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My Problem (Question) Regarding Drums (Machines?j
This is just MY opinion. I realize it’s contrarian, but maybe having the discussion will be helpful.
Often I think a track will be better without drums… or with the drums coming in and out. IMO, I think we have to ask ourselves why we are using drums, is it glue? Is it to enhance excitement which may be lacking in just the music? Is it habit? Is it what a category of listeners expect?
I think drums may often be used like bread in a sandwich. The bread holds the content together. But sandwiches are often second to a real meal where the contents are savored and stand alone.
The acid test may be listening to the track minus drums. If it doesn’t hold up then the drums are a crutch, maybe.
This does not apply, of course, to drum centric tracks, or carefully crafted drums like @Daveypoo excels at. Otherwise, slapping in a drum beat (and I did this for a long time) can often be as distracting as it is helpful.
I am not directing this at anyone in particular! It is just a kind of global usage I perceive and believe deserves some examination. Drums are incredibly important and should be considered an instrument, IMO, as well as a beat.
Ironically, my teacher’s teacher, Lennie Tristano, thought the opposite. The drums were there to keep time. Not much more. As I said, just my opinion.
Comments
This is interesting and clearly the perspective of pianist, who can pretty much play bass and melody by himself. But I know what you mean. At some point the drums became the bed of all popular music — it's why the common definition of "a beat" no longer just means a tattoo of kick-snare-hi-hat but the whole groove of a track.
But I suggest you rethink this:
The acid test may be listening to the track minus drums. If it doesn’t hold up then the drums are a crutch, maybe.
I can't think of a single Led Zeppelin song that is better without John Bonham dividing the beat in his impossible ways. Also it essentially negates all of hip-hop.
I think that all of popular music, dating back to the birth of jazz and then through rock and roll, soul, R&B, and hip-hop are built on the concept of a groove - and drums are obviously fundamental to that.
The backbeat is at the heart of modern music. It was born in the early 20th century in New Orleans, when the first kick drums became available, allowing players to play the kick and snare together (as opposed to marching bands when musicians played a single drum each).
To me most modern music, whether it's funk or indie (or hip-hop or EDM etc etc), relies on the groove to propel it. "A Forest" by the Cure wouldn't be the same without the driving beat. Heart of Glass without those tight drums? Forget it.
Maybe post-rock, and especially ambient are exceptions, but otherwise in most cases the drums are just an integral part of the music. Even in jazz I can't imagine listening to Kind of Blue, or Moanin' without the drums. These tracks groove.
I for music to be “successful” to a large segment of the population you have to provide context. Key centers and rhythmic pulse are two of the biggest contextual markers. They give anchors to what the performers intend and what expectations the audience can expect to have.
If you play something instrumentally without percussion you will still need to feel the pulse. Even if it lapses or goes out of sync and then resumes. When the audience knows where the beat is and how it’s divided you may not need drums. However then drums can anchor a piece and give the other parts something to play off of, or conversely the rest of the instrumentation can anchor while the drums subvert expectation.
(Blah blah blah he says - looking to the rest of the forum to provide examples cause he’s just theorizing)
I feel similarly about piano. It reminds me of mayonnaise in a sandwich, adds a bit extra to the sandwich but do we need those extra calories..?
Drums are just one more color for the artist to draw from the available palette of sounds in a piece. It can be as prominent as a Phil Collins, Bow Wow Wow or Hans Zimmer song or nonexistent, allowing the melody to do all the work of propelling the music.
Most of the stuff I write starts with no drums, or perhaps just a very basic beat which is rarely anything other than a more interesting sounding metronome.
I personally find that if I add the drums first then they have a way of dictating the pulse of the song and I prefer this to come from the melody or bass instruments rather than the drums/percussion. I can always add some drums later if it will improve things and by then I usually have enough "follow this bassline/melody, please" music to feed a GarageBand/Logic drummer and with a bit of tweaking they do a much better job than I could of creating a matching beat.
Others will be inspired the opposite way and of course different genres of music will give different levels of prominence to the instrument.
Recent pieces of mine start with the bass, even though I am no bassist. If I can find a solid and memorable bass groove, it makes finding the punctuation for the drums that much easier.
Good stuff. I am not suggesting at all that drums don’t do all the things mentioned above. I just think, as creators, we might examine why we do anything. In this case laying on a drum track.
I appreciate that you excepted me from your list
I like dance music, ultimately, which is why I like funk and funk-related grooves so much. For that type of music, it's possible to do things without drums, but ultimately the backbeat is a mainstay and what helps propel those butts out to the dancefloor.
I think you have to really ask yourself what's essential in any given composition. For me, it's easy to fill up a track with STUFF, but it's also as important to strip things away and leave space. And sometimes that means ditching the drums/percussion. As I said above, this is easier with some genres than others, but nothing is ever off the table.
For example - neither of the Prince songs "When Doves Cry" and "Kiss" have a bass line. If you haven't noticed, go back and give them a listen. Here's a perfect example of non-traditional instrument arrangements in a standard pop music format.
Fine points.
