best way to program drums?

[zai]

How do you program your drum tracks? What is the quickest and easiest way to program drums?

I'm not a drummer...and have limited knowledge on playing...been listening to a lo of drum tracks, been playing it with a keyboard...but velocity and timing is very hard to get right. Just wondering how you guys do it in order to make it sound "uniform" and feels like a real drummer playing.

Zai

[declassified]

Get a heavy load of breaks, slice them, assign each break to a key, insert the notes into your sequencer.
Start with reconstructing the original break, then vary it.

[kara]

Zai,

Have a look at ERA, it is a 16 step sequencer which is perfect for programming drums.
With the humanise function you can let it sound like real drums playing.

Rony

[Stupid American Pig]

practice. I used to struggle with "playing" drums on a keyboard. What you can do is load up a drum set and just try to duplicate beats you like with the kit. Also remember that you have the luxury of using more than one take for you drums. The way I do it is to record the kick and snare in one pass, hi hats and cymbals in another, and finish up with toms /other misc percussion in the last pass. Finally I go through and clean it all up and quantize where necessary.

[Manc Chris]

As an ex drummer myself, I would advise using at least two fingers to input the notes, using two hits at a time. Ie - kick drum and snare ..... hats open and closed, etc.

This way, you will get some level of feel into the track. Providing you dont go and quantise it all up of course


As for loops etc, sorry, never used one in my life. Dinosaur me, etc.

[wrench45us]

\
what I do (and I am or was or at least think like a drummer) is cheat

I use Groove Monkee template as a starting point

http://www.groovemonkee.com/home.php

Funk, Hip-hop and RnB
looks like price has gone up sine I got them, but there are lots of ways to spend $39.95 usd

what's nice about these is they aren't quantisized. it's a real player with velocity and timing captured
and usually there's a base pattern, two alternatives and a fill -- lots of styles and selections

i find one close to what i want and begin to build and subtract. sometimes building from just one -- sometimes building from more than one pattern. move the various lines to match the drum cells in a sampler and set up a groove build a song,
then go back and tweak some more.
setting proper fx chain on sampler cells seems to me to really do a great deal to raise the level of a tune. so i prefer to work with a drum sampler and patterns rather than slicing an audi file, but that works too.

[Armadillo]

Don't worry about playing them. Get Reason, FL Studio or ERA and use their step sequencers. That will get you a cracking rhythm going in 10 min. Then just fiddle a bit with the shuffle function to get that groove. Or get Stylus RMX if you're lazy

[Mystical_Fantasy]

Removed

[self]

my satanic flatmate arranges wav hits individually in protools to get what he wants......but he's not well

[Stupid American Pig]

ugh, mechanical drums...

So judging by the answers provided here- if you want Tarnce drums, use a step sequencer and 909 samples
If you want to sound like a rock drummer, hire one or try to play on the keyboard.

If you want something in between, use a step sequencer and tweak the timing/velocity...

[The Chase]

Being a drummer infinately contributed to my ability to program breaks, so a lot of it is mental. Other than that, practice with a 16 step sequencer. Nothing beats experience.

[skOre]

I just go for it, try out and mix the parts together and try out some more. Now breaks are am artform really!

[Beardedone]

You should try Fruity's FPC. Has an excellent set of grooves with some good drum sounds.

[Stupid American Pig]

I say you could just use "funky drummer" and "impeach the president" in all of your songs. That seemed to work in the 90s.

[hues]

I say you could just use "funky drummer" and "impeach the president" in all of your songs. That seemed to work in the 90s.

"amen"