How I am programming drums in my DAW now

[KuruPrionz]

Screenshot attached.

Since this seems to be working well for me I thought I would share it and hopefull learn how others go about their drum tracks.

It takes a little time to set it up but then it saves time by visually documenting my progress. 

 

A couple of friends have mentioned that my drum parts on my recent effort could be improved and I felt the same way. 

As to how I did it the first time, let's just say "we grow as we go." Note that this isn't using the individual tracked session of the song, yet. Once I have the MIDI "composed" for the song I can copy and past multiple instances of the MIDI track into the song session, more on that later. 

 

Here's what I'm doing:

I have a mix of the song on Track 1, the drums are soft but there to assure alignment. 

 

The next track is titled Assembly, this is where I am building the drum track in MIDI that I want for the song. FWIW, this time around I'm using MODO Drum - the Jazz kit in the Booth. The common element that ties all this together is the snare falls on the 2 and 4.

 

Track 3 is where I shift/click/drag all the clips that I am replacing with fills. This creates markers that show progress and it also makes it very simple to find a spot again in the event I decide to change things later. 

 

Tracks 4 through 16 contain looped clips, these are all slightly longer than the song itself. For the "song" called Synco, MODO Drum provides 2 Intro clips, 3 Verse clips, 9 fill clips and 1 outro clip. I tossed 2 of the fill clips because I hated the ride cymbal, it was too "washy". That leaves 7 fill clips. 

 

My starting point was to move large chunks of my looped clips into position for the parts of the song - verse, chorus, interlude, etc. 

Early on, I took one part and copied and pasted it into another place where it belongs. Another lesson there, after doing that once I realized that the blank spaces in the looped clips I'm using as building blocks are valuable information. I left that one but stopped copy/pasting and just moved the specifc chunks straight up into place - on a Mac that is done by holding the shift key, clicking on the selected chunk and sliding it into place. As long as you hold the shift key, the chunk won't move to the left or right, it will stay right where it needs to be. 

 

Once I have the MIDI tracks pasted into the session I can go into MODO Drum and use the mixer on individual tracks to separate out the kick and snare (and anything else that needs separation). Then I can render all drum tracks to audio and punch them up with EQ and limiting to get the mix I want. 

 

Bottom line - while there are some discrepencies since this was the first time I've tried this method and I did not execute perfectly - the clips below Track 3 are a road map for what has been done in Assembly (Track 2). This makes it very easy to start and stop working without needed to take notes so I don't have to search for what gets worked on next. All previous work is clearly shown in the drum loop tracks.

 

I'm finding this way of working very helpful and I'm liking the results so far. I probably have at least 2 more sessions to go to get the final MIDI track that I want for this song. 

 

I've got other things to address but I'll come back when I've got this to a new place. Meanwhile, I hope the above makes life easier for somebody, it has for me and I plan on continuing to use this method. 

 

 

 

[Anderton]

This thread has a lot of potential, because I suspect everyone has their own way of doing MIDI drum parts. My general approach is to populate the drum track by playing the kick, snare, and hi-hats first. These serve a purpose that's more like a better metronome, and they have some inherent velocity differences because they're being played. I usually quantize them as well.

 

After the song has developed, I add cymbal crashes, ghost notes, and fills. The final step is going back over the original parts and changing some of the snares to different versions, making sure no two consecutive velocities are the same, and adding slight timing differences so the part doesn't have a "quantized" sound.

 

One other trick I do with MIDI parts is grabbing some of my favorite Discrete Drum audio loops, and replacing the drum sounds with the MIDI drums used in the song.

[KuruPrionz]

9 minutes ago, Anderton said:

This thread has a lot of potential, because I suspect everyone has their own way of doing MIDI drum parts. My general approach is to populate the drum track by playing the kick, snare, and hi-hats first. These serve a purpose that's more like a better metronome, and they have some inherent velocity differences because they're being played. I usually quantize them as well.

 

After the song has developed, I add cymbal crashes, ghost notes, and fills. The final step is going back over the original parts and changing some of the snares to different versions, making sure no two consecutive velocities are the same, and adding slight timing differences so the part doesn't have a "quantized" sound.

 

One other trick I do with MIDI parts is grabbing some of my favorite Discrete Drum audio loops, and replacing the drum sounds with the MIDI drums used in the song.

Yes, I tend to lay down a beat as a "metronome with groove" first as well. 

It's pretty easy to track other instruments and then vocals over that. The above refers to what comes next. Maybe I put the cart before the horse but I'm not great at envisioning a completed drum track first, it has to compliment the song so that comes first in my mind. 

 

I've been using MIDI loops at this point, I don't own a drum set and am not a great drummer. I'm also staying at somebody else's vacant home at the moment. It's a large place and drums would probably sound pretty good here. They won't have enough space to "breathe" in my condo. 

