What Are Drum and Instrument 'Articulations'?

If you’ve read the product descriptions for any of our acoustic drum kits or MPC instrument expansions you’ve probably seen us talk about the included ‘articulations’. So, what exactly are ‘articulations’?

Drum Articulations

Let’s consider an acoustic drum kit which will comprise of a number of unique drum instruments, such as a kick drum, a snare, a hi hat, toms, ride cymbal, crash cymbals and perhaps some percussion instruments (such as shakers, tambourines and so on).

But each individual instrument can normally be played in a number of different ways, be it by varying the playing technique or the position where the instrument is hit. Each different method of playing the instrument produces a unique articulation.

Let’s take a snare drum as the example. Here’s some of the common snare articulations we could include in a multisampled kit:

• Centre hit – a hit in the very centre of the skin
• Edge or halfway hit – a hit away from the centre of the snare skin, producing a very different timbre to a centre hit
• Rim Only – playing the very edge of the wooden casing
• Rimshot - where the drummer simultaneously hits the skin and the wooden rim of the snare
• Cross Stick – here the drummer rests the stick on top of the snare and pivots the stick down to produce a ‘clicky’ sound
• Flam – a quick double hit
• Drag/Buzz roll – a short roll, where the drum stick is left to bounce up and down on the snare

Every instrument in a kit can be recorded with several different articulations similar to these, for example cymbals can be hit on the ‘bell’, the centre and the edge. They can also be ‘choked’ (muted with the hand). Hi hats can be played with varying degrees of separation from tightly closed up to fully open. They can also be played with the tip or shank of the stick, and played on the centre or the edge. And they can also be played using only the pedal.

By recording these various instrument articulations and combining them together, along with many of the features bult into MPC programs (such as velocity switching and round robins) we are able to accurately mimic the sound of a real drum kit inside your MPC.

Configuration Articulations

The articulations mentioned so far are what we could call ‘performance’ articulations, these are articulations that a drummer can produce with his kit in real time simply by varying the position or technique used to hit the drum.

Another type of articulation is what we could call ‘configuration’ articulations, which involve the same instrument but with a different physical set up, for example, by disengaging the snare wires to remove the ‘rattle’, by adding dampening on the skin to deaden the sound, increasing the tension across the drum skin or to play with brushes instead of sticks. Some of these need to be set up by a drummer before playing, some could in theory be configured ‘on the fly’ (e.g. swapping to brushes).

Instrument Articulations

Melodic instruments can also have multiple articulations, typically based on the playing technique. For example brass instruments such as trumpets can be played straight or ‘muted’, trombones can be played with ‘buzz’, with a ‘fall’ or with a quick short hit.

A violin or cello can be played pizzicato (plucked), spiccato (a short jab), tremolo, vibrato, or straight sustained.

Configuration articulations can also be used. For example, a bass guitar can be played with the fingers or with a plectrum, you can use different types of strings or different pick up positions.

Check out our bundle, the MPC Instrument Collection, which contains a broad range of multisampled acoustic instruments including woodwind, brass, string, keys, percussion and bass, utilising various combinations of articulations, velocity switching and round robins while remaining fully optimised for standalone use.