The Song Fight Bulletin Board

I've been using Acid Pro 5.0 for ages (I've also used Audacity). I've tried to build drum beats using one-shot samples using beat snapping so the beats are in time, and I even use the various tempos (swing, rock1,2,3, hiphop, etc), but it just sounds crappy. Further, I've used pre-recorded drums loops with some success, but mostly wrong for the song.

So my question is, do you think that I would have trouble using a drum machine if I am having trouble with drag-n-drop drums? Or is there something about the drum machine that makes it easier?

OR, do you think I will do better to actually get a drum set and learn to play? I've suspected that real drums would allow me to meet what's in my head where the software doesn't do that for me.

LMK your opinions!

Wages wrote:OR, do you think I will do better to actually get a drum set and learn to play?

If I was starting out and had no background in drums, I'd lean towards a PC-based drum synth. I've heard nothing but good things about Drumcore, and I've had good experiences with BFD and Groove Agent.

In fact, as a beginner, I'd go that route before I got a drum kit. There's a lot more to drums than just sitting behind the kit and playing what's in your head. Depending on your background and your style of music, it can take years to get good enough that you'd be happy with the results. Contrast that with Drumcore, where you'll spit out professional drum tracks within half an hour of installing it. Plus, after using a drum synth for a few years, you'll have a much better understanding of rhythm, easing the learning curve for a real kit.

Wages wrote:Or is there something about the drum machine that makes it easier?

Soft synths (like Drumcore) and drum machines come with libraries of patterns that you use as starting points. That's the big difference. You don't have to build each beat up from scratch.

Another thing that's worth doing (or at least was for me) is to spend a few hours listening to your favourite music but focusing solely on the drums, trying to map out what is being played when, how it is interacting with other elements of the song (particularly the bass), and what changes are made over the course of the soung.

Pick a song that you particularly like the drums on and try to sketch out on paper exactly what's going on - not so you can copy it hit for hit, but to get an understanding of what's going on 'under the hood' as it were.

If you're frustrated with drum machines, learning drums is a long and difficult path, but in the end, it's definitely worth it. As long as you have any musical talent, after a year or two of lessons, you should be able to play fine, and there'll be more personality to your songs.

Another drum vsti that might be of interest is (the name is awful), EZDrummer by Toontrack. I tried Drumcore because a friend bought it but it didn't light me up. EZDrummer did what I was hoping for: fast, easy drumming patterns that were passably realistic using its own sample library.

EZDrummer, (and possibly Drumcore though I didn't spend loads of time with it) is great 'cuz you just drag and drop midi patterns in the order you want them, adjust your adjustments (velocity, hit positions etc...) and away you go. The samples are decent and the library and expansion kits are or were, in the world of drum sampler/romplers, quite reasonably priced.

I use <a href="http://www.hydrogen-music.org/">Hydrogen</a>. It says that it's only for GNU/Linux, but there seem to be links to Windows and Mac OS X installers on the "Downloads" page, which might be worth a try.

Again, there are plenty of kit libraries available so you can experiment with different sounds.

obscurity wrote:Another thing that's worth doing is to spend a few hours listening to your favourite music but focusing solely on the drums, trying to map out what is being played when, how it is interacting with other elements of the song (particularly the bass), and what changes are made over the course of the song.

-cut & paste from an old drum machine post-

<a href="http://www.leafdigital.com/software/lea ... nload.html" target="resource window">Leaf Drums</a> is a good free drum sequencer. You can stage any drumset simply by adding folders to the Leaf Drums directory. I like it's 16th note abilities..it's good for adding a 'two handed skin hit' if you put in an additional snare track in with a weaker sounding hit and put it's touch on the 16th note behind the main hit. It also has left and right balance as well as volume control and a few effects that can be added. Two effects per drum even. It's always good to have at least two snares and two of each type of high hat so that you can have some type of dynamics in your drums. Not too many drummers hit the skins with the exact same force every time

combine that with the <a href="http://www.naturalstudio.co.uk/sampled.html" target="resource window">NSKIT</a>, which is an analouge kit sampled for sequencer use. There are different strokes for left and right hand as well as dynamic touches from strong to light hits on the skins. Please read his copyrights. He encourages the use of his drums but requires permission if you plan on using them for profitable use. Please respect that. I have asked him for permission a couple of times and he has been extremely pleasent about it and only required a copy of the commercial material for keepsake.