 

I am hugely aware that we all go about these things differently, that's exciting to me since I'm sure there is much more to learn. 

One of the fascinations I have with music is that there will ALWAYS be something new to learn and even the most seemingly simple musics contain subtle complexity that provides expression. 

[GovernorSilver]

I will mostly likely export MIDI, representing drum parts, to my DAW (Ableton Live 11) from my MC-707 groovebox or Yamaha PSR-SX600 arranger, which Yamaha calls an "arranger workstation".

 

On the MC-707, I've been working on a cover tune.   I've tried entering drum parts in real-time before on other sequencers.  Generally though for instrument parts that I know will be fairly regular, I find it's a faster process to lay down the kick or hihat first in step entry mode, then go back and tweak velocity as desired.  Then I may enter something like tom hits in real-time.   After I got all the parts entered into the drum pattern, then I'll tweak the Shuffle knob, and set Mute probability values for hits I want to hear sometimes, but not all the time.

 

The PSR-SX600 is a whole nuther beast.  Really good players will be able to record one performance of the tune as MIDI - the performance including whatever the player played on the keyboard themselves,  and anything played by the auto-accompaniment as triggered by the players.  Not-so-good players like me can use the multi-track option to overdub MIDI parts.  The MIDI data is captured in an SMF file which can then be exported.   The drum parts are generated by the auto-accompaniment, in the currently selected Style.  The player can press buttons to trigger song sections such as intros, verse/chorus variations, outros, etc. and the virtual drummers' playing will change accordingly.  Actually one of the reasons I got the arranger was to spend less time programming these song sections by hand, then if I get picky about something, edit it later in the DAW after importing the SMF from the arranger.  This particular model also has an onboard Style Creator, which will be the subject of another fun experiment - to see if the workflow will be faster using the Style Creator, or just using the stock Styles and expansion pack Styles and tweaking to taste in the DAW.

[Greg Mein]

Drums have often been the most difficult thing for me, I never learned to play them and being a lefty, it was always awkward to sit down and try on other players kits. For a couple of years I had an Alesis electronic kit but never spent enough time on it.

 

In the recording realm I haven't sat down to work on anything except backing tracks of cover tunes for a lot of years now. I've primarily used DP to record, and play, the tracks at gigs. Creating these tracks can be time consuming and often tedious so I try to be as efficient as possible. My best, and most common, method is to actually place an mp3 of the song onto a track, tweak it to a click and then use it as a guide while I create my various midi backing parts (bass, drums, strings, horns, etc.). Superior Drummer (currently ver. 3) is my "drummer" of choice and I've bought a lot of the available midi packs (and some 3rd party stuff) for it so I can almost always find the parts that work (often coming very close to the recording). It's not always easy to find what you want but SD3 includes some tools for searching and tweaking the beats and sounds.

 

With few exceptions I imagine I'll stick with SD when I return to recording my own original stuff in the coming months. It sounds great and there is an immense collection of available beats, rhythms and fills to satisfy what I'll need.

[Anderton]

5 hours ago, Greg Mein said:

With few exceptions I imagine I'll stick with SD when I return to recording my own original stuff in the coming months. It sounds great and there is an immense collection of available beats, rhythms and fills to satisfy what I'll need.

 

I think it's an excellent strategy to stick with specific drum plug-ins. My main drum module for realistic sounds is AD2, and then I also use MODO Drum for wilder parts. Some of the Kontakt drum sets have, at least to my ears, the best hi-hats. That pretty much takes care of what I need.

 

At a seminar , someone mentioned that his plug-in had 600 kick drums, and which one should he use. My advice was use the first one. If it doesn't work, use the second one. Keep going until you find one you like, and then STOP! The mentality of "Well maybe if I audition the other 500 kicks I'll find something better" usually does not end well

[KuruPrionz]

3 minutes ago, Anderton said:

 

I think it's an excellent strategy to stick with specific drum plug-ins. My main drum module for realistic sounds is AD2, and then I also use MODO Drum for wilder parts. Some of the Kontakt drum sets have, at least to my ears, the best hi-hats. That pretty much takes care of what I need.

 

At a seminar , someone mentioned that his plug-in had 600 kick drums, and which one should he use. My advice was use the first one. If it doesn't work, use the second one. Keep going until you find one you like, and then STOP! The mentality of "Well maybe if I audition the other 500 kicks I'll find something better" usually does not end well

I completely agree but I wanted a different sound than NI Studio Drummer offered for the song I'm working on, both the tones of the drums and the beats.

I've dabbled with NI Drum Lab but it's got another thing going on, not bad but still not it. I have MT PowerDrum and Izotope BreakTweaker but I haven't opened either of them yet, not even sure if Break Tweaker is drums. I'm pretty dedicated to fewer rabbit holes if possible. 

