Californication Redrum With MIDI Drums

i'm a big fan of Drumeo and it's helped me become a better drummer. One thing they do well is redrum popular songs with different levels of drum complexity.

For example this redrum of Californication with Domino Santantionio is pretty good.

But of course all their work is on live drums sets. I'm a DAW and MIDI guy so I thought I would try to recreate the levels here but with MIDI.

Intro

In the video Domino plays five levels of drums to Red Hot Chilli Pepper's 'Californication". Each level gets increasingly more difficult. The levels are:

1. Beginner
2. Weekend Warrior
3. The Student
4. Cover Band Drummer
5. Chad Smith

I'll attempt to recreate these in MIDI format. Let's go

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The Beginner

This is a simple, easy pattern. Simple kick, snare pattern wit hi hats.

 

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Weekend Warrior

Now we're adding a second kick before the second snare, and filling out the hi hats with eight note hi hats.

 

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The Student

Now we're adding in a few ghost notes for the snare to fill this beat out a bit.

 

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Cover Band Drummer

Now we're adding a few more ghost notes and a buzz at the end.

 

Chad Smith

Here we're emphasizing some of the hi hats, playing the ghost notes a bit softer, and I emphasized the snare buzz at the end a bit more.

I also used a different hi hat sound that was a bit loser since that's what was done in the original video.

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Fade Out

A good practice is to redrum a song you like. Start with basic pattern and slowly add in more layers. Following a path like this is an easy way to get started

1. Start with a basic kick, drum pattern
2. Add in more hats and an extra kick
3. Add in ghost notes
4. Add in a snare roll and more ghost notes
5. Tweak the samples, emphasize certain notes, play some of the ghost notes softer, and add in some swing

Follow that pattern to practice programming your drums right.

Cole