AS MENTIONED BEFORE, once you have a drum track for a whole song exported. Add compression..not too much, just enough to get a stronger sound. You don't want to clip and you also want to leave room for the other instruments. Then put the drumset in a room by adding some reverb. Depending on the type of song or sound you are going for, add reverb accordingly. Most of the time you just wanna put your drummer in a room to make it sound a bit more realistic. That usually just requires a minimal amount of decay.

I'm no expert. However, fake drums sounding as real as they can is an ongoing effort with me. I'll never be able to actually play the drums so I do the best I can with the tools I have. I'm always learning so if YOU learn a trick...lemme know. Some folk compliment my drum programming while others spit on it...so be ready for critisism from the elite drummests of songfight! I'm looking at you Dr. Worm.

*SMILEY*

somebody bookmark this post and be ready to post it in six months when this question is asked again *WINKY* (also note, I'm very slowly learning the drums now that there is a drum set sitting around my apt.)

I use Band In A Box, which contains a library of "styles" that include an A pattern (softer) and a B pattern (louder, for chorus, intro, etc) for each style and you set up a pattern - so many bars of A, so many bars of B, fills here and here... BIAB generates MIDI, which can then be fed to a softsynth or to an external synth to generate your drum sounds. You can create your own styles, too, and BIAB also generates bass, keyboard, guitar and string parts in MIDI form. I generally just use the drums, although BIAB plays way better keyboards than I do, and a few years ago where I was doing a lot of recording and workin' on carpal tunnel, I let BIAB play my bass parts, too, just to save the physical stress of doing those. One of the particular downsides of BIAB is that it doesn't seem to have any sort of "humanize" or "groove" settings that you can apply to drum parts. And I wish there was the option of a "C" part, an even more busy / loud pattern. But it's under $100 for Mac or PC, comes with 100 or so styles and there are lots more you can buy.

If you're going to be building your own drum parts, drum-machine style, you might check out mxtabs. It is a site where people create a submit tab versions of the drum parts for various popular songs. Quality varies (users can rate various tabs, so you can get an idea of what the best transcription of a particular song is), but if you really don't get drum patterns at all, this can be a place to start learning. I wish they had a tempo indication on the tabs, since a lot of the songs are ones I'm not familiar with, and a drum pattern that works at 85 bpm will sound stupid at 145 bpm.

Of course, I generally get beat up about the drum program and sounds on my songs, so I may not be the best source of info on this...

Charles (KA)

Thanks for all the suggestions. I checked out some software, but realized I didn't want to buy drum software, so I downloaded Leaf Drums. With Leaf, I can basically make slightly better patterns much more quickly and I must say it is quite easy to learn. I even imported better drum samples, but it still sounds too robotic, emotionless. I know a percentage of that is my not "getting" drums, but the other percentage is certainly the computer-generated aspect. Overall, I wonder if I am just too disassociated from percussion?

Because I feel my drum tracks detract more than they help and unless I start the song with drum loops before I write the guitar parts, I currently feel that I should probably not add drums to a song unless I can get someone to create custom drum tracks for the song.

What do you think? Better to have no drums than bad drums?

Wages wrote:What do you think? Better to have no drums than bad drums?

I think generally it depends what role you want the drums to play. If you want a real kit, and the best you can manage is the robotic boomBAPboomBAP from a free drum synth, then yeah, probably better to leave the drums out altogether.

But there are countless songs with obviously programmed drums (and in some cases, even poorly programmed) that sound great. So I wouldn't dismiss drums out of hand just 'cause you don't have a drummer.

All that said, personally I find weak drum levels are a FAR bigger issue than weak programming or playing. So to reword your question, I'd say better to have no drums than drums you mix too quietly because you're ashamed of them.

i always think about REM when the drummer left.. they just replaced him with a drum machine, but always made sure that nobody would think they were trying to make real sounding drum parts.

as a rule, i think synthesized rhythm sections are great, and definitely better than NO DRUMS -- until you try to pass them off as human. (obviously some people can program human sounding drums very well..)