BLASPHEMY! SANDWICHES ARE A LEGITIMATE AND AMAZING FOOD! HOW DARE YOU!
Signed,
Half of Radioactive Sandwich
Drum ( making/ios ) annoy me, usually but scratch wise. No way you might scratch without drums. Scratching to a mix tape gets you back to feeling more Pro. With the next track.
In theory I agree with you. Why do we need drums?. Are they redundant?.
A song with no drums just happened to play from the Spotify playlist as I’m writing this. Songs with no drums seem to be slower, even at the same bpm. In a tribal way drums sort of mark the passing of time, or accentuate it.
Maybe one could ask. Do we need harmonies?.
Personally when I add drums (which is basically always) I make them loud. I don’t like songs where drums are buried and hardly distinguishable, for me if there’s a beat it should right upfront, and the melody should follow.
This is an interesting question, and with every conclusion I find an opposite one.
I’ve been struggling with this too. If I had a good drummer or percussionist to play with then it wouldn’t even be an issue. But do I really need a mechanical beat that is not listening and reacting to me? Why?
And if I’m going to have a mechanical beat, does it need non-pitched sounds? Why? Why not use pitched sounds for that function?
>
No, we don’t. Melody and rhythm is always sufficient on its own.
In the world of MIDI there's a "meta" level above "to drum or not to drum".
It's the concept of "Beats Per Minute" and the decision to group beats into bars with time signatures.
I suspect @linearlineman doesn't play to a BPM based "click" or a drum track. Drums are
added later and (as you might expect) the sync between the improvisation and the drum app is a matter of chance.
Converting an improvisation to notation is also a nightmare requiring sophisticated AI to interpret the music w.r.t. a "beat".
Playing "live" assume the musicians listen to each other and bass and/or drums are helpful
to keep a group grounded, in sync and creating a groove.
In the age of "sweetened" live performances many bands play to a click or the drums might
be an automated MIDI track so that the extra recordings can stay in sync with the band.
I have waited for @LinearLineman to play something close to a "band like" groove and lately he's been using the ambiguity of 2 "Jazz Drummer" tracks that obfuscate the "click" but provide a more realistic group context that really works for post bebop jazz... what I think of as the Elvin Jones era where his use of polyrhythms was beyond the boom-chick dance era jazz.
Tony Williams playing on the classic Miles Davis Quintet albums also had a beautifully fuzzy sense of time... fuzzy for the audience but NOT for these extremely focused improvisers. Miles would have thrown a look at Tony or Ron Carter (bass) if the tune started to speed up or slow down.
I can stop waiting... @LinearLineman imporvises on the edge of a razor and adherence to
some external clock is not a part of his conscious thought. It's all focused on the melodic flow... and cliche melodies are to be avoided so any "quotes" from standards tend to be acidental. He starts in many case with a classic tune as as a general roadmap (like "Laura" or a Monk classic) but he carefully avoids long stretches of playing the melody. It's the core of what passes for his "method" as taught by his mentor. If he teaches you it will start with
"pick a tune" and play anything you want while thinking of that tune. For me it's like "Don't think of an elephant". But my approach is very traditional... play the "head" (a personal interpretation of the melody), improvise choruses over the chord progression (play the changes) and end with a final statement of the tune.
For most of us trying to leverage MIDI for better cohesion between tracks the MIDI Master and start/stop functions are key.
@Daveypoo shows the way for anyone hoping to letdown MIDI tracks and create the impression of love band. Play attention to the small details in the timing and sync'ing of
tracks and hand code the drums to avoid sounding think a cluster of machines.
In a more perfect world, an app could interpret the pulses in a @Linearlineman improvisation and generate a floating "click" that acts like a great drummer that listens to
a keyboard player and supports the playing with drums that help the audience follow along and (God Forbid) "get up and dance to the music".
The most sophisticated sequencing and notation apps offer a temp track so small variations in BPM can be input to create the "Ritardando/Rallentando" effects of a solo improvisor or an orchestra closely watching the baton of a conductor.
The math of computing the curve of a start tempo and then some targeted end BPM is possible but not generally requested.
Someone with some serious desktop DAW skills will likely weigh in and share how the pro's
handle "timing" controls.
To get close to a groove many of us "quantize" our rhythmically sloppy live input or add a use the "swing" option to achieve that subtle triplet overlay that makes a track groove without forcing us to switch from 16 note bars to something a lot higher (24, 36, etc).
I admire the ability of @gravitas to play extremely complex grooves using little more than
"Start/Stop" controls. The main benefit of this approach is that you can sit in with live musicians and fit in.
How many people who produce music with drums actually play drums? They can be like glorified click tracks, with random algorithmic variations applied to make things less static.
This is something I’m struggling with myself. I decided to put together a small e-drum setup to develop my own sense of groove, which has had a surprising impact on my playing on other instruments as well. I feel like I understand drums better now, and how to use them to accomplish a more organic push and pull.
I aspire to create electronic music with live drums that are dynamic and creative, as epitomized by Tycho, particularly in this song Horizon.
…
Most pro's don't handle timing except quantise whether it's midi or audio.
