Last November, Joe Chellman wrote this great article on drum programming techniques.

The section on ghosting stayed with me. I used to add lots of little ghost hits but for some reason I let it go. Well Joe shook me loose again and now I rarely let a drum beat go by without it.

I mainly use FL Studio for building drum beats, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done with ACID.

There are several important features that you should become familiar with to ease the process.

The first is “Duplicate Track.” Draw out one bar of your favorite clean drum beat. Right click in the far left tray and select “Duplicate Track” from the menu. You will use the first track as your main drum beat and the new duplicate track for the ghosts.

Next is the “Split.” Select the section in the duplicate track and place the ‘current’ line cursor right after the first bass drum attack. Hit the ‘S’ key to split off the rest of the track. Isolate the snare (usually on the second beat of the segment) and split away everything around it.

Now with just these two segments (the bass drum and snare isolated) cut, copy and paste them around the duplicate track.

When you hover at the top of every track snippet (or “event” as the ACID docs call them) the cursor changes into an up/down arrow. Click and drag downward. You are manipulating the “Fade Handle” which determines, just for that event what the level will be. Here’s a big image of what I’m talking about and clicking on Vincent will play the clip for you.

Get funky.