mdrummer laid back, ambient, smooth jazz beats

[Aikido123]

Hi, I've installed the full demo of MDrummer and I'm evaluating it to see if it can fit my needs and while I like everything I see, my biggest need is for slower more sparse beats to be used in my music. Can someone point me to the best sources for those rhythms and beats in the libraries as I haven't found them. Is there and ambient pack to be found? Smooth Jazz, Relaxation jazz, etc... Are there presets available for download that would be in these styles?
I'm open to tweaking and working with a simple beat to get what I want but I'd rather not start from scratch every time.

[Aikido123]

Another question I have: Is there a way to start with an empty Rhythm so I can add loops from scratch? How would that work? Is there an empty rhythm top start with or can I clear a rhythm somehow?
Thanks for any help.

[Schopenhauer]

A pretty new MDrummer user too but for slow lo-fi ambient material I just edit the existing rhythms and adjust the loops using velocity/midi notes. Store this and alter and save next time. Don't know how profficient you are but Chandler has good videos on this.

Some of the sets might not be applicable to ambient scores but have you tried using the 'Analyze and import sample library' feature? I use this a lot to create alternative ambient drum sets using my own samples with key word libraries you can save and re-use. You can create layers of sounds upon each other this way, (the ' Use only one instance' in the drum set editor can help out here (I wish this could be globally set))
Be careful though once I found this out I spent hours and hours in the wonderful world of MDrummer creating alternative rhythms and sets.

[Aikido123]

Thanks Schopenhauer,

I've been digging into it for only a few days.
It looks like I'll need to modify existing rhythms and sets or start either from scratch to get what I want. Not a great prospect but I'll power on for now.
I figured out how to clear the loops from the rhythm.
For anyone who is searching for it, there's a Clear selection under the Rhythm Processing tab on the Rhythm editor.

[goldglob]

AiKido123,

Re the concern about having to start from scratch.
No, there are quite a few ways to build up your own stash of rhythm stuff, from simply saving a single small Drumtype track (could just be one bar containing one cymbal hit) through saving loops (a loop is what you see in the editor..say a bar of Bass Drum, Snare, HH, Ride whatever..all together as a loop,) right up to saving a total Rhythm.

You can move loops around, E.G. you can create a bunch of 'beat' loops, save them in a folder, then import them back but feed them into 'break' loops.

You can integrate your own saved loops into MD's generating engine.

Or go further, you can generate a 'template' of loops by combining various folders of loops, then generate a whole new Rhythm from that template. And this is all from the Rhythm Editor tab, separate to the main GENERATOR tab.

It's all very complicated and involves a lot of internal logic (including various types and degrees of randomization). I am in awe of Vojtech's insanity.

I'm writing this quickly, it must sound confusing, no time to go into details at present, but have a look in 'Rhythm processing> Generate from template and 'Save/load multiple loops'.

And yes, good call, you need to 'clear' rhythms to be able to explore this stuff and see how it works.

[goldglob]

Another thing:
It makes sense to have anything you save in your own recognizable sub folders within MD's directory. This goes for loops, templates, Rhythms, Drumsets, Drum Layers, whatever, everything and anything. Why? If my hard drive failed and I had to start from scratch with MD, I could easily find in my data backups all my recognizable saved stuff to copy back into the new MD install/directory.
Use the same name for all your own sub folders (to facilitate a search later on if you need to). You still need to have the sub folders residing in parallel with the factory stuff so that the GENERATOR sees their classification.
E.G.
Save Break loops to: Breaks/xxxx/MyLoop (xxxx is your unique recognizable name).
Save Intro loops to Intros/xxxx/MyLoop.
In other words, don't integrate your own stuff with the factory stuff at the individual file level.

[Schopenhauer]

Some great tips there goldglob, especially about having your own folder structure and strict naming approach. Looking at mine and realised it was just too random.
The 'If my hard drive failed' mention had me firing up my backup software and pushing stuff into the cloud. Off topic but I can recommend this company if anybody is looking for solid backup software;

https://www.2brightsparks.com/

[Aikido123]

Yes, I agree that it's important to put all of my created and edited stuff into new folders with well named contents etc.
So I'm starting to get the hang of editing drumsets to get the sounds I want and putting in some basic simple beats into the rhythm editor and learning some of the shortcut keys to speed things up.
I do just wish there was a decent selection of laid back beats with matching drum sets that I could start with to use as models. I love all the flexibility and power of this tool but I wish I didn't have to use it all right out of the box. I don't have any use for the heavy rock beats and edm beats. I guess I'll look at trimming and slowing some of them down now and softening the instruments.
On the other hand, I own a number of other drum plugins (ezdrummer, mpowerdrumkit, groove agent, and others), and haven't had any success with them with this genre of beats either in the base products or extension packs and those I can't change much as easily. Personally, I think it would be a great niche for a product like mdrummer to fill.

