Hardcore Punk Drum Track

Hardcore Punk Drum Track

On May 8th I programmed the drum track for my hardcore punk track, making me ahead of my FMP plan. I will use this extra time to record guitar and bass earlier, allowing me to use the studio at an earlier date. This drum track was created using Logic and will  later be recorded in the recording studio in order to give the track a genuine and less clean feel to it. The track is played in 4/4 as this is what every hardcore punk band played. The track has a BPM of 180 in as almost all hardcore punk bands would use a high tempo.
The track starts with with an 8 bar intro that utilises a rolling 16th note snare roll which is followed by two hits of the kick, snare, and low tom, which is then followed by a subsequent hit that transitions the beat back to the beginning. I chose to use this beat for the beginning of the slow as it provides a slow introduction into the track, which is common in punk music. I chose to use snare rolls as I felt that this would emulate the sound of marching drum snares used in the military, linking the music to a political theme, much in the same way a lot of hardcore punk bands would theme their music. In order to achieve the rhythm of the drums I wanted, I slowed the tempo down to 120bpm for the intro, before it transitions up to 180bpm. This allows me to achieve the marching rhythm I wanted, whilst also making the verse sound more intense when it starts up.

The beat in the track then changes from the intro to the first verse of the track. The beat used for the verse section of the song is an extremely common drum pattern used in hardcore punk, using an alternating kick and snare drum pattern, with an extra beat from the kick drum on the off beat of every 3rd beat in the measure.

The beat then changes again as the track transitions from the verse to the chorus. This drum pattern is the most intense and frenzied drum beat in the track, allowing for the chorus to be the most aggressive and abrasive sounding when the track is complete. The beat consists of an 8th note kick pattern with a quarter-note open hi-hat pattern, as well as quarter note floor toms with an extra hit after the first hit. On the 4th beat of every bar the pattern changes slightly and the floor tom and hi-hat are hit on the off-beat of the 4th beat.

The verse and chorus then repeat before transitioning to the bridge in the song. The drumbeat used for the bridge is known as D-beat and is extremely common in punk music after being popularised by bands such as Discharge and the Varukers. The beat itself uses a kick, snare and crash cymbal with the kick and crash cymbal played in unison. The kick and crash cymbal play on the first and third beat of every measure, between the offbeat of 1 and the start of beat 2, as well as between the offbeat of 3 and and the start of beat 4, and finally between beat two and its' offbeat, and 4 and its' offbeat. The snare is played on the offbeat of every beat.

This then transitions back to the chorus, which then goes into the next verse and then back into the chorus, before going to one short measure, which utilises snare rolls in much a similar way to the start, linking it back to the beginning. The tempo changes back down to 120bpm just for this bar in order to achieve the same feel rhythm the drums had at the start of the track.

There also some very fast drum fills played on the toms and snare at the end of each part of the track to tie the track together as a whole. The drum track may change as I add guitar and bass to track and may find better ways to incorporate the drums with the guitar and bass.