Drum Loops

[Al_]

Musicians Friend had a pretty good deal on some drum tracks for $5 today so I bit. Might be cool, maybe not. I'm not in a band anymore so thought it would be fun to have some tracks to cut and use if I wanted to make some music on my own for possibly one of the comps or who knows what else. Anybody here use that type of stuff? I figure I'll just upload the wav files into protools and then copy and paste bits and pieces around to make an arrangement. Likely pretty basic but hopefully useful. I'm not at all familiar with midi so doing anything more complicated is probably beyond me.

[Mike]

Musicians Friend had a pretty good deal on some drum tracks for $5 today so I bit. Might be cool, maybe not. I'm not in a band anymore so thought it would be fun to have some tracks to cut and use if I wanted to make some music on my own for possibly one of the comps or who knows what else. Anybody here use that type of stuff? I figure I'll just upload the wav files into protools and then copy and paste bits and pieces around to make an arrangement. Likely pretty basic but hopefully useful. I'm not at all familiar with midi so doing anything more complicated is probably beyond me.

Nice. You'll get MIDI eventually, I used to be completely clueless but now I mess about with SessionDrummer2 which came free with Cakewalk Sonar 7 and it's brilliant, it's never going to replace a real drummer, but it does the job. I wish I had space and a soundproof area for a drumset so I could just play my own drumparts. I used to when I lived at my folks and it was great, but I donated my drumkit to a school as it was just gathering dust. I miss it. :-/

[Al_]

I actually have a drum kit, but I think my 3-yr old plays it better than I do. I'm pretty crap and don't really have the time to practice/learn at this point. I'm happy to grab something like this finally though. I have a copy of Garageband on my mac which I think has builtin drum loops, but I can't get it to run on my machine due to some conflict with my Waves plugins that I don't really want to horse around with. I also have Drumagog (sound replacer software) that I thought I might be able to use by just triggering stuff with sticks and then replacing it--but that has the same problem with rhythm and whatnot. I've got an old Yamaha drum machine too; but I just think some basic beats will be the easiest thing for me to work with. We'll see.

[Mike]

I'm not that competant, but I sure do love whacking them.

Will be interested to hear how you get on.

[DanHeron]

I recommend trying some midi drums, once you do it a couple of times it becomes really easy. I have Fruity Loops and Ableton Live and use them to make my own midi drum beats.
Fruity Loops has a demo/trial you can download which is pretty good. I think its the same as the full program but without the ability to save your stuff - but you can export what you make as sound files! So with other sequencing software you can make the beats on the Fruity Loops demo then sequence them as audio files in another program. Deffinately worth downloading and messing about with.

[Al_]

Thanks for that. I'll start with the dummed down stuff and if I feel limited and want to get trickier I may check that out.

[JamesSmann]

i use midi drums myself from both reason and session drummer. ironically enough i'll be programming drums tonight i think. one thing i've learned just very recently is the power of the quantization feature. i don't have TERRIBLE meter, but the lag from USB to recording interface/application is tricky and well, i'm not a drummer. so when i'm programming pretty much anything in MIDI now, whether it be drums or other instrumentation it gets the quantize treatment. as mike doughty says "the quantize knob that drains the beat of all soul..." but i'm okay with it being soulless if it doesn't sound shitty. lol

[More Cowbell]

I actually have a drum kit, but I think my 3-yr old plays it better than I do. I'm pretty crap and don't really have the time to practice/learn at this point. I'm happy to grab something like this finally though. I have a copy of Garageband on my mac which I think has builtin drum loops, but I can't get it to run on my machine due to some conflict with my Waves plugins that I don't really want to horse around with. I also have Drumagog (sound replacer software) that I thought I might be able to use by just triggering stuff with sticks and then replacing it--but that has the same problem with rhythm and whatnot. I've got an old Yamaha drum machine too; but I just think some basic beats will be the easiest thing for me to work with. We'll see.

I read an interesting article/interview w/ WillIam from Black eyed peas. He claims he can't play drums either but uses real drums in his demos and songs. He'll go and record just kicking the kick drum, then go and add snare, then whatever else, just playing one part of the drums at a time, so its "real" drums.

[JamesSmann]

I actually have a drum kit, but I think my 3-yr old plays it better than I do. I'm pretty crap and don't really have the time to practice/learn at this point. I'm happy to grab something like this finally though. I have a copy of Garageband on my mac which I think has builtin drum loops, but I can't get it to run on my machine due to some conflict with my Waves plugins that I don't really want to horse around with. I also have Drumagog (sound replacer software) that I thought I might be able to use by just triggering stuff with sticks and then replacing it--but that has the same problem with rhythm and whatnot. I've got an old Yamaha drum machine too; but I just think some basic beats will be the easiest thing for me to work with. We'll see.

I read an interesting article/interview w/ WillIam from Black eyed peas. He claims he can't play drums either but uses real drums in his demos and songs. He'll go and record just kicking the kick drum, then go and add snare, then whatever else, just playing one part of the drums at a time, so its "real" drums.

that sounds like a lot of work, only because you can get fully awesomesounding total-kit loops these days...but i guess if you have the time to do that, that's pretty cool.

[Sloan]

i remember reading that QOTSA usually does the shells first and then adds cymbals. what a pita.

[Al_]

Yep, I've actually considered doing that in the past. Sounds kinda fun but quite a bit of work. Drums need to be tuned then too, doh!