Percussion - the best section to write for?
The percussion section is an extremely versatile family of instruments. Equally capable of adding a light sprinkling of fairy dust to a Strings and Woodwinds piece, or providing the rhythmic energy and movement to an action cue accompanying a car chase.
Many people struggle writing for percussion - I have had countless emails asking how to go about adding percussion into a piece. It can be difficult to 'get it right' and for it to not dominate a piece of music.
For example, you do not want to have a fast paced, heavy percussion sound if you are writing a love theme!
Writing the percussion is probably my favourite part of the whole composing process - I am a percussionist though, so I can be slightly biased on the topic 😀. If you get it right, then percussion can really help elevate your piece of music.
In this newsletter, I am going to go through the percussion instruments I would recommend using for a killer groove if you were writing for an action track.
Now this may seem obvious, but to write a groove that has a big sound, we want to make sure we're using a instruments that collectively cover a wide frequency range.
So start by loading up a variety of percussion sounds in your DAW:
🥁 High Pitched Instruments
Up in the high frequencies, we will want to have instruments such as Hi-hats, Shakers or Taiko stick hits loaded. You'll also want to have some additional metallic sounds such as Crash Cymbals (Piatti) or a Tam Tam for some occasional punctuation.
Coming down the frequency spectrum, high pitched drums like Snare drums, Frame drums, or Indian Dhol drums can work extremely well for the mid-high range.
🥁 Mid Range
Going down further, instruments such as Concert Toms, Surdos & Taikos can be a fantastic way to add extra energy and intensity.
🥁 Low Drums
Down at the bottom, try to have instruments such as a Gran Cassa (Bass Drum), low Taikos and Timpani loaded up.
General rule when writing for lots of percussion instruments
The most important point for when writing percussion is this:
The bigger the drum, the less you use it.
Large diameter drums, such as Bass drums, Timpani or even Surdos, provide a huge amount of low frequency energy, which can really muddy up a mix, if used too frequently. These drums work best when playing the main accents of a rhythm only. I tend to think of these as played as either half notes (minims) or quarter notes (crotchets).
Then for the higher pitched drums, like Snare drums or Dhols, you can use them playing faster rhythms - think eighth notes (quavers) with the occasional 16th notes (semiquavers) thrown in as well.
At the top end, with instruments such as Hihats or Taiko stick hits, you can then write fast rhythms based around say sixteenth notes (semiquavers) for some added energy.
For the largest sound, try to include all frequency spectrums in your groove.
Here's a diagram summarising below:
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I also have a video on this as part of a series I did over a year ago now - 'Writing for Percussion', for a more in depth look at how I write for percussion & the best uses of each range then feel free to have a watch.
I could share with you so many tracks where I just love the percussion but the ones that I listen to over and over are 'This is Madness' from Man of Steel & The 'Blue Spirit' from The Last Airbender.
🎶Favourite Percussion Libraries
My favourite sample libraries (by a long way) also happen to be some of my oldest, dating back to around 2010! They are the epic series from 8Dio. Their Epic Dhol, Epic Tom and Epic Frame Drum libraries are exquisite, featuring so many velocity layers. I have heard these libraries in countless film scores (often used during solos) and they are hugely fun to play on my midi controller. The best part is that they are pretty low cost - they are currently on sale for $28 each. These 3 libraries are the best sample library investments I have ever made (and no I am not sponsored by 8Dio - they are purely my most favourite libraries ever!)
