When recording a demo, a drumset or collection of percussion instruments are not always available in the home studio. Luckily, the budding producer does not have to limit themselves to stale drum machine sounds. All that is needed is a microphone, a decent audio sequencer such as ProTools or ACID Pro, and a great sense of rhythm. Different household items, as well as different surfaces throughout the house or apartment, can be experimented with in order to create an almost endless array of percussive sounds. These unique and organic sounds, combined with some tedious mixing and equalizing, will almost always provide surprisingly adequate results, giving any demo an original and timeless sonic quality.
Ideas for Percussive Innovations
Low Percussion
a) Place the microphone no further than 4 inches away from any type of door, as close to the geometric epicenter of the door as possible. Holding the door with one hand to minimize any rattle that may emit from the knob, hit the door solidly with the other hand, treating it as a kick drum.
b) Lay the microphone on a non-carpeted floor. After securing anything in the room that would rattle or clatter, move two-to-four feet away from the microphone and stomp on the ground with the ball of the foot. After some mixing and heavy EQ-ing, this creates the ultimate makeshift kick sound.
Middle Percussion
a) Use a large wooden spoon with the largest glass mixing bowl in the kitchen for a custom cowbell; place one microphone on the concave side of the bowl and another on the convex side, both no further than six inches away, for a robust stereo effect.
b) Smack (not too hard, not too soft) the neck of an empty wine bottle against the edge of a table or desk for a great organic snare sound.
High Percussion
a) Car keys are a vital ingredient for the ideal household percussion collection, but the rhythmic timeliness of car keys, when used as a shaker, can be tricky to capture, as the “jingle” may begin earlier or later than desired. Try to cradle the keys in a towel or a shirt, thus compacting them in on themselves, tightening up the desired sound effect. Place the microphone so that it is facing the open metal of the keys, instead of the side that is muffled by the towel or shirt.
b) Use a metal spoon on a stainless steel bowl for a good organic ride-cymbal effect. To get a really unique sound, try filling the bowl with a little water, tapping the bowl and then rocking it back and forth so the water rolls around. This will manipulate the pitch.
Layering and Equalizing Drum Sound Effects
I take seven ill drums put 'em in a line / and add seven more snares to make it combine / It'll take seven more horns before I start to rhyme / Now that’s twenty-one beats made up at the same time
-Pete Rock "Soul Brother #1"
True words from a legendary hip-hop producer — good drum tracks don’t come simply from superb performance and recording, although those aspects are exceptionally important. Once there is a percussive sequence, it is ideal to thicken it up either with duplications of the same sequence, or by adding new layers over the top. This is true whether the drum sequence is recorded live or programmed using pre-recorded sound effects; exactly how you duplicate the sequence/effects depends on what software is being used. The key (although this does not apply to the "multi-clap-effect" described below) is to make it sound like it is one snare, kick, or tom, instead of many.
One purpose of layering the drum tracks is to make a more powerful sound; secondly, and more importantly, with seven snares instead of one, the engineer has an opportunity to layer two high-treble snares, two mid-treble snares, two low-treble snares and finally one pure, un-affected snare, all combined as one single snare sound. Add onto these equalized duplications some different panning (left-to-right speaker mixes), and the engineer has much fuller control over the snare than (s)he had with just one track.
For example (the following instructions are loosely based around the ProTools sequencer, but can translate to many other software models): to produce the effect of many people clapping, record five-to-ten (or more) single claps. Once recorded, position (drag) each individual clap a little bit apart on the edit screen for your sequencer, so that during playback they all hit on beat, but not all at exactly the same time. Then, EQ each individual clap a little bit differently: some low, some high, etc.
Next, pull the left-right speaker pan on the first clap all the way to the left; pull the pan on the second clap almost all the way to the left, repeating for each clap until the last one is all the way to the right. This emulates the effect of multiple clappers standing around a microphone. Finally, “bounce” the multi-clap effect to disk and plug it in to a drum machine patch!
An example of the multi-clap effect, as produced by the author, can be found on track 9 of this music player.
Isaac Darnall - I've made my home in Franklin, Tennessee as a writer/musician/photographer. I focused on fiction for about five years, and while it is my ...
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