I am not a very good drummer, so I program my drum parts on a Roland drum machine.
These sounds are very good, but the cymbals sound sterile and lack stick variations that a real drummer provides.
So I program a solid Kick and snare part, and add "live" Hi Hat, Crash and ride cymbals and percussion.
The end result is very convincing, because the live cymbals give the track a human feel, while the kick and snare provide a solid groove in perfect time.
One more added benefit is the kick and snare create a tempo map so I can later cut and paste other instruments using the drum track for in and out points. I can line up edited parts perfectly this way by locating the punch point to the nearest kick (1+3)or snare (2+4).
Years ago, when we would use the Alesis drum machines for tracking, we'd just replace any of the ride and crash cymbals with real cymbals, and no one could ever tell they were drum machine parts. Everyone had gotten used to listening for that less-than-natural decay, and were fooled by inclusion of real cymbals. It's a great trick.
Yes, REAL cymbals. We did a bunch of songs at one point some time ago where we used the refrigerator door as a bass drum. Sounded fine, didn't have that "mechanical" feel, cause it was not 'perfect".
Rick - I am absolutly serious. No joke here.
When I took some art classes back in college, we had an assignment to use paper and charcoal to make "texures" from objects in the area. Rub the charcoal on the paper on a brick, or a piece of rough wood, see what kind of visual texures can be created using things around the area. Years later, I used that in music. For instance, rub a piece of steel wool on a drum head, a piece of metal pipe struck against different objects like another piece of metal or a table leg. See what kinds of sounds can be created. It offsets the mechanical feel of programmed drums. Fun also!
Bud Angelotti wrote:Rick - I am absolutly serious. No joke here.
When I took some art classes back in college, we had an assignment to use paper and charcoal to make "texures" from objects in the area. Rub the charcoal on the paper on a brick, or a piece of rough wood, see what kind of visual texures can be created using things around the area. Years later, I used that in music. For instance, rub a piece of steel wool on a drum head, a piece of metal pipe struck against different objects like another piece of metal or a table leg. See what kinds of sounds can be created. It offsets the mechanical feel of programmed drums. Fun also!
I agree, it is a lot of fun.
I started doing things like what you've described.
I started a collection of my own sound FX. Things like a door slamming, my dog's bark, cat's meow, tuning in different stations on the radio, a telephone ringing (I know, The Beatles and Pink Floyd have already done this).
Now you got me wanting to pick up my recorder and do even more than what I've already done. You never know where you might be able to use those sounds in your recordings.
Depending on your software or hardware recording system, you can "sample" your home-made percussion sounds and assemble them into a rhythm pattern.
Then cut and paste the patterns as measures into a song.
Of course, rap artists have been sampling bits and pieces of existing songs to create new beats for many years now.
Music or noise? sometimes magic happens when you try new things.
Dom Franco wrote:
sometimes magic happens when you try new things.
Dom
The folks at Abbey Road must have thought this way too.
BTW, is that an Alesis SR-16 that I see in your picture?
I use to have one of those until I decided to purchase a drum set (which gave me neighbor problems).
I now own a Roland V kit.
That Alesis drum machine was a whole lot of fun.
I recorded a lot of stuff using that thing.
Another nice thing with electronic kits is to fold it back to a pair of speakers in a decent sounding room and stereo mic the room to blend in with the fake drums...saved many a track this way over the years....
John Macy
Rockport, TX
Engineer/Producer/Steel Guitar
If I remember correctly, wasn't it possible to link the MMT8 and the HR-16 together?
I had an SR-16 too, but I didn't keep it very long.
It's not that it was a bad machine...not at all.
It's just that I got my V kit almost immediately after I got the SR-16. SR-16 was sold.
John Macy
PostPosted: 17 May 14 10:58pm Post subject:
Another nice thing with electronic kits is to fold it back to a pair of speakers in a decent sounding room and stereo mic the room to blend in with the fake drums...saved many a track this way over the years....
John,
Isn't this what they do when using a reverb chamber?
So it's a way to blend in room mics like you could do with an actual live drummer?
That's correct, give more life and depth to the track like it was really played in a real room...gotta be a decent sounding room, though...you can use a room simulator in a digital reverb, but nothing sounds better than the real thing...
John Macy
Rockport, TX
Engineer/Producer/Steel Guitar
Fun also!