S2.0 w/ Reaper help

[xBOBxSAGETx]

So I've done SOME reading and have stayed away from posting because I hear constantly how many people hate on noobs here. Honestly I'm tired of spending hours in front of my damn piano roller in REAPER trying to figure out how to program drums. I searched on here for a little and found no avail. I have a very simple setup for now until I can afford my custom 6-core computer w/ 8 gigs but that's stemming away from my question. Is there an easier way to program drums? I've heard that FL Studio has the best piano roll and that Reapers piano roll is a joke. Anyone have ANY advice or should I just keep on clicking and doing trail and error on the piano roll? Bring on the hate I don't care at this point, I just want to record because it's become an addiction of some sort for me and I want to put my music out there but I can't do a mix or anything without drums so I'm kinda stuck :/

 

[xBOBxSAGETx]

The only gear I have is a POD UX2 with the Metal Shop Pack and S2.0

 

[narcossintese]

Buy this http://www.rayzoon.com/

 

[pattonfreak1]

What I usually do is whip up various tempo/speed/time sig. midi files usually just consisting of snare/hats/cymbals (no kick)... Say about a dozen or so, and save them. You could even do this with the pre-made files in SD and just delete the kicks.
Anyways, then you can just "paint" the kick in to go along with the song.
Its a little work but once finished your productivity will increase dramatically.

 

[xBOBxSAGETx]

Okay, what I've been trying to start my base off of is doing all of the kicks. I try and do all the cymbals as snares first! Also with the Jamstix what is that gonna do besides "humanize" my drums further?

 

[Plankis]

Do one measure that's pretty edited velocity-wise but is pretty simple drumwise, copypaste, go through the copypasted ones so they're not completely similar to each other, add a fill here and there where it's necessary. Repeat until the song's finished.
This is how I do it. I do use a drum map though which makes it A lot easier. Not sure you if use it but I did a quick googlesearch for drummaps for reaper anyway and found these: http://www.godprobe.com/projects/notemaps/
Hope it helps.

 

[narcossintese]

Okay, what I've been trying to start my base off of is doing all of the kicks. I try and do all the cymbals as snares first! Also with the Jamstix what is that gonna do besides "humanize" my drums further?

It writes the whole midi track. You select the style (metal, rock, ballad,samba, etc), the "virtual drummer" (it has some options, all of them have some peculiar characteristics in their playin techniques) and just press play. It makes all the fills and stuff. If you want you can change a shitton of variables, like how much groove, dynamics, etc. It also comes with drums samples, but I like to use only the MIDI data to feed another sampler (Kontakt, in my case). There are many many features but it would take too much time to list them all, such as you write a 1 bar kick and snare pattern and let the drummer improvise using that as a base, etc.

You can actually learn a lot about drumming just studying the MIDI that it creates, as it behaves like a normal drummer, respecting the human limbs limitations and such.

 

[xBOBxSAGETx]

It writes the whole midi track. You select the style (metal, rock, ballad,samba, etc), the "virtual drummer" (it has some options, all of them have some peculiar characteristics in their playin techniques) and just press play. It makes all the fills and stuff. If you want you can change a shitton of variables, like how much groove, dynamics, etc. It also comes with drums samples, but I like to use only the MIDI data to feed another sampler (Kontakt, in my case). There are many many features but it would take too much time to list them all, such as you write a 1 bar kick and snare pattern and let the drummer improvise using that as a base, etc.

You can actually learn a lot about drumming just studying the MIDI that it creates, as it behaves like a normal drummer, respecting the human limbs limitations and such.

WOW that's beyond amazing! Thank you very much for this man, I really appreciate it and surprisingly no one has been a dick! Everyone told me not to post on here until I knew somewhat of what I'm doing! Thanks everyone for the input!

 

[xBOBxSAGETx]

Also Plankis! OMG that's the most amazing thing I've ever seen!

 

[xBOBxSAGETx]

Hold on this seems too damn magical. You're telling me I just plug in the style and the kit and this thing write drums to my guitar!? BUT HOW!?!?!? I'm baffled right now.

 

[narcossintese]

Hold on this seems too damn magical. You're telling me I just plug in the style and the kit and this thing write drums to my guitar!? BUT HOW!?!?!? I'm baffled right now.

Yep. kinda like that. It´s a VSTi. It starts to send audio and/or midi to the host. As I´ve said, it has too many features to list, but a really quick workflow is to choose a style, a drummer, a drumkit (with whatever pieces you want) and then you can just press play or you can make a list of the parts of the song (verse, bridge, chorus, etc) and how many bars he should stay on each part.

Try the demo. The bad thing of the demo is that it doesn´t send midi data out (only the kick) so you can´t use another sampler to play it and have to stick with the Jamstix samples, that aren´t very good. The full program doesn´t have this limitation.
http://www.rayzoon.com/jamstix3_demo.html

Remember that if you can´t find a style that matches the riffs of your song you can study the program a bit more and learn how to tell Jamstix to use a kick snare pattern that you´ve done (that goes well with your riff) and let Jamstix do the rest (cymbals, hars, fills, variations, etc).

My favourite software to jam and come up with ideas. It´s like having a talented drummer avaiable 24/7 that shuts the fuck up with the click of a mouse.

 

[metalfanat1c]

I use Guitar Pro 5 to write drum tracks, then tweak them in Reaper's piano roll.

 

[SimonTaddio_Qc]

You can either write your drums in Guitar Pro then import the MIDI files into your DAW. You have to use the General MIDI map in SD if you do that.
Another option is to get EZPlayer and a couple of MIDI pack, and build it from there, then add/remove/edit things as needed.
Of course it's a little more expensive than Guitar Pro, but it's what I do, and the workflow when I'm writing stuff is amazing with that thing.
I just open a blank session with EZPlayer and Superior Drummer and jam along some basass beats, it does wonders to help you lay down rough tracks fast and gives you some cool ideas as well.

EDIT: After that, you could also use Drumagog to replace drums hits with other samples from the drumkit of your choice.

 

[iamandy]

I use Guitar Pro 5 to write drum tracks, then tweak them in Reaper's piano roll.

+1

or you can be super rad.. and use the virtual midi keyboard in reaper(alt + B) and record yourself playing the beat?

 

[Fama]

I use Guitar Pro 5 to write drum tracks, then tweak them in Reaper's piano roll.

+2

 

[darthjujuu]

first of all...reapers piano roll is far from a joke, and plenty of us (myself and harvey included) have no problem quickly programming an entire song with nothing but the reaper roll. tweak the view settings, change it to diamonds. more practical for drums. you just need to learn all the little navigation tricks, scroll wheel to zoom, alt scroll wheel to move around...etc. double click to drop a note, double click it again to delete it, select notes+ctrl drag to duplicate a section of notes, label each note to be aware of which drum it's mapped to, etc.

also ... look into ezplayer, and all the toontrack MIDI packs. you can just drag chunks of MIDI directly onto a track (the track, not the piano roll) and it's made for s2.0.

i made this:

http://www.atomicballroomcalamity.com/metal3.mp3

entirely in reaper by using modified chunks of toontrack MIDI and just composing quickly in the piano roll. once you get good at it and learn how to intuitively use all the nav features, it really isn't any better or worse than GP or whatever else.