FL Studio, either use the hotkey CTRL+SHIFT+C or right click on the pattern and select "clone". Once you have your first pattern, it will save you a bunch of time to duplicate it twice to make the other two from. Let's go over how to actually do this effectively though. So, what this may look like is a 1, 2, 1, 3 arrangement. These aren't huge changes either.Īnd if you want to make catchy music, using the same pattern every second variation can keep things consistent and prevent an endless progression. Now, to finish it all up, an important thing to do is make variations in your drum patterns. You should also avoid making the delay carry on past the next time this sound is heard, the decibel level can start to add up.įor snares, I would set the decay time to something around 1-3 seconds so it doesn't muddy up the mix as I mentioned before. With that said, I do think adding delay to high-hats and sometimes reverb to snares can make a huge difference in the quality of your percussion.Ī good way to add delay to something while maintaining the rhythm is by locking it to tempo. I hardly ever use effects other than EQ on kick drums as applying reverb to low-frequency sounds can make everything blend together and remove the clarity of each individual sound, this is often called making something " muddy" in mixing terms. If you're just starting out with this kind of stuff I would avoid adding reverb and maybe delay to a kick drum. Okay, moving on to the next method, you can fill in the emptiness of a drum loop with subtle effects like reverb and delay. Just make sure everything is lined up or it may sound a bit off. Then, reverse it and place it right before every second instance of the type of percussion you want to enhance. The first thing I want to talk about is a really cool way to make your snares, claps, or even snaps sound a lot better by taking advantage of this one trick.Įither pick out an entirely new sample or just duplicate the one you have.

Adding Reversed Drums Before Regular Ones Stick around for the b onus tip at the end as well.

Let's start with making simple changes to the drum samples you have to work with, then move on to creating variations in drum patterns to keep things interesting.

There are many ways to make your percussion sound more interesting, with not only the individual samples but with entire loops too. So, In this music production tutorial, I'll teach you how to make percussion sound better. Learn how to make drum loops and percussion sound better in this blog post.ĭrums can start to sound pretty stale after listing to a typical 1 or 2 bar loop for an entire song.