 

The grid I made ^^ screenshot above ^^ should work with any drum plugin that provides MIDI clips or even audio clips. If you can loop it, it will work. 

It isn't plugin specific, I've been using it on MODO Drum but I would use it the same way with Studio Drummer. The primary purpose of it is to display the current state of a work in progress so I can leave it for a few days and not have to worry about where to pick up. I also did not want to have to take notes, this is faster now that I've gotten used to it. 

 

One thing I do like regarding how MODO drum responds to it is that I can run one track of loops and just switch drum kits on the fly to hear what they sound like. That's pretty fast. 

I liked the Jazzy kit but I gave it punk sounding loops and in the end I preferred the Oyster snare so I changed that one drum. I did try the 3 different beaters on the kick but went back to the Felt has having the best overall sound to my ears. 

 

FWIW, my next step after cobbling a drum part together was to copy and paste that part into a total of 4 tracks. When I started using the Mixer section of MODO Drum to separate the Kick, Snare, Hi Hat and the rest of the kit for EQ, I found that MODO Drum doesn't really work that way. If you leave the kick volume up and turn down all the other volumes (including room, overhead and effects) you can still clearly hear the snare in the track. 

 

So I guess I'm going to have to try editing MIDI after all, at least until I find out if it is literally mic bleed and the MIDI tracks do not represent separate instruments. 

Maybe that's more of a plugin by plugin difference or maybe I overlooked something. I had an easier time mixing Studio Drummer and getting separation.

 

We grow as we go. I just want cool sounding drums and as little work as possible. Will be trying recording in a studio with a real drummer and bassist soon, I'll see how that goes. 

I suspect it will go well but it does bring up budget constraints and I'm sure there will be other considerations - humans always have them, myself included. 

[Mighty Motif Max]

Interesting thread. As I think I may have mentioned in the MODO Drum thread some time ago, I pretty much stick to playing the drum parts into the DAW via a midi keyboard, and then adjusting as needed from there (extra ghost notes, quantizing, etc). I just don't enjoy drawing things into a DAW; I've done that and I just loose the sense of groove etc so it's hard to come up with good sounding drum parts. I have recently bought an Alesis SamplePad Pro to, among other things, actually play drum parts into the DAW more like a drummer would. So that's an adventure in itself.

 

Sound-wise I stick to Addictive Drums 2 for the most part, with electronic kits still being somewhat of a challenge (getting samples organized into kits, finding a player for it, etc is definitely not my strong suit); occasionally Modo Drum comes out for more processed sounds.

[KuruPrionz]

8 hours ago, Mighty Motif Max said:

Interesting thread. As I think I may have mentioned in the MODO Drum thread some time ago, I pretty much stick to playing the drum parts into the DAW via a midi keyboard, and then adjusting as needed from there (extra ghost notes, quantizing, etc). I just don't enjoy drawing things into a DAW; I've done that and I just loose the sense of groove etc so it's hard to come up with good sounding drum parts. I have recently bought an Alesis SamplePad Pro to, among other things, actually play drum parts into the DAW more like a drummer would. So that's an adventure in itself.

 

Sound-wise I stick to Addictive Drums 2 for the most part, with electronic kits still being somewhat of a challenge (getting samples organized into kits, finding a player for it, etc is definitely not my strong suit); occasionally Modo Drum comes out for more processed sounds.

 

I have the gear to track drums but currently I have a situation that doesn't encourage doing that. My condo is being repaired for water damage caused by imbeciles and it's taking a long time. I had to pack EVERYTHING that was in the kitchen and living room areas into 2 small bedrooms, not much access (or inclnation). Thanks to the good graces of a friend, I'm currently camped out at a vacant home and I've brought a minimal studio rig over since I need to keep on recording. I don't want to bring more gear over here at this point in time so I thought it would be a good opportunity to learn more about "drumming" in the Box. I've learned lots and have much more to learn, in the end my process will probably be "hybrid". 

 

Have you tried swapping drum programs on your MIDI tracks? In other words, see if your Addictive Drums will play MODO Drum loops and vice versa? For the most part that seems to work with MODO Drum and NI Studio Drummer, it does provide more options. 

 

FWIW, my home setup includes an Akai MPK 25 MIDI controller, an X-Key 25, a Roland Handsonic HPD-15 and a Korg Wavedrum. If I could only have one of those it would be the Korg Wavedrum, hands down. Playing the Korg feels like playing a real drum, it's very responsive to the location of the strike and the "feel", it also can be played with hands/fingers or sticks. You can hear the difference between sticks and brushes, it's very sensitive and very "real world". No MIDI, no samples, one of a kind drum widget. 

