Ze Drums-- She are kiking my arse

[Lunch Money]

I have about half a million ideas for songs, but every time I sit down to work on one, I can't get a drum track going. I've had success in the past with starting with a drum track (audio or MIDI loops) and then tailoring the song to fit the drums.

But let's face it, while that's valid for SOME approaches, it's not always going to cut the mustard. It's not even that I can't visualize a good drum track. I can 'hear' them with my mind's ear, and can even 'beatbox' them (not with any skill, just to give an impression to myself while I'm jamming or bouncing the idea off people.

But then I sit down and none of the audio loops match what I need to do and it doesn't make sense to hunt all over the net hoping for the 'perfect loop', so it's high time to start programming them. Sit down at the sequencer, hustle over to the keyboard, and anything I come up with sounds like crap.

Bleh.

Not asking for advice, just ranting.

Greg

[Derek up North]

Not offering advice, just sympathising

I have this problem with *everything*, not just drums. Sometimes I can hear complete arranged songs in my head but as soon as I try to transport them from there into a sequencer things just start to fall apart - I either spend ages looking for the "right" sound (using the "wrong" sound usually derails me completely) or, more often, I find another interesting sound and go off in a different direction altogether!

I think the solution for me is that I just need to get better at playing the keyboards (or buy a MIDI guitar, being a guitarist). Ironically I did use to play the drums (it's OK, I'm all better now) which actually makes it worse as I can't manage to hit the right key for the kick drum with my right foot, which is what I keep wanting to do

Regards,

Derek.

[Lunch Money]

For the kick drum, you can assign a sustain pedal's control to respond to it as well, though I think it's an on/off situation and you'd have to assign velocity separately. (I believe).

I'm a guitarist, too. I can play bass. I can even dick out the parts on keyboard for organs and piano if I want to, though I ALWAYS end up editing them afterwards in the MIDI editor. But I can't get any of that off the ground without drums. Playing to a click track certainly isn't the same because the groove of a drum track will influence the playing of the other instruments.

Thanks for the sympathy.

[Stupid American Pig]

I can relate, my drum programming sounds like ringo starr on his worst day on acid, crack, smack and salvia.

[MickGael]

Btw, have you guys checked out JamStix?

Although I find that it it works best for rock/pop/funk stuff, it really is pretty fantastic and does what it advertises....

Not a pitch, just curious....

[Z3R0T0N1N]

ugh. I have that same thing happen; I just get sidetracked so easy if I start working on drums when I have a song in my head that I want to make. So,
for building from a melody or song idea in my head, I have found that sometimes the best thing I can do is use a nice soft attack analogue kik in 4/4 and maybe a quite hihat (analogue, open and close, funky rythm to mach the bass line rythm = every second or third long note in a two measure sequence gets an open hh, every first quarter note and every seventh and ninth eighth note gets a closed hh and where they overlap give the closed hh priority.)
this is a formula. I know, it sucks. But, this way you have just a simple kind of funky and very unobtrusive rythm track, and you can just build the song until the drums come to you, and they will.
Of course everything you do will start out sounding like electro/trance music

[Lunch Money]

I suppose that's an option. I have, indeed, tried out Jamstix but I didn't get very far with it. Not that it wasn't a capable piece of software, but at the time I had a nice soft almost jazz-meets-brushed-country kind of beat in my head, a l a Cowboy Junkies' version of "Sweet Jane".

I didn't explore Jamstix much more deeply because it wasn't able to do the kind of beat I required at the time. I'll get back to testing it again some day.

Greg

[pHz]

mmmnnn ... cowboy junkies ...

slainte rob

[androidlove]

mmmmmnnn ... velvet underground

well, if ya aint askin fer tips, pm me and i'll give ya some

[flanneljammies]

How about recording your beatbox riddims to a click track then try to recreate them using either with midi or audio by matching up to the sounds on the timeline? (I can't take credit for this idea: ModuLR made the suggestion a while back.)

[herodotus]

You know, I would be neglecting my role here if I failed to point out that there are tons of unemployed drummers in the world

I know no one will really listen when I say that there is no shame in using others, that the vast majority of the great bands of the past 40+ years have had real drummers, and that you will never really duplicate the sound of a real drummer.

You may now continue as if I had never said a word.

[shamann]

(...Continuing... )

I know you weren't looking for advice, Greg, but tough beans, I'm compulsive at this sometimes.

Are you able to tap out the beat with your fingers? Just put them on a table and see if you can get the rhythm you want.

After that, do the same on a keyboard and record the midi. Don't turn on the volume, don't worry about what you are doing, don't hit the kick/snare/hat/etc when you want them, just put your hands in a comfortable position on any keys and tap away.

Once you get the exact rhythm you want, then just map the recorded notes to the specific hits in your sampler/drumsynth without changing their time position. Then manually adjust velocities, remove any unwanted beats, fix timing errors, add variation, etc.

The biggest problem with sequencing natural sounding drum lines is that we are attempting to do something very natural in a very unnatural manner. So it works well to deconstruct the process, start with the most essential element and then proceed from there. If you sit at a keyboard, look at the assigned octave for your drum hits and try to drum like a real drummer using a bunch of one-inch-wide keys in a space smaller than a snare drum, well you'll get a result that is as natural as the process sounds. Drumming is about hitting stuff and marking out timing. Highly controlled fine motor skills, have their place in percussion, no doubt, but are of only limited use when emulating playing a drum kit.

Give that a try, it might help alleviate a bit of the mental block.

[Derek up North]

You know, I would be neglecting my role here if I failed to point out that there are tons of unemployed drummers in the world

Proof that there is indeed some kind of universal justice (speaking as a former drummer)

shamann - good advice, though I must admit that all of my best drumming is done in traffic jams. I *really* need a MIDI-enabled steering wheel

Regards,

Derek.

[Jeremy_NSL]

I have a similar problem.. I don't usually have a lot of trouble coming up with an initial beat, but when it comes time to spice things up, add variations, I often get bogged down. Its not that I can't do it - I just find fine-tuning my drum tracks very time-consuming, and actually sort of unfun. I may look into Jamstix, if nothing else just to do some of the grunt work

[metalsvinet]

Are you able to tap out the beat with your fingers? Just put them on a table and see if you can get the rhythm you want.

After that, do the same on a keyboard and record the midi.

Great idea. The sound is inside your head anyway.

You could even record the fingertapping, make midi later. KT Drum Trigger might do the trick.