How to make better House drum fills | 6 tips & tricks - LÄMMERFYR

How to make better House drum fills | 6 tips & tricks

House and especially dance music is all about a steady groove and rhythm. A lot of us producers use drum loops to build the different sections of a song. But how do we make sure that each section is tied together? The solution is sometimes to use drum fills.

In this blog post, I will share some of my favourite tips on creating cool and unique-sounding House drum fills.

Let’s go!

 

1. Choose the right drum one shots

A great house has a solid foundation. The same can be said for House drum fills. Choosing good and quality drums are crucial for getting a solid and rhythmic House drum fill.

I look for short drum sounds with some interesting characters to them. It can for example be a snare drum layered with a recording of foley like the sound from one banging on pots and pans in the kitchen. Okay a long example, but hopefully you get the idea:

Find something that sounds interesting and good to you!

 

2. Program a groovy MIDI pattern

The MIDI pattern is essential for rocking those House drum fills of yours. 

My key ingredient here is to add an amount of MPC-styled swing to the MIDI pattern. It makes the drum fill sound a bit more human and alive. 

So don’t be afraid to shuffle those notes a bit off-grid.

Turn off the tempo-syncing in your DAW and move those MIDI notes until it feels right.

 

3. Add different velocity values and panning

Change in velocity and panning will make your House drum fills at least 15% more cool. 

Set different velocity levels in the MIDI pattern that we programmed in the previous step.

This will definitely make the drum fill feel more “moving” and “alive”. 

Using panning creatively can catch the listeners' attention a make your House drum fills stand out - and most importantly: add excitement to your track!

Start programming in different values for the velocity and panning. It’s gonna make a huge difference.

 How to make better House drum fills | 6 tips & tricks

 

4. Go nuts with processing

The effect plugins are a palette of endless possibilities. Playful effect combinations to your drum fills can add that distinct character and vibe that will be remembered.

I like to add:

  • distortion for punch and grit
  • chorus for a cool stereo effect
  • unsynced-delays for unexpected rhythms
  • auto-panning for left-and-right fun stuff
  • RC-20 plugin for that LoFi-vibes (big love for that plugin)

How to make better House drum fills | 6 tips & tricks

At the moment of writing this blog post, I have grown pretty fond of applying auto-filter to my house drum fills. Which can be heard a lot on my House Drum Fills Vol. 1 sample pack.

Like to be honest, there are no boundaries to what effects you can apply to your own house drum fills.

The most important thing is: does it sound good and fit the rest of the vibe in the track? Then you can’t go too wrong with your processing selections. 

Bonus tip: Just save your processing chains for later use. It makes it way easier to create other drum fills in the future. 

 

5. Automate knobs and parameters

Did you know that the built-in sampler of your DAW is packed with dope sound design features? Adjusting the amplitude envelope? The pitch of the sample? Creative filtering?

Well, you should try to automate some of the parameters not only in the sampler but also in the selected effects from the previous step.

Why not automate the pitch of the snare drum to start at -12 semitone and go all the way up to +12?

Then crank up the wet of the delay so the fill starts to get bouncy at the end. 

And as the last thing, automate the filter cutoff to introduce those juicy high frequencies at the end of the drum fill. That will definitely sound wicked!

Get started on automating some knobs.

 How to make better House drum fills | 6 tips & tricks

 

6. Export and save for future use

This is perhaps a no-brainer to most people. However, it didn’t do this until recently. Export your drum fills from current sessions. Trust me, you are definitely gonna use them later in future projects. 

I spent so much time re-creating the same kinda House drum fills in a lot of projects. And sometimes it was kinda messing with my creative workflow. Because I actually don’t always like to spend time on creating drum fills. 

So my advice is to just start exporting your drum fills. Label them with tempo and perhaps a catchy name, so you can easily locate them in the sample folder.

How to make better House drum fills | 6 tips & tricks

Just a small quality-of-life tip.

Hope you could use these inspirational tips and tricks  for creating your awesome own House drum fills :-)

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More tips on YouTube

I hope you enjoyed this blog post.

Check out my YouTube channel for more music production tutorials.

The best

Martin / LÄMMERFYR

My YouTube Channel

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