Changing the beat
Otherwise you might as well just use a sequencer.
Everything on this page works on whatever the sticks are already playing, and it all combines.
Half-time and triplets
- Hold the left shoulder button L1 to shift into half-time feel. The hi-hat swaps to its own half-time rhythm rather than playing the same one slower. The snare drops to the 3 and the whole kit follows, for a heavy, spacious groove in breakdowns and trap drops.
- Hold the right shoulder button R1 to play everything in triplets. The whole kit rolls into a shuffle, the swung 12/8 feel of blues and doo-wop, with the snare still on the 2 and 4.
Both are momentary, so you can tap them in for a bar or two and drop straight back out.
Both are settings as well. With Half-time on, the kit plays half-time all the time and L1 plays normal time. With Feel set to Triplet, R1 plays straight. See Shaping the kit.
Both together
Hold both and you get half-time in triplets, with the snare on the 3.
Opening the hi-hat
Pull the left trigger L2 while the hi-hat plays and it opens up on the &s, or on every beat after the 1 if the hi-hat is playing quarters, the sizzle that makes a groove lift, with one more leading into the next bar. Reach for it to lift a chorus or push into a fill.
The deeper you pull, the wider and washier it opens, on drum libraries that have more than one open hi-hat. Let go and the pedal snaps it shut.
Busier hi-hat and kick
Click and hold L3 and a hit lands between every pair of hi-hat hits - in most cases it'll come out as a sort of ratchety fill, the rolled hi-hat of trap and drill.
With the left trigger opening the hi-hat, L3 plays a tight closed hit just before each open one instead, for a "tss-ah" stab.
R3 does the same kind of thing for the kick: hold it for a busier kick, a double-kick push for accents and fills.
This works best when used in short bursts, for accents and flavour. Try combining it with L1 holds and taps to create new rhythms.
Busier snare
Controversial opinion I know, but snares aren't actually all that interesting most of the time. That doesn't stop them from being important: they're the metronomic thing that anchors the groove, the thing that makes your head nod, but 99% of the time they're stuff you want to keep going while you're doing something else, so Drums leans into that.
Backbeat is most of what snares are used for, but when you need them to do something else it's useful to have them do it precisely, and generally speaking pretty quickly. That's where the right trigger comes in.
R2 plays the backbeat, whichever way Snare is set, and it's how you build tension on the snare. Pull it a little further and ghost notes creep in around the backbeat. Keep pulling and the snare gets busier and more insistent, until right at the end of the pull it rolls, ready to crash into the next section. Ease off and it settles back down.
The more the snare is doing, the harder it hits, moving out from the centre of the drum to the edge and to rimshots on drum libraries that have them, the way a drummer digs in as a fill builds.
Again: play it like a fighting game.