The Song Fight Bulletin Board

I recently talked with a friend about drumming using a MIDI keyboard. I like it (vs. an electric kit) because it's cheap, you can still record velocity events, there's less vibration, and you don't sweat as much.

When I taught myself to keyboard-drum, I tried to record 90%+ of the rhythm as one track, rather than looping the rhythm and recording separate layers for kick/snare, toms, cymbals, etc.

Now, this approach might be more common than I imagine, so if it is, I apologize for ignorance. But in the past few years several people asked me to write up some text/diagrams explaining my technique (for better or worse). I never got around to it; now I'm tempted.

So I'm wondering, is this something you're interested in reading? Is a common technique already well-documented?

I'd *love* to learn better methods of keyboard drummin'. I don't think my method is wicked-awesome, but it works.

To give you an idea of what I mean, I recorded some rough, unscripted, drowsy late-night clips of general drum messings-around. Not my best, and hardly a great ad-libbed narrative, but you get the idea. The "real" version would be more clearly articulated.

The actual write-up would be a mix of text (primarily), diagrams, MIDI files and short video clips to explain the approach (hand/finger positioning, important percussion key locations, basic rhythms, fill techniques, misc percussive decoration, and realism).

What'cha think?

I think you should find a drummer.

Seriously.

Computer-generated drums are bad enough.

Not being mean, but... really.

I concur. Do you concur doctor?

I'm not sure if you meant these in the general or specific sense, but assuming specific:

john m wrote:I think you should find a drummer.

It's a fine thought. Or you know, use an acoustic kit, but neither is a viable option for me right now, so I'm trying to make the best of what I have. Plus I *like* playing percussion.

john m wrote:Computer-generated drums are bad enough.

Are you referring to the takes, or the synth sounds, or...? If you're referring to the rough takes, I'm definitely open to any good texts you can provide regarding drum style and technique (regardless of drum type). The synth sounds are easily remedied by pro sound fonts.

Plat wrote:Is a common technique already well-documented?

I don't know if this video (3.4mb .WMV link) will answer your questions, but it always makes me laugh. "This is rock and roll!!!"

Sequence them instead of playing them in realtime on your keyboard. We're the ones who have to listen to the results; have pity on us. :)

joshw wrote:Sequence them instead of playing them in realtime on your keyboard. We're the ones who have to listen to the results; have pity on us.

Get a chance to play with Renoise at all Josh?

joshw wrote:Sequence them instead of playing them in realtime on your keyboard. We're the ones who have to listen to the results; have pity on us.

Don't know if I mentioned it before, but for me this is a method of data entry into the sequencer. I always recommend quantization and touch-ups after the initial recording to clean up whatever artifacts remain (very few at 16-quant, but more at 32 depending on your accuracy and your host's sync to the click). Though quantization won't help for some of the faster rolls.

If someone's happy with step-entry, manual sequencing, or heavy layering, I certainly won't stop them. It seems to me you can get more variety and realism from your drum track in a single take than through the other methods.

This probably opens the thread up to a whole new generation of single-line detractors, but all of my Cow Exchange songs use drums entered through this method. Maybe I'm mentally blocking out the bad news, but I don't remember any anti-drum comments in the reviews. Some people seemed to believe they were real, or at least that I was a drummer, so I'm having a hard time understanding the backlash here.

deshead wrote:I don't know if this video (3.4mb .WMV link) will answer your questions, but it always makes me laugh. "This is rock and roll!!!"

That movie's narrative is hilariously great! It looks like he has a different approach to some of the one-handed fills. Thanks for the link; I couldn't get it to work on my Mac (even with Windows Media Player), but now on Windows, I'm all over it.

I'm just about to start using MIDI for the first time and I'll probably be experimenting with this stuff too. I see nothing wrong with this approach. I'm currently getting some razzing in reviews for our "Fell From The Sky" that the drums aren't expressive enough; I'll bet if I'd "played" them as MIDI-controlled samples rather than cut-pasted WAVs into Audition, some (of course, not all) of those problems would be solved.

One day, of course, I will learn to play the drums, buy a nice kit and a house with a spare room that can be sound-proofed or at least dampened, and get a nice mic setup to capture the sound. But until then, I'd like to hear what Plat has to say.

deshead wrote:"This is rock and roll!!!"

