Drums
Let's add some drums to our song. First off, we need to create a new track, and name it. From the menu bar at the top, choose: Track > Create > Rhythm Track. Then go to the Compose screem, and click on the Add Sounds button. This brings up a menu of available drums. Put a check beside Bass and Snare. These two drums are the heart of a drum set. We will add more later. Click "OK." Now we should be back in the Piano Roll Composer window, and ready to add drum beats the same way we entered the melody notes on the previous page. Now play back the melody while tapping your foot and hands to the the music. Think of your foot as the bass drum, and your hand as the snare. Watch the blue playback arrow as it follows the music across the top of the piano roll grid. Try to locate where the arrow is on the grid when you tap each beat. Then use your mouse to enter bass and snare drums at these locations. This will give us a basic rhythm to work with. Later we can come back and add some accents with cymbals and toms. In the screenshot below, the time value of the note is set to 1/8, and bass drum notes are entered by mouse-clicking on the grid. The green lines represent the notes. The time value can be changed either from the circled menu, or by dragging and clicking the note. (green lines) Play back this drum track and see how it sounds.
Bass Drum
Next, lets add the snare drum. For this, change the time value to 1/16 notes. Enter the notes as shown below. Play this back, and see how it has added to the rhythm. Go ahead and enter this drum pattern for eight measures. With Anvil Studio, there are several ways to do this. The most laborious is to manually enter each note as we have just done. It is quicker to copy one measure, and paste it 8 times. It is also possible to create loops, but we are not going to do this in this exercise.
Snare Drum
If you have done everything correctly, your song should now sound like this: For now this is all the drums we need to set our rhythm. From here we can build the rest of the song, and then come back to the drums to add accents where needed. At this point, we are ready to add the next instrument. A little bass would be nice, don't you think?