In the commercial world of pop there isn't much call for timing and or tempo changes.
4/4 all the way.
Break down most demos and you will hear that they are based around 4/4.
Occasionally you may hear 3/4 or 6/8 but in twenty years of production at
different levels I've come across only a handful of 3/4 or 6/8 grooves or tracks
and most of those I wrote myself.
DAW timing skills come in handy for scoring to visuals especially movies and that's about it.
It's rare that a producer will create the subtle push and pull of a live band using only midi.
It can be done, I've mentioned it before.
My advice to get a more live sound in regards to feel?
Don't quantise during the recording and quantise notes
or move notes that sound to obviously out of place into position.
When quantising audio?
Quantise to the nearest beat or bar rather than every 16th.
I've done the latter and it creates loads of audio artefacts.
Thank you.
First and foremost I was a pro session drummer and when I started recording,
technology back then was simply "ready to record?" start/stop.
Though I don't play drums professionally anymore the mentality is still there.
I hear a pulse and my mind automatically starts subdividing the space in between
into possible rhythms.
It's all about phrasing whether you're playing with a click or with live musicians.
When playing with a band or ensemble the whole group has a sense of time.
The band leader or conductor will guide the time but everyone feels it.
To emulate that in a home studio recording requires whomever is doing the writing
to think as a whole band not only as an individual.
It requires forethought.
@McD, I do often record with a click track so that I can add drums later. I have found my bpm rate during a clickless improv is ok, but not close enough to conform to a drum track. My pleasure, recently has been with a jazz Drummer cause I can play my improv and get a live feel as I record a jazz Drummer by improvising on the xy pad (not present in Soft Drummer). That works well for working with the dynamics. Adding a second, staggered track of the first drum wav adds the complexity I’m looking for. I could take the next step and create a unique second drum track… even with a different rhythmic pattern, but so far I’m liking the results with repeating the same track. I just set the grid to 1/8 and the beats coincide, tho the 1 is delayed by an eighth or two or three.
This discussion helps clarify what I’m looking for in a drum track. Unless it’s EDM or Techno, or similar genres, I guess I am looking for an aliveness…. @Wrlds2ndBstGeoshredr said it best….
Also, maybe the mixing volume has a bunch to do with it. A repetitive beat at an up front volume, unless you’re dancing to it or like the jackhammer throb… maybe just varying the volume can overcome the ear fatigue?
We’re fortunate to have folks like @Gravitas and a few others here who have real world production experience. It’s very illuminating.
The rest of us can try to imagine the forces and techniques at play but it’s just guesswork (at least on my part). The upside is I get to make a track that sounds like me… and maybe only me. Being an “original” or expressing my original nature was stressed by my teacher, Connie Crothers. Hence she didn’t produce students who played like she did.
Btw, Ish, on the rare occasion I quantize my improvisation I always choose 1/8. I don't think I am creating artifacts… what do you think?
I agree with your teacher Connie Carothers, it's a much better path to take I do believe.
That's only if you're quantising audio tracks which
is different from quantising midi information.
I didn’t know you could quantize audio tracks.
Yup, that's why modern production sounds so tight.
Hence me mentioning Pro-tools which was one of the if not the first to quantise audio.
It now has Beat Detective inbuilt which is used for tightening drum takes
and then was used for other instruments and Synchro Arts have Revoice Pro plugin
which is used to tighten vocal performances and again for other instruments as well.
All modern DAW's now have this ability.
The only app on the iOS platform that can warp tracks like this is Auria Pro.
You could time stretch in Cubase or BM3 but it is tedious.
What I want is the controls to get the @LuisMartinez (LumBeats) drummer to sync up to the clock in AUM.
My workaround is to export audio from the "---- Drummer" apps and then play to the timing of that audio in AUM.
I'd love to see one of the big development shops make something that could "quantize audio".
My experiments in Staffpad are showing me that the "attacks" on various libraries range from OK to unusable.
Is there a DAW on IOS that allows you to control subtle shifts in alignment to improve the
execution of a collection of "stems". Logic Pro X has a "nudge" feature in 10 msec increments I think... maybe 1 msec. I stopped using it because everything I wanted more it cost me $100+ for a synth, FX VST/AU, etc.
Doing this improves the groove.
As mentioned before Auria Pro can quantise audio.
It's the only DAW on the iOS platform that can do this.
You can quantise audio in BM3 but you have to first slice it
and then trigger each slice using midi.
Saying that you could extract a groove from a sample using this technique.
That's usual with any string sample library.
Yes, in actual fact you can do this.
Switch off snap to grid.
Zoom in and you can move stems by samples.
I have always thought of drums as a convention driven by the introduction and longevity of music from certain parts of the world to European/American music, but taking a step back I often wonder why we have such an obsession with including drums on everything.
Because drums were the second instrument invented after the voice.
I suspect the human brain responds to a predictable repeating pattern. Your mileage my vary.
https://www.thatericalper.com/2021/04/22/princes-sound-engineer-on-purple-rain-on-why-when-doves-cry-doesnt-have-a-bass-line/?doing_wp_cron=1638918602.1945760250091552734375