Often randomize and humanize functions are used to create a more living drum beat. But if you already know a song or guitar riff with a nice groove. Lets rip it and apply to the drums!

Lets start with this guitar riff.

Rhythm Ferret in Ardour (open by selecting the region -> Window -> Rhythm Ferret) let you detect the hit-points.

Adjust the sensitivity and threshold in order to get enough hit-points.

When you hit apply the region will be sliced into smaller regions that will be used for snapping the drum samples to.

First copy the regions into two new tracks (that will be your kick and snare tracks), than mute those regions.

Now pick your one-hit drum samples and start placing them on top of the muted regions.

Make sure the grid is set to region bounds in order for the samples to correctly snap to the hit-points.

Now lets have a listen to it all together.

Notice: If you would like to add hi-hat and percussion to the drum beat in the same way, you should increase the sensitivity when detecting hit-points. The down side is that more hit-points also leaves you with more choices that might cause problems finding the right ones.

Consider a real drum kit. When you hit a single drum, sound is also reproduced in the nearby drums. You are going to learn how to make this effect from a sampled drum kit,  using a drum trigger and mixing in modified samples. To illustrate the effect listen to these two sound clips.

The original drum beat:

The drum beat enhanced with resonance:

In the example three drums are enhanced. Kick, snare and tomb.

That is done by creating their corresponding resonance samples composed of five low attack samples of the drum kit. Kick, snare, tomb, cymbal 1 and cymbal 2.

The waveforms displays the low volume of the samples. In a multisampled kit the low attack samples can be found being used at low velocities.

Creating the resonance samples
Put together the low attack samples and do leveling and panning. Also delay the samples individually. If you want to think in therms of a real drum kit, this would reflect the microphone placement. The further away from the mic, the more delayed.

- Kick

The kick resonance sample consists of low attack samples: snare, tomb, cymbal 1, cymbal 2. Mixdown as sample1.wav

- Snare

The snare resonance sample consists of low attack samples: kick, tomb, cymbal 1, cymbal 2. Mixdown as sample2.wav

- Tomb

The tomb resonance sample consists of low attack samples: kick, snare, cymbal 1, cymbal 2. Mixdown as sample3.wav

Trigger and mix with original samples
Now if you have a drum beat with at least kick, snare and tomb on separate tracks you can use the LADSPA Trigger to apply the resonance. But first you have to add the resonance samples to the trigger. Replace sample1.wav, sample2.wav, sample3.wav with the ones you’ve created. The path is: /usr/share/ladspa/samples/.

Insert the trigger to each track and step up the sample number to select the correct resonance sample. Then adjust the amount of saturation.

Contribute
If you make your own resonance samples it wold be nice if you share them with us. I see this as an effect, not just a way of making realistic drums. So go ahead and use your imagination.

If you are alone in the studio, both handling the recording and being the musician, you might have difficulties to comfortably getting ready for the recoding countdown. You simply want to add more time of silence before the interesting part starts.

In Ardour there’s a function called “insert time” that allows you to do just that. Moving regions and markers towards the right side of the project window.

- Select all tracks

- From the menu choose: Track → Insert Time
- Input time in seconds or optionally Bars:Beats
- Select Move and Move Markers (if any)
- OK

If you want to add silence in times of a sample. It’s possible to measure a region. Right click the region and under it’s individual name chose “Popup region editor”. It will display the length in seconds or optionally Bars:Beats.

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Update: A suggestion to the Ardour team
An alternative to the insert time function in this case would be if you could delay the play button. Telling it to start after x seconds.

Update 2:
Now I have filed a feature request and contributed with a small sponsorship.