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Comments
This is like a masterclass in Rozeta Suite. Never dived that deep into Rozeta yet — I’ll have a play with your suggestions. I’d love to hear an example if you have anything laying around?
Experiment with moving your hi-hat midi notes to the ride cymbal for an instant 'chorus' variation. Trigger the bell sample on the offbeats a la 'Uptown Funk', 3:50sec.
Subtlety and structure is the key. Listen to some P-Funk to get an idea. No need to go all 'Phil Collins' on those toms.
I always LOL at non drummers talking about tempo variation. Yeah that happens when you record as an ensemble but we've been cutting to click tracks forever now. A lot of those obvious tempo changes on old records were actually spliced together seperate parts...
Electronic drums takes some practice. Garageband drummer it does it all for you. Just dial up a combination of a few of them, cut em up and live life on easy mode.
Here is a nice tut on ghost notes:
https://www.musicradar.com/tuition/tech/how-to-add-groove-and-pace-to-a-beat-using-ghost-notes-625526
Nothing to add; just clicking in so that I can find this thread later.
Lots of good information here.
Thanks everyone.
Melodics is great! I just got a new v-drum set in Thursday so now I get to make use of all three Melodics instruments.
Also the upcoming Audible Genius app (from the Syntorial people) does a great job teaching you how to write drum beats.
What @MonkeyDrummer and @Multicellular said!
That, and listening to the #neverquantize masterclass that is Dilla’s Donuts album on repeat. You’ll know you finally get it when any veneer of boom bap dissolves into a galaxy of microtiming and tempo shifting wonders. (What makes that album so powerful in re-learning how to listen to and play drum parts is how subtle and deceptive the wild experimentation is. At first it’s going to seem like polite and simple background music.)
Plenty of tips + tricks here already. Just a few more...
Shifting complete patterns (or only one part) forward or back in time by 16th or 8th note intervals may result in some amazing happy accidents. Listen to the results in context, as the track is playing to hear the differences.
Orchestrate the drum parts that you already have for that pattern. Move one drum part to a different piece of the kit. Split up hi-hat parts between 2 other sound sources. Switch the kick + snare patterns (snare pattern is played by kick and vice versa).
Use the 1/2 time or 2X buttons on some of the drum apps. Use them as fills or for whole sections of the tune. ALSO use the REVERSE button to really change up a part.
Sometimes less = more. Silence can be Golden.
I like the less is more thing. That sounds quite easy to achieve.
On the less theme:
Bear in mind that, me personally, I’m not interested in drums, or drumming, pay no attention to them at all, and am highly unlikely to a] listen to a track with great drums just for the drums, and b] know what great drums even means. What I was hoping for was a few little cheats I can deploy without thinking about it to improve the tedium of even having to do a basic drum pattern in the first place.
When I first tried doing electronic drums I’d tend to paint interesting patterns, but they’d invariably prove to sound unmusical. Then I realized you’ve got to paint a highly predictable and regular pattern which doesn’t actually look good. It took me forever to realise that there’s usually four kick beats in a bar, or a bunch of hats in a bar all spaced evenly. I didn’t even realise that this is what I’d been listening to all this time. But that was years ago, now I know how to do a basic pattern. Fills are starting to interest me now they’ve been mentioned, but I’ve never successfully worked out why they are the way they are.
I think this is what LPXs drummer probably is – an encapsulation of whatever logic there is behind the whole fill thing. It’s not big on fills, but even some fills are more than my own drum programming has (which is nearly none).
Anyway, there’s been some excellent hints and tips here, thanks everyone and I’ll try and put some of the easier ones in to practice if I remember, comprehend and aren’t so lazy that I just give up as usual.
+1
Seems every time I open Melodics there’s an update with cool new stuff. The dev is open to bringing it to iOS too.
Very underrated imo. Haven’t seen Audible Genius app. Any links @Liquidmantis?
Drums are athletic and masculine. Drum machines are dorky and hypnotic.
