What Is a Redrum?

A redrum is a DJ edit in which a new drum pattern is placed under an existing song, typically a steady four-on-the-floor kick with a clap on beats two and four and a hat on the offbeats. It makes a track with loose or quiet drums behave like a club record on the dancefloor and in the mix.

Why DJs redrum songs

Plenty of songs that work on a dancefloor were not produced for one. Pop, R&B, disco, funk and older house records often have drums that are swung, sparse, buried or inconsistent in level. That makes them hard to beatmatch, hard to blend with a modern kick, and prone to losing the floor's momentum.

A redrum fixes this by adding:

• A kick on every beat so the pulse is unmistakable and DJ software grids it cleanly.
• A clap or snare on 2 and 4 that marks the bar.
• An offbeat hat that keeps the groove moving between kicks.

Classic redrums were made in a DAW by hand, lining up drum samples to the song over the full length. The style became common in open-format and party DJ circles and in the edit packs sold to DJs. In those scenes a "redrum" often means the whole track gets the treatment; an "intro edit" means only the front and back.

How Club Ready Music does it

In the DJ Edit tool the redrum is a setting with three modes:

• Off: the song's own drums only.
• Intro and outro only: the synthesized kick, clap and hat sit under the drum intro and outro, which gives a stronger pulse for mixing while leaving the body of the song as the artist mixed it.
• Whole track: the pattern runs under the entire edit.

A strength slider from 0 to 100 sets how loud the added drums sit under the song, roughly from -18 dB to -4 dB relative to the mix. Around 50 is a supportive layer; above 80 the new kick leads.

The pattern is synthesized at the song's exact detected BPM, so it stays locked to the original drums rather than drifting. The kick is a short pitched sine with fast decay, the clap is a filtered noise burst on beats two and four, and the hat is a short bright burst on the offbeats. Because it is generated rather than sampled, it is tempo-accurate at any BPM from 40 to 260.

Redrum and tempo shift together

A redrum is often paired with a tempo shift. A 118 BPM disco track with a redrum shifted to 124 BPM behaves like a house record in the mix. Club Ready Music applies the pitch-preserving tempo shift after the redrum is mixed in, so the added drums move with the song.

When not to redrum

Tracks that already have strong, steady drums gain nothing and can sound cluttered. Try "Intro and outro only" first; it solves the mixing problem without touching the body of the song.