Lets talk about drums..

[NuEra]

Not kick drums, not high hats, but everything in between.

I always feel like I am missing something in the mid range percussion area. What are some good points of discussion to get the dialog going on these drums?

I'm most interested in one word; groove. What are some good methods of practice to get going in the groove department. And then once that groove gets going, how is it kept fresh and evolving through the course of a 6-9min song?








I'm having a hard time wording what I want to ask, but basically, I am trying to find out how to program interesting drum grooves.

Thank you thank you!

[admin]

Most of these seem to be utilizing a lot of live percussion. Whether or not its sampled, programmed or even played live from sessions the producers did themselves is always the question. In my experience its a lot easier to just play in live for when you want lot's of variation. You can program it but it\s tedious to do compared to the former. Not everyone can plan in well though so sometimes programming is your only option, or heavy editing later. Most sequencers allow quantizing by strength so you can tighten up a performance without losing all the dynamics.

With packages like Stylus RMX and Addictive Drums you get both nice acoustic samples of these drums along with midi performances which you can edit. I'd say that most of the dance music type libraries aren't very good for shakers and congos etc.. Theyre usually stiff sounding drum machine samples. You need something a little more raw and dynamic to pull off these types of grooves.

It also helps to listen to the type of music these grooves come from. Get some Latin or Middle Eastern music and listen to the patterns they use and apply it. Most of the roots of the grooves from dance tracks come from other forms of music and it's always best to go to the source to educate yourself.

[NuEra]

whats the difference between adjusting the percentage of swing quantization and applying a "groove template" to a programed midi drum pattern?

[admin]

Swing is generally a static timing change where as templates offer more variation for different notes as defined by the template. A lot of the groove templates are midi files that were made from analyzing real drummers so the push and pull within the boundary of the template.

[sven hauck]

It also helps to listen to the type of music these grooves come from. Get some Latin or Middle Eastern music and listen to the patterns they use and apply it. Most of the roots of the grooves from dance tracks come from other forms of music and it's always best to go to the source to educate yourself.

That explains the gigabytes of funk tracks on your hard drive back in the day.

[przechuy]

If i want to have massive groove i usually pick a good ,solid kick (but not too much as it have to leave space for rest of the drums).

Then i open NI Battery etc whatever anyone uses to drum composing (i strongly recommend this one as actually you can import into it any drum hits,single shots etc and with this flexibility your drum composing abilities are unlimited).



I love all those bong ,bongo sounds,compose a loop of them (using bong sounds with both lower and higher freq.) and sidechain it with kick.It immediately gives nice pumping effect when bongs hit,and kick still has his space. Those bongs really seem to start "jumping out" on you,thats a nice feeling,as if you do not give them space they will be somewhere hidden in "groove" and only make mess and mud instead of desired effect.



Then time for some cymbals or silent hihats.I use for it another track in my DAW and i put on them reverb ,sometimes delay. It allows those sounds to be clearly heard even if the overall drum beat is complicated. Reverb makes them "breath".If hihats are open,loud,the reverb is not that much important,or if i use it i use really small reverb.



And last track is used if i want to make massive snare sounds. For those i usually use some sampled snares and sometimes i play with eq.
If i did not used earlier siechaining on bongs then i usually use it on snares,sidechaining snares with kick drum.And here i play with attack and release a lot of a compressor ,it can give interesting effect and make the loop much more "swingy" "bouncy" "groovy" etc .



Those are my techniques of composing drums



And also about composition.

Use diffrent variations .If you compose a loop you dont have to use any given sound for whole lenght of the loop.
If you listen to some electro songs,house songs or any other genre where beat has to interesting and drums are really important you can notice this big variations of drums .Lets say with 3 first kicks you hear bongs,but when 4th kick comes you hear a "woosh" sound from hihats,white noise ,or maybe a cymbals crash sound etc. Such variations,changes make the drum loop interesting and groovy.If it would be only bongs (bongs are example here,it can be any other drum sound) it would be most probably boring to death




This is some stuff that i do.I do not advice to follow,we have here expert on board,mr Medway .I posted it to show what i do,,which not necessaryy must be the proper way ,but it just sounds good to me

[przechuy]

Most of the roots of the grooves from dance tracks come from other forms of music and it's always best to go to the source to educate yourself.

Best example is "Timbaland" He steals less known songs from mid east,india music etc ,imports them to daw and just adds beat ,probably also from some patterns lol.

A lot of interesting stuff regarding it is on youtube with exact songs showed that he stole .And namely,stole,it is exactly the same .Even when they analyzed spectrums etc,he brutally steals it ,remake a bit and create from it a new dance/rnb or whatever hit.And i tihnk it sounds good,but it is funny to hear about "best hip hop,rnb producer" etc knowing that majority of his hits is just stolen ,with a bit of drums added.




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1X58UPPKDsY


who would even think from regular listener that those hit songs are just a rip offs from mid east,smart idea for milti bilions business.Not even cutted,chopped rearraned.Just brutally stolen,imported to daw and some drums are added

[Rambunkcious]

Thats so weird, I practically grew up with those original middle eastern tracks blasting in the background, and yet didnt even think for one second where they came from on timbalands tracks.

[sven hauck]

Thats so weird, I practically grew up with those original middle eastern tracks blasting in the background, and yet didnt even think for one second where they came from on timbalands tracks.

Sweet, then you should be able to bust out some funky beats.

[NuEra]

Groove templates...I've tried poking around in Logic and on google, and I am still a bit lost..

I see that I can create my own from an audio loop, or I can download third party template and import it (goldbaby had a free one). Does Logic not come with some stock groove templates? Where would one find some good groove templates online?