-craig

Wages wrote:Thanks for all the suggestions. I checked out some software, but realized I didn't want to buy drum software, so I downloaded Leaf Drums. With Leaf, I can basically make slightly better patterns much more quickly and I must say it is quite easy to learn. I even imported better drum samples, but it still sounds too robotic, emotionless. I know a percentage of that is my not "getting" drums, but the other percentage is certainly the computer-generated aspect. Overall, I wonder if I am just too disassociated from percussion?


What do you think? Better to have no drums than bad drums?

I'm not posting this song to 'get you to listen to my stuff' but I'm posting it to give you an idea of what 'can be done' with leaf drums.

<a href="http://chris.hoblit.net/sound/Hoblit-SpringOfTeal.mp3" target="resource window">Hoblit - Spring Of Teal </a>

Note/suggestion: use the 16th note grid on leaf drums. Every once and a while...throw in a snare that is one 16th off of the snare that is exact. Think of it as a two drumstics on one snare hit... both hands hitting the snare 'at the same time' but one just off the other. Make the second one, the off one, a little lower in volume... as if you didn't hit the snare as hard with your left hand as you did with the right.

As obs and I have said... listen to the drum parts of your favorite songs..it's the little things you'll notice. Drum software lacks the human element...so YOU sort of have to make up for the human element by adding it in subtley. There are several other tricks to this..you'll learn as you go. (others include using more than on high hat both open and closed...different levels... crash and rides at interesting times..like a real drummer might do..not just at the end of each measure like an easy loop offers)

I think it's better to <b>have</b> drums than to simply </b>not</b> have them in your song list EVER. Drum machines can also be mixed a little lower as so the listener isnt' necessarily forced to FOCUS on the drums.

Every fight entry I've posted here has been with a drum machine. I've always used a drum machine for writing music and after getting good at it, I started programing in mistakes to add a touch of sarcasm. Here is a song we did in the studio with a drum machine I programed. Note the impossible intro.
Also, in the song, note the double sticks on the snare like Hoblit was referring to, by using the 16ths when programming. It helps give a real feel.

On my Pink Ribbon entry, I'm using a demo version of a drum program that came in the bundle with my cubase. I really like it. It programs just like my drum machine, except uses real drums and has way more "hit" options (not good with the lingo yet). I was able to program in ghost strokes and slight rim shots to give a real feel to the whole thing. Although it's much faster than programming my drum machine, it took just as long because of all the awesome options I got caught up in. The demo version only has one kit (one kick, one snare, etc) so I am thinking of paying for the full version if I don't find a better program. I figure after I get some comments from you guys, I'll decide if I want the full version BFD drum program.

You guys act like I shouldn't give up! I feel like the the sprinter who twisted his ankle in the 100 meter dash, but everyone started standing up cheering for him. He's got to finish the race, even if means he comes in dead last. It makes for a great scene, but ultimately, does it make any difference? Would anyone have a different outlook days or even hours from now? Will my song get the same or more or less votes because I did or did not include my crappy drums? Will Peter Parker and Mary Jane ever make a Spider Baby? Will anyone ever realize that Kent is just Supes with glasses and his hair parted on the other side? Will Bruce Wayne and The Boy Wonder finally go out on a date?

Wages wrote:You guys act like I shouldn't give up! I feel like the the sprinter who twisted his ankle in the 100 meter dash, but everyone started standing up cheering for him. He's got to finish the race, even if means he comes in dead last. It makes for a great scene, but ultimately, does it make any difference? Would anyone have a different outlook days or even hours from now? Will my song get the same or more or less votes because I did or did not include my crappy drums? Will Peter Parker and Mary Jane ever make a Spider Baby? Will anyone ever realize that Kent is just Supes with glasses and his hair parted on the other side? Will Bruce Wayne and The Boy Wonder finally go out on a date?

but ultimately, does it make any difference? Would anyone have a different outlook days or even hours from now?

