Programming Blast Beats

[viewerfromnihil]

EZ Drummer from what I hear. Hell, Meshuggah used it on Catch 33.

 

[RIFFERATION]

I’d like to start off by saying thanks guys, this is exactly what I was looking for. I have written a pretty badass EP using a BOSS DR-3, which served me well, but no matter how hard I tried the drums still sound automated, and I have always struggled with note placement. In my ignorance I programmed blast beats it in what that dude called the gay way which in 32 note measure was:
S-S-S-S-S
-B-B-B-B
-and for the record sounds brutal as fuck in short doses, but in an eight measure structure, sounds pretty robotic. I fit the symbols to the riff or offset them to mix it up a little. My brain seems to sync up with the snare so I almost always have to start the measure with the snare for my riffs to fit, but that’s probably just a conditioned response honestly. The fastest blast beat I used is 138bpm, and no matter how hard I tried, it sounds automated.
Now I have REAPER, EZ DRUMMER, ADDICTIVE DRUMS DEMO, which are all reasonably priced and compared to every drum program and drum machine (except maybe BFD’s) EZ drummer symbols are like night and day (they sustain and don't mute out which pissed me off). I’ve tried programming the song in REAPER, duplicating the track and disabling the EZ Drummer bass drum and enabling the Sonar which comes with the free Addictive drums demo. I’m going to follow the aforementioned advice and try using the suffobeats and humanize it. Ez drummer has a humanize function, but I’m not sure if it follows an algorithm, because when I cut and paste midi sections sometimes I notice the snare hit hard in the same position, like the riff at the beginning has the same “spots” as the end riff. It’s not that noticeable, but little things you know. To humanize it manually I doubled the tempo of every measure I programmed into Boss DR3. For instance instead of blast beating 138bpm I use 276. With the Reaper midi editor I am able to divide each section up to 128 notes per measure I if I remember right. I can manually slide each note over a hair because at that speed, humans are going to be off by a cunt hair, thats all there is to it. Also by doubling the tempo, I believe I have tightened the area where I can place notes, making note placement fucking surgical dude.

I'm going to redo some pieces of my work and follow your advise guys, again, thanks

 

[-CC-]

EZ Drummer from what I hear. Hell, Meshuggah used it on Catch 33.

I thought they used Drumkit from Hell?

 

[mrbean667]

EZ Drummer is Drumkit from Hell.

 

[peteloaf]

I use FL Studio with my own samples. I have several snare samples (softest, softer, soft, medium, hard, harder and rimshot) as well as several hi hat samples. I use a medium snare sample for traditional/"euro" blasts and a slightly harder snare for simultaneous/bomb blasts. I feel like the hardest thing to make sound realistic, as far as blasts go, is the hi hat. You can accent hi hat hits by turning every other hit's velocity down a little bit. Make sure, when using Fl Studio, to right click on the hi hats and select "cut itself" so the excess noise doesn't build up, because it sounds like shit. Programming blast beats with the ride is a lot easier to make sound realistic. You can still turn the velocity down on every other note or you can just accent with a bell.

 

[Beezerk]

Anyone who hits the cymbal on the off-beat is a retard.

Agreed, the hats/ride should be hit with the snare on a regular blast beat.

 

[progtronic]

I'm using Studio One Pro 2, and Superior Drummer 2 with The Metal Foundry SDX.

Most modern, extreme metal productions use a lot of drum replacement and sequencing. Even guitar and bass tracks are spliced, sequenced, tightly quantized and tuned.. so it's sort of easy to mimic considering you're skipping a step of actually recording real drums.. and going straight to the electronics.

Regarding blast beats.. I arrange them in a manner that help emphasize certain aspects of the rhythm riffs and lead melodies they are supporting.

I'm producing Technical Death Metal though.. so that free's me up to be a bit more experimental.

Sometimes the kick works better on the down beat so that the snare can pick up the emphases on the riffs up beats. I'll even switch that around, mid stream, to a more traditional blast.. to match any riff changes.. and back again.

Subtle rhythm changes in those longer measures can help avoid that robotic feel. Occasional drum fills help as well.

I suggest learning the basics, then tweaking and experimenting with the details of the beats to best match and beef up the riffs they are supporting.

Superior Drummer has built in humanize features that automatically vary the repetitive stuff, even at full velocity.. and avoids that electronic machine gun effect. See if your VST's have something similar.

Hope this info is helpful.

 

[El-Shoggoth]

I used Reason to program the drum part for this song of mine, and it contains what I believe is the same blastbeat you're referring to (although I don't listen to very much Suffocation). The blastbeat at the beginning is the traditional kick/cymbal on the downbeat and snare on the upbeat, but the pattern that starts when the vocals come in is kick, snare, and hi-hat all in unison.

I agree with Dimaension X that it's necessary to bring down the level of the snare during the blasting. Another thing I like to do is accent the ride/hi-hat on the odd numbered beats. This is something I've notice Trym do a lot, and it helps make the general pulse of the song stronger even if the blastbeat is extremely fast.

 

[Death and the Lament]

This is what drumagog is good for. Record some real snare hits or find some online. Load them into a program like drumagog and you can automatically switch between those sampled hits of the same snare using midi/transient detection