Snare Rolls
It’s been around forever, but the snare roll is still a dancefloor-devastating way to lead out of the breakdown and back into the beat. If your snare roll sounds too robotic and programmed, use MIDI velocity control to make it sound more natural.
Program in a basic snare roll (four eighth notes, followed by four sixteenth notes, then eight 32nd notes):
Adjust the velocities of the notes so that they gradually increase over the course of the snare roll:
Now drag every other note’s velocity slightly downward:
This velocity increase over the course of the snare roll makes it sound like it’s building up to something, and changing the velocities of alternate notes makes it sound more like a live drummer and less like a machine.