Thanks for your help.

[mevla]

Thanks for all the approaches mentioned in this thread. I'll add one: sometimes I slow down a rhythm to 50% , I lay down basic patterns and perhaps some fills, then I switch to MIDI channel 10 and play single percussion hits here and there as the song plays in the DAW (Bitwig in this case).

There's something to having a smooth relaxing song that nevertheless runs at 140 BPM or more. It kind of gives some leeway and adds a feel of 'space', or room between the notes.

[Aikido123]

One thing I have to get used to is not thinking so much about intros, outros, breaks and choruses. The rhythms are simpler and go on for much longer time spans than the box beats you get.
So I guess it's basically using the different complexity layers as needed.
One thing that's not explained well in the docs is the relationship between the drum set and the rhythm editor. When I set up the instrument tracks in the rhythm editor, it only changes for the one loop I'm on at the moment. Shouldn't there be a way to select the set of instruments I want from the drum set for all the loops in the rhythm and then maybe vary it from there if needed?

[goldglob]

Correct, you can't change the set of instruments in one go, but you can change one track at a time and this will apply to all loops in the whole Rhythm whether they be beats or breaks etc, including all variations in the loop index list (the panel to the right of the keyboard).
So, Rhythm Processing> Change type of one track. Note that the first window that pops up is to choose the Drum Type you want to change, then the next window is to choose what you want to change it to.

And don't be fooled by the Rhythm Processing> Change type of all tracks..you might think it would do what you are asking about, but no, it merges all tracks into a single track. (It would be better called 'Merge all tracks to one type'.)

[Aikido123]

Well I tried using the Change Track Type of one track in a loop but it didn't change anything in any other loop. It's the same as deleting and then inserting a track. Unless there's something I'm missing.
So the rhythm editor is totally independent of the current drumset I guess. And each loop is totally independent of every other loop for what drum types it uses as well as rhythms and there's no provision to duplicate tracks from one loop to another, only notes. Interesting.
What about the column of drum types on the left? It seems to always revert to the same five instruments when starting a new rhythm regardless of drumset etc... I don't suppose there would be a template somewhere that I could edit would there?

I appreciate the help Goldglob. There doesn't seem to be much else to go on.

[Aikido123]

I see now that the Rhythm processing options don't apply anything to other loops unless they have at least one note on them. So Change Type of One Track works then, though with limited usefulness.
The Copy Beats to Breaks does copy the Drum Type configuration of the active Beat loops to the corresponding break loops so I'll just have to set up my drum configuration multiple times for the beat section and then copy it to the breaks.
Looks like pretty soon I'll be ready to start making some music. Hope all this saves somebody else some time.

[goldglob]

Yes, you need notes in them.

Yes, the RHYTHM is independent of the actual DRUMSET, but Drum Type is what links them. You hand a drummer a drum chart, over on the left of the staff he sees the usual Kick, Snare, HH, and Ride etc (Drum Types). He then goes out to the van (DRUMSET EDITOR) and decides which particular Kick, Snare, HH, Ride (samples) he will use today.

Part of what defines a loop (apart from the notes) is the Drum Types it is intended for. If you create a loop consisting of a gong track and a shaker track, then save it (the little folder symbol in the Loop Editor menu strip), then load it anywhere, it will appear with gong and shaker Drum Types over on the left.

You can duplicate tracks from one loop to another by saving/loading the track (right click over the Drum Type list for lots of options).
Also, in those options you'll see that you can load various 'drumsets'....these are not actual drumsets but just an array of Drum Types to load into the Loop Editor. In fact they are just loops but with no notes. You can actually set up your own array (with no notes) then save loop to root, then it will appear as a choice along with the factory arrays. But I don't know of a way to actually change the default array. And the default array applies to all new loops whereas choosing anything else (like 'percussion' or indeed your own one you just saved) will only apply to the selected loop. I've also noticed that if you want one of these non default 'drumsets' to stick, you have to put notes into it.

But yes, being able to set something up that replaces the default such that it appears for all new loops would be good.

[Aikido123]

Ahh, those things are what I've been looking for.
The Save to Root and Load from the right click menu act exactly like Drum Type templates.

Thanks again