I also use FL Studio. A tip I have for people struggling with drum patterning (which is not something I struggle with as I'm a drummer), is to lay down drum patterns in the playlist like this:
instead of laying drum patterns down in the piano roll like this:
and this:
Laying your drums down in the playlist, like I did in the first example, really pushes you to be creative. Force yourself not to copy and paste a loop of drums, but rather lay down the drums in the playlist separately for every part of the song. This allows you to fit every little drum hit exactly how you want it, without wasting a bunch of patterns.
The first example drum pattern sounds like
this. The pattern doesn't get stale because it changes throughout the loop. That being said, it still has a consistent groove to it. Adding little percussion blips and bloops here and there really spices up this pattern.
The second drum loop sounds like
this. Evidently, the first pattern is way better than this one. This pattern gets boring after a while, due to the lack of variation. I didn't force myself to be creative with this one, I didn't add any little sounds that could spice up the loop, and I didn't even bother to add fills, or any extra percussion for that matter.
Force yourself to be creative with your drum loops. It can really make or break a song.
Hope this helps!