Funny. Went out with some friends last night and the pub band did a depeche mode cover. They should have asked the drummer to sit that one out so they could switch to a drum machine. It sounded very wrong.
https://www.audiblegenius.com/courses/bb1
It's not released yet but I worked through the first two sections of block one through the beta and I'm really excited for the release. It takes the same structured iterative approach as Syntorial but with a much more modern UI (and is about composition and production rather than synths, of course.)
There are a few tricks to help you out, but the best way to learn how to make drums sound less like a robot and more like a person is to understand drumming and how drums work. Ideally, you would learn how to actually play the drums but that's not realistic for most folks.
Watch some basic drum videos. Learn about basic rhythms, basic drum rudiments and how drummers construct beats. Listen to your favorite drummers and try to dissect what they're doing - where are the accents, where do they place the fills, do they change the beat mid-song? Why?
These all help only if you want to learn about a traditional trap drum kit and how drummers play in a band context. There are many styles that eschew trying to sound like a human and deliberately do things a human drummer couldn't. There's validity here too and the same rules apply - listen to other guys who are doing what you like to hear and try to figure out what and why they are doing what they're doing.
@u0421793 : if you don't like drums and don't care about them, I don't think there are any tricks that will enable you to create good drum tracks. Maybe, you will be better of not using drums at all and using other instruments to carry and vary the pulse.
I am generally skeptical that any musician can learn to develop an area well (meaning done in a way that will be meaningful, impactful and engaging) that they don't find engaging. For instance, people that aren't interested in melody might be able to learn formal rules for constructing melodies, but they won't be able to construct engaging melodies with any consistency -- because they won't be able to recognize what makes one melody striking and another boring.
If one understands only the cliches and form of drum parts but doesn't find good drums engaging, I doubt that one could program drums that engage people. But you don't have to. Nothing requires musicians to use drums in a traditional sense. Tangerine Dream, for instance, did some really nice work where the drum machines were not used as a replacement for drums which worked a lot better than trying to make them imitate a drummer.
Exactly! Last night I saw some ladies doing a variety of covers, too, but they had programmed their drum machine really extensively, with fills and cymbals and everything to play the real drum parts, and I was thinking how much better it would be with a canned beat from FunkBox running the whole way through. Drum machines have taken on a life of their own culturally, and aren’t really exchangeable with live drums. Maybe because at no point should a robot be the star of the show- the programmer can be, but that’s a different thing... athleticism isn’t impressive, from a robot, crazy complicated rhythms aren’t impressive from a robot, remembering the changes isn’t impressive. Appealing sounds are, choice beats are, interesting mixing/automation is, creativity with the instrument. Nobody falls in love with a mannequin.
There is a grey, in between zone, of the drum loop. Different vibes than programmed drum machines, different than live drums. The OP, who admits little interest in drum programming, might see if a library of drum loops works better.
Fills are literally there as a heads up to the other players and the listener. If you apply the bucket o fish to electric drum programming you're already 200km ahead of most people.
Er…
Bucket of fish is one of the essential basic drum fills.
Fills are a way of letting players in an ensemble know which bar they're at so they can concentrate on looking good.
Some great tips in here, cheers everybody. One of the difficulties I find with programming drums is how important subtlety is.
Simple
Well said all.
Especially strongly agree with the ‘Appealing sounds, choice beats’ are impressive. I actually play drums and this all in fact presented a small learning curve when I first tried to make electronic drum arrangements. I was too stuck in realistic sounds and what was humanly possible. When I realized that, I started exploring the sound and rhythmic possibilities, I was much happier with the electric songs.
hahahaha - Fills are a comfort blanket for bar counting
Sage advice! I went the extreme route and took drum lessons for 18 months to figure this all out. But there's much to be gleaned just from watching a YT vid or two.
I love how folks like Araabmuzik both prove and disprove your point. (Araab comes in at around 2 minutes.)