MIDI Drum Patterns for EDM

Programming beats using MIDI with Ableton Drum Rack (or any other drum machine) gives you a degree of customization and flexibility that using pre-fab loops can’t match. When you’re starting to produce in a new genre, though, it can be difficult to figure out exactly where each drum in the MIDI pattern should go. Use these basic dance music drum patterns to get your beat started; once you’re comfortable with programming the MIDI beat, get creative by adding triplets and ghost notes, changing the velocities of the drums, stretching the beat out to a full eight bars, and adding variations to the drum pattern. You can download a zip file containing MIDI clips of all the beats from here, and grab a JPG of all the drum patterns here.