Fake drum workflow

[Sloan]

Dudes. I hate programming drums, but I need to get in the habit of doing it more often for songwriting purposes, preproduction etc...

I use Reaper and free drum machines/samples; using the midi shit to manually click in hits for a basic groove and then copypasta it around and change different parts for each section of the tune. then i go through and adjust velocity by hand if need be. it's time consuming and pisses me off, which in turn keeps me from dedicating the time to adding drums to my riffz. lame.

If you guys could share how you go about creating your faek drum tracks, that would be killer!

 

[Erratic]

Guitar Pro 5 for the basics and then into cubase 5 ; I load the midi track and re-arrange the velocities and add more cymbals, it happens that I've been tabbing and writing music in Guitar Pro since 2004 so I know my Midi mapping and the SD 2.0 mapping so it goes uber fast for me to bring out a quality drum machine, I then export kick,snare,hh,toms,oh,room,oh drummer separately then to pro tools for processing

 

[Sloan]

shit sounds COMPLICATED

 

[Erratic]

so fuckin not honestly, I get a track in 10 minutes like that.

EDIT: This is my method for a full professional mix, for a basic idea I'll just tab the shit in guitar pro and that's it.

 

[AntonioPetrole]

i used to tab my stuff in guitar pro when i first started but i realized its much easier and beneficial to do it all in piano roll IMO. Once you get quick with control+c control+v for copying and pasting its like nothing to program drums. Just keep working on it.

 

[psycle_1]

i used to tab my stuff in guitar pro when i first started but i realized its much easier and beneficial to do it all in piano roll IMO. Once you get quick with control+c control+v for copying and pasting its like nothing to program drums. Just keep working on it.

Agreed. Doing my own drum parts used to intimidate the shit out of me when trying to do it in piano roll on Cubase 5. After I sucked it up and did my first intro and verse parts, it was a piece of cake. Hardest part is just sucking it up and actually doing it. It might still take me roughly an hour depending on the complexity/length of the song, but it's very rewarding hearing it after it's all said and done.

 

[mstone564]

I used to be the EXACT same way as you guys with Guitar Pro.
I had everything in GP down pat and now I almost have my Superior Map memorized, and it's a lot easier to just do it in your DAW so you're not wasting time by exporting midi from different programs that you'll end up changing later anyways.

 

[Cacoph0ny]

I do the same thing you do, basic skeleton then go back and add details. I used to use Guitar Pro but I prefer doing it in my DAW so I can hear what it sounds like as I go.

 

[26]

shit sounds COMPLICATED

i "played" (kick, sn,) short parts of a piece manually (keyboard) and added everything else afterwards. chances are that you produce a more natural feel and it's more fun too.
might not work with super fast metal stuff, though.

 

[DanLights]

if I'm the one writing the song, I normally write in guitar pro anyways so I do the method mentioned here, add stuff and velocities in Reaper if it's serious recording, don't do shit if it's preproduction (just map it correctly obviously)

If it's not just me writing (for example when I write songs with my wife), I do it in the Reaper Piano Roll cause we record scratch guitars to a click while writing, and then I go adding drum parts on top of the scratch guitars

 

[Scott Horner]

I definitely use the piano roll. I usually go through and get the basic drums down for a "scratch track" to record everything else to. Then I will go and add fills, adjust velocities and humanize as I go. I've never been a fan of using Guitar Pro to program drums.

 

[koalamo]

Program one Beat copy and paste adjust velocities move everything of the grid slightly and use random quantize or something so that it doesn't sound like a machine go on to the next part rinse and repeat

 

[JamesNorman]

I have a lot of the basic beats.... Two step, stomp beats, breakdowns, cirlce pit beats, blast beats, etc, saved with pre mapped velocities, humanisation in a folder.

Drag in, add fills, maybe a few ghost notes, then fiddle with some settings. Save that again.

Then over time you end with alot is fills and different velocities for similar beats and what not. Makes it fairly easy at that stage.

 

[guitarguru777]

I write mine in the piano roll of the DAW after I place my kicks and snares using a keyboard.

You can take the LAZY MAN route and get Easy Player from ToonTrack which has hundreds of pre programmed beats in MIDI and then tweak to taste.

 

[professorlamp]

piano roll with a startup preset, record the guitars, change the bits and bobs of the kit (i.e. get rid of the zillion amounts of compression that startup presets have) to sound decent and change the velocities and stuff. bounce down so it's like a real kit (kind of) and then im done .

 

[wetpenny]

I write mine in the piano roll of the DAW after I place my kicks and snares using a keyboard.

You can take the LAZY MAN route and get Easy Player from ToonTrack which has hundreds of pre programmed beats in MIDI and then tweak to taste.

EXACTLY how i do my drum parts.. kicks/snares courtesy of a controller keyboard,then getting busy in the piano roll with my mouse...

 

[Plankis]

Add midi, a measure or two depending on the difficulty of the beat.
Open piano roll/drum editor with a drum map assigned.
Create beat, make sure to edit the velocities and timings as thorough as possible.
Copy/paste appropriately.
Go back and edit until the copied midis doesn't sound copy/pasted.

When song's finished rest a few days. Then go back and make final adjustments.

 

[koalamo]

I write mine in the piano roll of the DAW after I place my kicks and snares using a keyboard.

You can take the LAZY MAN route and get Easy Player from ToonTrack which has hundreds of pre programmed beats in MIDI and then tweak to taste.

Lol dude I bought some of those when I first started they're so unrealistic it's ridiculous though apparently they were made by a reAl player there was one with like 2 toms two cymbals and a snare hit on one beat

 

[Joel4662]

Wow glad to see im not the only one who uses Guitar Pro!
It'd be nice if they'd make their midi mapper separate so you could use it as a midi editor in your DAW???
But that'll never happen :\

 

[chrisjmp]

I usually use a couple midi grooves from either Slate or BFD, I find one that somewhat matches the feel I want and then move some of the hits around to make it work. Occasionally I program a couple sections with the mouse in Pro Tools. I hope to eventually be able to program more stuff from scratch, but I'm not a drummer and most of my stuff would be boring and overly simple.