Did the cowbell in "Don't Fear The Reaper" make a difference?

Will my song get the same or more or less votes because I did or did not include my crappy drums?

I think it would take three...three licks to get to the tootsie roll center of any of your songs. But don't take my word for it, go ask Mr. Owl.

Will Peter Parker and Mary Jane ever make a Spider Baby?

Peter Parker is still in the closet, so no.

Will anyone ever realize that Kent is just Supes with glasses and his hair parted on the other side?

He knows everyone knows. He's just in the Nile...yes, the river that runs through Egypt...he's in it.

Will Bruce Wayne and The Boy Wonder finally go out on a date?

They should go catch a show on that one planet....can't think of the name....oh dang, what's it called? It's on the tip of my toungue....so close I can taste it, uhggg. You know, the one between Saturn and Neptune.

Some kinds of music really need drums. A rocking tune with no drums or percussion is going to sound lacking. So sometimes not including drums can hurt a song, I think. That's the hardest situation for fake drums, I think. You want the dyamics and nuance of a real drummer, but you're not a drummer and you don't have a drum kit anyway. You might do best to use samples and loops in those cases, unless you're willing to spend a lot of time learning the keyboard drumming technique, and then tweaking the MIDI notes to make them more realistic, and getting and using good samples/software. The reality is that even that route will only get you so far.

If you're using fake drums, sometimes going the route of using obviously fake drums, like old analog sounding bleeps/bloops, works better. But those types of drums don't fit all kinds of music.

Some kinds of music can get by with some hand percussion, like shaker, tambourine, claps, guiro, castanets, bongos, etc. You can go to the music store and pick up some of those things for real cheap, and record real parts. If your rhythm sucks, you can clean it up after the fact in a good audio editor.

To me it's all about matching up the type of music you're doing with the kind of drum/percussion track that you can do. If you must do rock music, but you can't get real drums, you're going to have to compromise on the drums and just live with it. It's better than not making the music at all, or doing some other kind of music that you're not as into because you can do a more fitting drum/percussion track for it.

Lunkhead wrote:A rocking tune with no drums or percussion is going to sound lacking

Very true. That was one of the major problems with my earliest entries

Sounds like I'm just ready to throw in the towel, when what I should be doing is practice, practice, practice. All very convincing arguments.

I think I'll continue to seek drums or "all instrumentation tracks" in the collab group. Because 1) I am really wanting to focus on vocal and songwriting development and that is much easier to do when I don't have to worry about the instruments...especially the drums and 2) Sometimes I won't be able to collab, so then I will work on my own drums and 3) I could conceivably collab AND do a solo effort in the same week if inspiration worked in my favor. I think I did this the week I did my very first collab, but it is hard to do and both songs can suffer.

Anyways, I'll see what I can do with Leaf Drums and I will likely try out a few of the other suggestions. I guess now I just need to find some really good drum samples (one-shots and loops).

Thanks a lot! I've learned quite a bit and will need to chew a while.

Good thing I'm a drummer, because I couldn't figure out FL or leaf drums. I can never figure out computer stuff. Good luck with finding the right drum machine for you.

jolly roger wrote:Good thing I'm a drummer, because I couldn't figure out FL or leaf drums. I can never figure out computer stuff. Good luck with finding the right drum machine for you.

And a great drummer at that! I'm still getting to know everyone, and I had no idea how good you were. After listening to the Lunk/Jolly tune, I'm loving your drumming.

Wages wrote:

Lunkhead wrote:A rocking tune with no drums or percussion is going to sound lacking

Sounds like I'm just ready to throw in the towel, when what I should be doing is practice, practice, practice. All very convincing arguments.


Anyways, I'll see what I can do with Leaf Drums and I will likely try out a few of the other suggestions. I guess now I just need to find some really good drum samples (one-shots and loops).

Thanks a lot! I've learned quite a bit and will need to chew a while.

No Problem...and you have a good plan. That NSKit in my first post is probably the best sounding Natural Kit on the web and works really well with Leaf Drums. He has different pressure hits and the whole nine yards. Never throw in the towel, practice is hard...but its what makes ya good.