Making Drum Patterns with Redrum

Redrum is one of Reason’s drum instruments. It emulates a drum machine: first you load a patch that provides a “kit” of ten drum sounds; then you construct a short pattern that will cause those sounds to play in a loop, over and over.

Before trying this yourself, watch the Drum Machine 101 with Redrum tutorial. Do not bother trying to recreate the steps in that video. Just watch it once, to understand how Redrum works.

If you’re not a drummer, it’s a good idea to learn something about how drum patterns work before trying to make some.

• Review Drum Patterns in Popular Music. This shows how some different styles of popular music elaborate a basic three-layer rhythmic structure, comprising kick, snare, and hihat or cymbal instruments.
• Watch a real drummer at work on an acoustic drum kit to get a better feel for the drum types and simple rock patterns.
• If you already feel comfortable with this material, pay close attention to these drummers:
  • Antonio Sanchez, a jazz drummer who incorporates Latin rhythms into his style. That cowbell.
  • Sarah Thawer, who interprets Indian rhythms on her drum kit. Check out right-hand cymbal work at 1:57.
  • Jojo Mayer, another jazz drummer who sometimes plays in genres that often use drum machines instead. Notice the hihat play and spots that veer off from the main tempo.

The tutorial that follows shows you how to use Redrum to make a basic rock drum pattern, like that used in the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper, discussed on the Drum Patterns in Popular Music page. Then it explains how to store multiple patterns in one Redrum, create a drum fill, and sequence your patterns.

Building a Pattern

Next you build a pattern out of the three basic types of drum: kick, snare, and hihat.

• Set the tempo.

  

  The Beatles’ song is at about 108 BPM (beats per minute), so set the Reason Sequencer’s tempo to match. Double-click the BPM number to type something new, or drag up or down on the number.

• Listen to the click, to hear the basic beat.

  Press the Click button in the sequencer’s Transport Panel (see above image), to turn on the metronome click.

  Hit the space bar to let the metronome play, and count quarter notes silently to yourself with the beats of the metronome: 1 2 3 4. Be sure that your “1” coincides with the highest-pitched click of the metronome, which only occurs every fourth click. This is the downbeat.

  Watch the changing numbers in the Transport Panel. The second number shows the quarter note count, and so it loops, showing “1 2 3 4” over and over.

  Stop playback by pressing the spacebar again.

• The Pattern Step Sequencer

  Note that the default pattern has 16 steps, and that the resolution is set to 1/16. This means that there will be 16 sixteenth notes in the pattern. Since there are four sixteenth notes in each quarter note, and four quarter notes per bar, Redrum is set to make a drum pattern that is one bar long.

• Enter the kick drum part.

  Drum channel number 1, the leftmost one, is already selected. You want a kick drum on quarter note beats one and three, so click on step number 1 and step number 9. There is also a kick drum hit on the “and” of beat three (i.e., the second eighth note), so click step number 11 also.

  With the metronome click still on, listen to the kick drum part. You might want to lower the level of the click so you can hear the kick drum clearly.

• Enter the snare part.

  To do so, you first must select one of the snare drum channels. Click the Select button at the bottom of the second, third, or fourth drum channels. You want snare hits on the second and fourth quarter notes, so click on step number 5 and step number 13.

• Enter the hihat part.

  Select the open hihat (channel 9), and click every odd-numbered step, to add a hihat hit on every eighth-note.

• Of course, listen to your completed pattern, and don’t forget to Save!
• If some of the drum hits sound too soft or too loud, you can adjust that using the dynamic switch.
  1. Select the drum channel you want to change.
  2. Set the switch to Hard, Medium, or Soft.
  3. Then click a step button.

  The hihat part in particular will benefit from having hits that aren’t all the same loudness.

Creating a Drum Fill

Let’s build a third variation that includes a drum fill. This usually makes use of some faster notes, and is a chance for drummers to show off a bit. It’s also an opportunity for the drummer to play the toms.

A fill typically places the fast notes near the end of the last measure of a phrase (often, every 4 or 8 measures). This lets the drummer lead convincingly into the next phrase.

1. Select A-3 in the pattern grid. Press the space bar to start playing.
2. Once again, enter the one-bar Beatles pattern, or something similar.
3. Erase all the notes in the snare and hihat parts in the second half of the measure (step numbers 9 through 16). The drummer can’t play the toms at the same time she’s playing the snare and hihat!
4. Play a series of four 16ths notes on two toms, one after the other:
   • Select a higher-pitched tom (channel 5 or 6), and add four 16th notes during the third beat (step numbers 9-12).
   • Select a lower-pitched tom (channel 6 or 7), and add four 16th notes during the fourth beat (step numbers 13-16).
5. It really helps to vary the velocities of the fill notes, so try that. Otherwise, they will sound too stiff.