Catchy Drum Beats

What do you guys think makes a catchy drum beat? When you get a meolody that you know you can play too...what do you think is the best thing to play so that it makes it REALLY catchy...how can i create a super catchy drum beats.

i thinks its got to have some nice fills

ghost notes on the snare instantly make an otherwise boring drum beat come to life

Personally, all of the drumbeats I think are 'catchy' are beats that have ghost strokes, like Stapes said.

As crazy as it may sound, I just realized TODAY that the beats that I sing when I walk down the street ALL have ghost strokes. All this time I thought it was the hats I was singing when it was actually ghost strokes.

As for the 'catchiest' guy around.....Steve Gadd

Check out this site.

http://www.intrepidsoftware.com/sgadd/gr_lh.php

Greavette

the catchiest beat i've ever heard was from a commercial for the cadillac escalade.

and, word, on ghost snare hits. you can practically make a 4/4 into a groove riff with a well placed ghost note or two.

i dunno about the ghost strokes

look at the hives...they have a catchy as hell drummer and he hardly ever uses ghost strokes

do you think it could be phrasing?

The Toadies' "Possum Kingdom" came on the radio the other day and I realized what a catchy drum beat that song has. I am not a Toadies fan per se, but since I have been trying to teach myself to play drums I am much more aware of drum riffs. This one really stood out as sounding good to me.

I think a catchy beat is one that initially sounds fairly simply but has some latent intricacies that come to the surface later.

I am brand-new to drumming so I couldn't even comment on the "ghost stroke" on the snare... what is that please?

A "ghost" note is a drum hit that gently touches the surface of the skin. You could say it is the complete opposite of a rimshot. It's a soft accent, as opposed to the hard accent of a rim shot.

An easy way to practice them is to play normal sixteenths (i.e single stroke roll) with the accent alway on the first hit, and then playing the other hits as soft as you can.

Rlrl Rlrl Rlrl Rlrl

Once your muscle memory masters the "soft touch", you can start adding ghost notes to your rhythms whenever ya feel like it and you can do a gazillion variations of the above exercise.

Personally, I'm a percussionist, who dabbles a little on a regular trap set. In hand drumming (djembe for example) ghost notes are key. I use them all the time. Ghost notes on a djembe can give the illusion that you're actually playing two or more rhythms at once by yourself, and they can also work as a sort of bassline to accommodate you actual slaps, tones and bass hits.

I don't mean to show off here, but once at the park a guy came up to me and said: "Jeez, I thought there were two guys playin' over here!" Well, not really, it was just the ghost notes foolin' the listener.

Peace

I always thought Liberty Devito (Billy Joel's drummer) had some very catchy drum beats....such as "Miami 2017 (seen the lights go out on Broadway)" and "Captain Jack".

I also think John Mellencamp's drummer is very catchy

I can't think of his name, but the drummer for "Toad The Wet Sprocket" has some very catchy and cool sounding fills!!!

I guess it is an individual thing that makes a particular drum beat catchy, and for me, I can't really put my finger on what it is that I like about these drum parts.

Totally agree. Ghost notes can add a little "swing" sensation to a beat and make it bounce a little more.

On the flipside, very simple beats can be piledriven into a crowd's head. Think Queen's "We Will Rock You"...Boom Boom Splat, Boom Boom Splat, etc, etc. Not really 'catchy' but even the most rhythmically challenged people can find this beat...that's why it's still played at sporting events..even the drunk guy who's painted himself in the team colors and is wearing a rainbow wig can clap along!

One of the catchiest beats I've heard in a while is from the soundtrack to the movie Office Space (great movie, BTW). There's a slow hip hop song called Damn It Feels Good to be a Gangsta that has a nice slow jumpy (heavily ghost noted) beat. A good example when somebody is looking for a definition of 'groove'.

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EVERYTHING is about the phrasing. Right on bro.

Whether it be a guitar melody, a vocal melody, or a drum beat...complex or simple, if it's phrased "right," it likely will be catchy, or at the very least, memorable (slight difference IMO).

Unfortunately, there's no formula for writing a good melody or a catchy beat (if there was, songwriting wouldn't be so special).

But IMO the one constant is, if you keep it simple, it should be easier to develop something catchy. It doesn't mean you can't be complex and catchy, but it's a little more difficult and takes more effort/thought IMO. Think about catchy melodies...they're all simple, with simple intervals (i.e. no or few big jumps, usually moving in half or whole step increments). Same thing goes for a beat. You need something simple for the listener to latch on to. Adding more texture to the beat, simply makes it more "interesting" but not necessarily more "catchy" IMO. The catchiness is at the core of the music...adding texture, flavor, themes and variations, etc. simply help keep something that's catchy, from quickly turning into something monotonous and boring. I certainly don't agree that fills are the key to developing something catchy. To me, a fill is a mini eye opener within the song. I don't get songs stuck in my head because of the fills, it's because of the groove and the pulse. Build from the ground up, and use your ears. Rock on.

WTF dude?

lol! I think?

DeepSleeper,

Thank you very much for the definition and practical example.

Drumming is fun!

Originally posted by ulank WTF dude? lol! I think?

Those were your own words cupcake!

mine hed hurtz.

and yeah, typically simpler things are more catchy because they are easily recognized/remembered - esp to those w/ short attention spans

i concur w/ the addition of ghost notes

If you only knew about the strange people in Cheyenne. You see, they are constantly bludgeoned by cold winds and snow. Makes them really weird. Frost begins my door thinks open...crap!!!! maybe it's the water and I live downhill from the castle of indian tribal twinkies.

I like drumbeats that kinda mimic a melody. I'll hear a song and if I go play drums right away, I'll start laying down a beat that sounds like the song or compliments the vocals without even realizing it. Weird, huh.

I find I am more inspired to play new catchy beats if I go into beats right from a warm up type of rudiments. If my warm up progresses to beats it is usually pretty cool stuff

thanks bros

i've drumming for about a long time now and i was writing a new album with my band and my guitarist assigned me to find out what a catchy drum beat is ha

phrasing is so sick, it sounds so good when you can phrase really well, the ghost strokes though, i dunno, its much more rock and roll with out the ghost strokes i think just straight forward...they are good every now and then...i think it's real cool to use double bass with out making it sound like metal

thats gnarly as hell

thanks dudes

-lefty

Definitely, you might want to get that checked out.

Absolutely - even the least rhythmic human can't help moving to that.

I really like that song, despite my general dislike of rap. Despite my beefs with the genre, I think hip hop drumming can be very very cool sometimes. I'm thinking of Everlast (who I love, by the way - great mix of hip hop and bluesy styles), some of the songs with Eminem, and I think John Otto from Limp Bizkit is a fantastic drummer. Sometimes they just have a real good groove going, be it from ghost notes or not. I've noticed that a lot of the Everlast beats I like have very good variations on the bass drum that come back in loops.

Wade

Hey, I almost went to see your band at Club Drakulas.