Blog: Drum Programming Basics

[Evan Skopp]

Click here.

[DrNewcenstein]

Re: Blog: Drum Programming Basics

Nice, though I will add that you can use the hi-hat pedal to "fake" a hit on single-bass patterns, and leave the hands free for doing Tom-boogies.

And you can do things a real drummer couldn't do to save a bit of time in post-editing, like hit a low-tuned floor tom along with a kick to get that "cannon in a canyon" kick sound.

[DankStar]

Re: Blog: Drum Programming Basics

I'd add don't be afraid to change tempos through a song. A riff may feel better slightly faster at the end of a tune versus near the beginning for example.

[DrNewcenstein]

Re: Blog: Drum Programming Basics

This is a tad harder in software packages and even hardware drum machines. I've got one song that uses 3 different tempos, within 20-30 BPM of each other, and had to make 3 different presets for my drum software (BFD 2), then export them as wav files individually and hand-align them in Audition.

My Alesis SR16 would only laugh at you if you wanted to mix tempos. Best you could do is even divisions (say if the Song starts at 80 BPM, you can drop to 40 or go up to 160 just by changing the beat spread, but dividing any finer than that requires turning off the Quantization and stepping through one beat at a time, and you can't loop from 1 to 99 in reverse, so if you want to shift the hit at beat 87, you start at 0 and go up. If you pass it up, you have to loop around again).

[DankStar]

Re: Blog: Drum Programming Basics

in a DAW it's pretty straight forward - you just automate the tempo to change where you want it to, as many times as you want & the midi drums just follow along. one of my favorite things about computer recording! I remember it being a pain with a physical drum machine - id have to keep punching in at the right spot, not to mention the unit would fill up after so many patters/tempo parts and you'd have to dump the data down to tape and load the next series (with a boss dr-550 at least) - what a drag that was!

[ratherdashing]

Re: Blog: Drum Programming Basics

in a DAW it's pretty straight forward - you just automate the tempo to change where you want it to, as many times as you want & the midi drums just follow along. one of my favorite things about computer recording! I remember it being a pain with a physical drum machine - id have to keep punching in at the right spot, not to mention the unit would fill up after so many patters/tempo parts and you'd have to dump the data down to tape and load the next series (with a boss dr-550 at least) - what a drag that was!

Yep. Tempo changes in Logic and ProTools are easy peasy.

[DrNewcenstein]

Re: Blog: Drum Programming Basics

Hmm. Never really played with the MIDI automation in Audition, so I tend to build the drum track in BFD 2 entirely, or GuitarPro, then import the MIDI file into BFD 2, tweak it, then export it.

[ratherdashing]

Re: Blog: Drum Programming Basics

Hmm. Never really played with the MIDI automation in Audition, so I tend to build the drum track in BFD 2 entirely, or GuitarPro, then import the MIDI file into BFD 2, tweak it, then export it.

Nah, you should keep your MIDI stuff entirely in the DAW and just use BFD as a plug-in. Much, much easier to manage that way.

[DrNewcenstein]

Re: Blog: Drum Programming Basics

On the other hand, doing it my way has led to me being able to place tracks in the right spot almost by instinct


Might try to run it as a vst. I know it can't do ReWire. But then, Audition has no MIDI composing feature like Sonar etc. I'd hafta build it in GPro, then set that as a MIDI track in Au3, and I don't even know if you could assign a vst for a MIDI track, or even route it to a vst/plugin bus.
Seems like it would be just as much "work" as I'm doing now.

Might dig into it and Blog it