If you’re not a drummer, you know that writing drum parts from scratch can be tough– but it doesn’t have to be!

While nothing takes the place of a great drummer, once you understand how a drummer thinks and moves it’s actually not that hard to program basic drum parts that sound realistic.

We’ll make a better version of this tutorial soon, but for now we wanted to share this quick-and-dirty tutorial from Periphery’s Matt Halpern (who just happens to be an award-winning teacher) on writing drum parts even if you’ve never touched a drumstick in your life.

He goes over how to get a basic groove going, how to add interest via dynamics, what subdivisions are and why they matter, and a million other things.

This is basically the blueprint for any drum part you’ve ever heard– take notes and you’ll have everything you need to write your own parts from scratch!