Below are several drum patterns we looked at in class, extracted from popular songs and realized in the drum editing view of a DAW. In most cases, the column duration is set to sixteenth notes, so that there are four sixteenth squares per beat and four beats per measure. The higher the note velocity, the deeper the color for the note. Only one measure of the pattern is shown; repeat this to make a longer beat. Drummers always vary the realization of such patterns, sometimes adding or dropping notes, playing fills (usually faster flourishes between phrases), playing notes with varying strengths and subtle timing differences. None of this is reflected in the notation shown below.

Drum patterns used in many styles of Western popular music typically feature an alternation between kick (i.e., bass) and snare drums, with the kick on beats 1 and 3 (in 4/4 time) and the snare on beats 2 and 4 (the backbeats). A more constant, faster-moving part on hihat or ride cymbals completes the texture. Think of the patterns below as variations on this particular setup.

Try recreating these patterns in Reason’s Redrum or Kong (using the Reason Sequencer in Drum Edit mode), and experiment with your own variations.

Led Zeppelin: When the Levee Breaks (1970, written by Kansas Joe McCoy & Memphis Minnie in 1929)

This heavy beat by Zeppelin’s drummer, John Bonham, is similar to Ringo’s pattern in Sgt. Pepper, except that the kick drum has some syncopated sixteenth notes.

Play an excerpt of When the Levee Breaks.

Kraftwerk: Pocket Calculator (1981)

Stylistically, this music seems worlds apart from the rock and blues/rock examples above. But the basic drum setup is similar. The main difference, of course, is the prominent “four on the floor” bass drum pattern in relentless quarter notes, so characteristic of disco and house styles. Another characteristic of these styles is an emphasis on the off-beat eighth notes in the hihat part, which are played much louder than the on-the-beat eighths here.

Rather than the subtle human timing flexibility found in the other excerpts, this example — from the fathers of techno — revels in the robotic nature of machine-made drumming, with every note precisely quantized to a grid of sixteenth notes. Notice that there is a softer, closed hihat part that plays a stream of sixteenth notes, which is not notated here.

Play an excerpt of Pocket Calculator. The beat starts about one third of the way in.

The Winstons: Amen, Brother (1969)

This short drum solo, by G. C. Coleman of The Winstons, has found its way into a large number of tracks by other musicians — cutting across hip-hop, drum ’n’ bass, and other genres — by virtue of appearing on the seminal Ultimate Breaks and Beats bootleg sample collection in 1986.

This excerpt features the original drum solo, followed by slowed-down and speeded-up versions. The slower version is closer to the samples found in many early hip-hop hits, while the fast version is similar to those found in British oldschool jungle tracks from the ’90s. It is known as the “Amen break.”

Notice that the Amen break shares some characteristics with the rock patterns above (the prominent snare backbeats and the consistent hihat pattern), and that its snare drum part features ghost notes — soft hits appearing on weak sixteenth portions of the beat.

Here is a famous example of the Amen break’s use in a hip-hop track. This is the introduction to NWA’s 1988 song, “Straight Outta Compton.”

Check out this rapid-fire compendium of many one-measure ’90s jungle excerpts that use the Amen break and variants.

Steely Dan: Home at Last (1977)

This pattern is called a half-time shuffle and is attributed to Bernard Purdie, the drummer in this Steely Dan song. It features a strong contrast between loud snare hits (deep red) on beats 2 and 4 and soft snare hits (light red) — the ghost notes mentioned earlier — that complete the triplet sixteenth figures played lightly on the hihat. Note that the quarter notes in this pattern are divided into six parts (sextuplets), instead of four parts, which gives the pattern more of a swing feel. The kick drum part in this recording is a bit more complex than the notation here, which represents a simpler variant of the half-time shuffle.

Even with all these details, the basic alternation between kick and snare heard in the Beatles excerpt above is still clear in this shuffle pattern.

Play an excerpt of Home at Last.

A related example:

Led Zeppelin: Fool in the Rain (1979)

Just the drum track of Fool in the Rain (note that Bonham’s countoff corresponds to eighths in our notation, not quarters).