Oh, that's getting sampled.

Hey Plat,

Without listening to your sample, I'd say I would read whatever you might have to say on it. I enjoy programming too, and find creating realistic feel is tricky, often elusive. Overall, I'd rather use a real drummer, but there are times and genres where only the deft touch of a savvy programmer can get the desired result.

Whether you are good or not, you might know something I don't, or get me on to something I might not otherwise try.

So post it up!

sounds interesting, mr. plat; if you have the time, write it up.
-bill

deshead wrote:

Plat wrote:Is a common technique already well-documented?

I don't know if this video (3.4mb .WMV link) will answer your questions, but it always makes me laugh. "This is rock and roll!!!"

\m/
that video's great!

You're right, I should have known to do a clean take before posting to this forum (despite all the warnings of roughness). I was also sitting in a weird position to prevent blocking the camera.

Since there seems to be some interest, and I still can't find any existing write-ups, I'll try to write up what I know and post the link here when I'm satisfied with it (could be a week or three). Hopefully it'll be marginally useful.

I promise to keep the media a lot cleaner than what I've posted so far, within the limitations of the camera.

Thanks for hearing me out!

I'd recommend replacing the drum recordings with ones recorded cleanly, on the comp or whatever,instead of using the camcorder mic. They just don't sound that good. Be a bit more work but would improve the video a lot. I'm sure the voice parts are fine as-is. Not to whine or anything, do what you want
-bill

There was this band I was in two years ago, but my drumset was two states away and I had no car, so for an entire semester I played my MIDI keyboard instead. It actually worked really well. The only problem was that it was too quiet, so the other guys had to turn their stuff way down. Don't worry, we never played live, even though I did eventually get my drumset. The transition was actually pretty easy--I had learned all of our songs on that stupid keyboard, but playing the same parts on real drums was no big deal.

I've always played keyboard drums, unfortunately. It seems to me like there's sort of a quality plataeu after you reach the point when you can quickly play the basic patterns you want, quantize them, arrange them, then add in fills. At that point things sound passable, though still not very real, IMO. To get beyond that level seems like it would take a huge amount more work, trying to give everything a good "feel" and adding all the little things like flams, etc. that real drummers do all the time but are not necessarily so simple with fake drums.

I for one was really excited to to see this thread's title. As a guitar player, I've never done any percussion (electronic or on a kit). Right now I don't have the room in my office for a kit so I've decided on the keyboard approach. I would love to hear what anyone has to say about recording drum tracks.

Plat wrote:hand/finger positioning, important percussion key locations, basic rhythms, fill techniques, misc percussive decoration, and realism

So Plat, please post anything you think would be helpful or insightful - I'm looking forward to it.

deshead wrote:"This is rock and roll!!!"

That video is hilarious I should also mention deshead, you have a new fan

tentativious wrote: I would love to hear what anyone has to say about recording drum tracks.

There are a lot of software drum kits out there. To quote JB: Among Good, Cheap and Easy, you can pick any two. I chose BFD, which is Good and Easy. All my Ants (Invisible) entries use it. Prior to that, my Jim of Seattle and everything else from last year was Midi drums. The nice thing about BFD is that it let's you get started right away without having to specifically lay down grooves or hits or anything. Just choose a kit, choose a style, and you're off. It acts as a simple Cakewalk DXI plug-in. Later in the process, you can go in and edit everything if you want. BFD uses an enormous (9 Gb) database of sampled drum hits, which were recorded in a studio with multiple mics at many different velocities. You can mimic "mic placement" which actually re-mixes the recordings in the background, you can specify fills whenever you want, and you can add human feel by indicating looser playing and randomly variable velocities. It's way fun. Requires DVD, 1 Gb of RAM and 10 Gb free disk space. And you should have a fast processor.

The big caveat about BFD, well two, is that it's got this bizarre interface that at first seems really easy and intuitive, and actually gets LESS intuitive as you work with it. Secondly, they only supply extremely realistic drum sounds, nothing weird or techno. You can use their Midi grooves with your synth's drum patches, but it's kind of a hassle. Oh, and it's 300 smackers.