 

Thanks for posting, I learn from every post and I hope others do too! 😁

[Mighty Motif Max]

3 hours ago, KuruPrionz said:

Have you tried swapping drum programs on your MIDI tracks? In other words, see if your Addictive Drums will play MODO Drum loops and vice versa? For the most part that seems to work with MODO Drum and NI Studio Drummer, it does provide more options. 

 

...If I could only have one of those it would be the Korg Wavedrum, hands down. Playing the Korg feels like playing a real drum, it's very responsive to the location of the strike and the "feel", it also can be played with hands/fingers or sticks. You can hear the difference between sticks and brushes, it's very sensitive and very "real world". No MIDI, no samples, one of a kind drum widget.

I have swapped drum programs on my midi tracks; generally I end up putting my own kit together, pieced from different programs/patches (i.e. I prefer the concert percussion and electronic sounds in Groove Agent (and Hollywood Orchestra Opus), most acoustic drums and cymbals from AD2, and the kicks sometimes from SSD5.5 or MODO). There are some interesting drum sounds in the Kontakt Factory Library as well.

 

That said, I don't think I've ever found a use for drum loops that I liked the sound of. Too static, and generally they don't have the feel I'm going for. The only time I might find them useful might be for practice tracks in theory, but I haven't bothered yet.

 

The Wavedrum seems like a cool piece of equipment. I feel like it would be nice to have midi capability (output only) for controlling some percussion plugins from that surface, but I'd imagine it's not using standard midi data anyways.

[KuruPrionz]

2 minutes ago, Mighty Motif Max said:

The Wavedrum seems like a cool piece of equipment. I feel like it would be nice to have midi capability (output only) for controlling some percussion plugins from that surface, but I'd imagine it's not using standard midi data anyways.

 

The Wavedrum uses microphones, pressure sensors and synthesizers to combine analog and electronic sounds together and make various drum sounds. 

Once, we turned it way up and at first there was feedback. We adjusted for that and and at high volume you could literally hear fingernails scratching the head. 

The pressure sensitivity is interesting, sometimes pressing down makes the pitch go up (what you would expect) and sometimes it makes it go down. 

Plus, sometimes pressure on the head will shift the pitch of the drums sounds you make by striking the plastic rim of the drum instead of the head!!!

 

I don't think MIDI would be able to deal with the implementation that makes it such a great electronic drum. It does have stereo sound and L-R outputs, I just plug those into DI inputs and play it. There are some nice snare and kick sounds, some interesing bells and all sorts of cool stuff. I've not tried to program my own sounds yet, internet advises that as a relatively diffiult procedure. There are about a million things I want to try but only so many time slots!!!

[RABid]

I have a huge V-Drum set anchored with a Roland TD-30 sitting a few feet away from my DAW. When I was slowly building it I thought that would be my primary way. It's not.

 

I have a couple Zendrums. Strap on percussion drivers that can connect to the TD-30 or to the computer and drive BFD. Not how I like to do it.

 

Got plenty of recorded loops and MIDI patterns. Maybe as a holder when I start, but eventually replaced. 

 

Even though I am a drummer at heart I prefer to build patterns note by note, starting with the bass drum. I then start the note editing process, pushing the beat by bumping the snare forward, varying the high hats both in dynamics and timing. Sometimes dragging the timing on tom hits. It is not point and click that makes a beat. It is knowing where to push, where to pull, when to accent, and how to vary. I do use the Zendrum or one of my Roland pads to play in odd timing rolls such as 13/16 or 5/16. Thirty years ago I never thought I would do it this way by choice.

[KuruPrionz]

32 minutes ago, RABid said:

I have a huge V-Drum set anchored with a Roland TD-30 sitting a few feet away from my DAW. When I was slowly building it I thought that would be my primary way. It's not.

 

I have a couple Zendrums. Strap on percussion drivers that can connect to the TD-30 or to the computer and drive BFD. Not how I like to do it.

 

Got plenty of recorded loops and MIDI patterns. Maybe as a holder when I start, but eventually replaced. 

 

Even though I am a drummer at heart I prefer to build patterns note by note, starting with the bass drum. I then start the note editing process, pushing the beat by bumping the snare forward, varying the high hats both in dynamics and timing. Sometimes dragging the timing on tom hits. It is not point and click that makes a beat. It is knowing where to push, where to pull, when to accent, and how to vary. I do use the Zendrum or one of my Roland pads to play in odd timing rolls such as 13/16 or 5/16. Thirty years ago I never thought I would do it this way by choice.

Im with you on the micro seconds that make a huge difference in groove. 

I go about it a little differently, I'm a pretty good bassist and have adjusted kick and snare to match up with a bass line that I played on a loop that was close but not quite there. 

Once I get an clip that is lined up with the bass groove, I can use it in the parts of the song it belongs. A bit tedious but it works, I just want results.