How to Add More Drums on a Drum Machine

This article will teach you how to add more drums to a drum machine. A basic drum kit is great, but what if you want to expand your kit? We'll construct a basic kit and then try adding more elements and even non-traditional drums to your kit. You will also learn the concept of sampling (if your drum machine is capable of it), which allows you to bring in completely new sounds to your drum machine, in addition to those installed at the factory.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Drum machine
• Drum samples (optional)

1. Get familiar with the sounds in your drum machine. Before you can start adding more drums to your kit, you need to become familiar with the sounds that your drum machine offers. This way, you know what your options are.

2. Add a kick drum to your kit. Hit your kick drum pad to activate it. Use your scroll wheel or UP/DOWN arrows to select a kick sound on your drum machine.The kick drum is the basic building block of any drum kit.

3. Add a snare drum to your kit. Hit your snare pad to activate it. Use your scroll wheel or UP/DOWN arrows to select a snare sound on your drum machine.Once you have a kick and snare, you have the basic building blocks of your beat. Some songs use just a kick and snare drum alone.

4. Add toms to your kit. Hit a tom pad pad to activate it. Use your scroll wheel or UP/DOWN arrows to select a tom sound on your drum machine. Hit your remaining tom pads to activate additional pads. This is where you can really go crazy when adding drums to the kit on your drum machine. Some drummers use only one rack tom. Two rack toms is very common, but some rock and metal drummers use three or more. The choice all depends on your personal preference. You will also want to add a floor tom to your kit. For some drummers, this is just not enough. Most drum machines will allow you to add some less common toms, like roto-toms, to your kit. It is not unheard of for a drummer to use a dozen toms! Although this is overkill for most applications, it IS a possibility.

5. Add exotic drums to your kit. Hit any other open pads left on your drum machine. Use your scroll wheel or UP/DOWN arrows to select a sound on your drum machine. In addition to the traditional "kick, snare, and toms" setup, you can also add more exotic drums, like congas or bongos, to your kit. Some drum machines offer drums that are not really drums at all. You can add a drum that sounds like a gunshot or a car, or sometimes even a human voice.

6. Add samples to your kit. Some more expensive drum machines allow you to utilize sampling to add more drums to your drum machine. Sampling makes your options virtually limitless. Samples are short recordings of a sound, which can be triggered by a pad on your drum machine. You can sample a real drum to add more sounds to your drum machine, or you can sample a non-drum sound, such as a dog barking. It doesn't matter. Whatever sample you load into your drum machine can be played back. This is a great way to add more unique sounds to your kit. Hit the "load" button on your machine to load in your samples. Select the file and press OK. That's it! You have now added enough drums on your drum machine to create a full-fledged drum kit. Start playing some beats!