Programming drums makes me want to hang myself with a necktie.

[Roman Empire]

Well, you guys are better at this then I am. I'm going to have become better with drum programming because I can't sit in front of a computer screen and stare at little black squares all day trying to force something interesting to happen. I'm completely uninspired. There is a reason I dumped ableton too.

What´s wrong with just playing them on your keyboard? Start with bass+snare, then hats, then toms, then crashes. Just keep in mind what a real drummer can do at the same time, if you want it to be realistic. Also, I always record - not only drums - at much lower speed, to not make too many mistakes.

Best Regards

Roman Empire

[Burillo]

Jamstix is da bomb. learning curve is insane but it's worth it.

[Zexila]

I'm going to have become better with drum programming because I can't sit in front of a computer screen and stare at little black squares all day trying to force something interesting to happen. I'm completely uninspired.

Think you put too much importance on drums too early on, I have basic 808 kit that use as place holder until I have most of the arrangement done and than start changing samples or programming sounds, also I do my drums later on in composing phase, they aren't driving force, but complementing my music. First thing I do is kick&snare and that start doing rest when I really feel my drum kit needs something more in arrangement phase, than everything falls together nicely along the way. YMMV

[beely]

Now, using Logic and ADD, and having set up a drum programming page in the environment, my eyes glaze over, and it is one of my least favourite tasks to building song backings.

Although Logic's "Drummer" is great for getting something up and running quickly with minimal effort, tha you can go an edit later if you want/need to...

[Dasheesh]

I'm coming away some interesting ideas to shake things up. Going try to set up a kit that I can play with my keyboard as a template, then swap out sounds as needed, and I'm looking into a nice buffer effect to play around with. Also going try working the drums around the melody.

[jethrobull]

Seriously. How do you guys get off on this stuff? Especially bass drums. There is a reason I'm a keyboard player. Programming drums is the most tedious boring sterile destructive thing to ever happen to music.


/endrant

I love it

https://soundcloud.com/igloomag/meltt

Damn this is good.. I love this! Awesome work!

[foosnark]

It might help to do some non-4/4 stuff and see where that leads. There aren't as many obvious conventions to follow if you're doing 5/4, 7/8, 9/8, 15/8 or whatever.

Another thing that might help is improvising along with existing music. Something with a really basic beat, just finger drum on a desk or your knees or the steering wheel of your car or whatever -- come up with parts that the music suggests but aren't explicitly there. Like a very small drum circle without the stink of patchouli

[lobanov]

1. Read this:
http://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/ ... drum-parts

2. Search the internet, there are many places where you'll find very useful info. Don't read/look materials about drums programming only, read/look materials for drummers. You'll learn to think like a drummer, it's very important skill to program drums. You cannot program drums without it.

3. How the others do it? Simple reading or analysing of ready patterns or scores sometimes is very, very inspiring.

4. Use loops. Search "The Loop Loft" etc.

5. Use drumstations like Addictive Drums, EzDrummer, BFD etc. They are bundled with many MIDI patterns. Use them, change them.
Jamstix is da bomb, yes, Burillo is right.

6. I don't know the music style you play/compose, but you can program very simple patterns and then apply delay (or, may be, other effects) to them.

[beely]

3. How the others do it? Simple reading or analysing of ready patterns or scores sometimes is very, very inspiring.

Or just *listen* to music you like, and identify what the drums are doing - what the kick/snare patterns are, what the hats are doing, what fills go where, accents and grace notes, whether the drum part feels "lazy" and laid back or up front and driving the music - lots to learn, once you open your ears/mind...

[exmatproton]

Seriously. How do you guys get off on this stuff? Especially bass drums. There is a reason I'm a keyboard player. Programming drums is the most tedious boring sterile destructive thing to ever happen to music.


/endrant

I love it

https://soundcloud.com/igloomag/meltt

Damn this is good.. I love this! Awesome work!

thnx

[Rappo Clappo]

I don't know exactly what you mean. Do you want to sound like all other boring repetitive programmed stuff? 50M in a dozen?
Then I understand; truly uninspiring

I am gonna get myself an electronic drum set

[ghettosynth]

Do you mean programming the sounds, or programming the beats?

I mean staring at known catalogued quantified expected sounds all placed in their neat little synced places going around in static circles is killing my brain cells.

I only program electronic rhythms (I refuse to use the word beats here), that is, I don't program pure acoustic stuff at all. That said, several techniques have really helped me.

1) I get a basic rhythm going but then I move parts back and forth across the grid in small amounts. This doesn't work for many fixed drum machine plugins, so I do this in my DAW's grid. I find that the feel is often substantially improved by sliding parts or hits forward or backward in time small amounts.

2) I often record just one acoustic part, a shaker, or some other handheld rhythm instrument. Sometimes that's all it takes to liven up a static rhythm. Similarly, I often play fills with sticks on a single pad. You don't need an entire electronic kit for this. I hate finger drumming BTW, I can't do it at all nor can I play rhythms on a keyboard worth a crap, but I can manage with some sticks.

3) I do it in stages. I start the track with something that I throw together, and then work on the rhythm as the track progresses.

There are some other things, but those are the things that made the most difference for me.

[t3toooo]

You're doing it wrong.

Classic

[Chapelle]

---

[chaosWyrM]

sometimes i like programming drums myself...a lot of the time i dont.

for those latter times....what i find fun, interesting, and still satisfying as being "my own" is this:

i have microtonic....so i go to patternarium and click through looking for a decent starting point. then...i use microtonic to trigger something like battery (or whatever). THEN maybe ill export some loops and put those into transfuser and let m.a.r.i.o. have his way with hem. also using something like meldas mrhythmizer or cableguys shaperbox really spices things up. you can get all kinds of different patterns, fills, and breaks without having to sit there and mess with all those little boxes.

theres a lot of ways to "program" beats without having to, you know, program any beats.