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SurfGuitar101 Forums » Recording Corner »

Permalink What do you recommend for drums in lieu of acoustic drums?

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I have been starting to record my own music.. but am having bad results with my existing drum machine. What do you folks use for drums?

Drum sequencing programs, drum machines or what? I need an easier way to make drum patterns reliably and am looking for some advice. Thanks!

Up until a month ago I was doing drum loops, but after some experimentation I found there are way too many limits with those. I then went the Alesis SR16 route based on the slew of good reviews, plus the price was only $47 on ebay. Making patterns on it was almost instinctive, though I still have not used its song mode yet- I'm just stitching a few multi-pattern parts together in Audacity to make a complete song; generating a click track helps with the timing.

I've been working on something for the past week to test out my new equipment and also determine my best recording workflow, so I'll definitely post something with the SR16 and any other notes/observations.

Mike
http://www.youtube.com/morphballio

I'm currently looking at getting something like either EZ Drummer or BFD, & interfacing it with an electronic kit. For the last few years I used an old Alesis D-4, which allowed me to plug pads into it & record a drum track to a sequencer. I'm no Drummer by any means, so doing it like this lets me put the guts of a "live" track down, & then edit it to fix up any flaws (which usually account for most of the song.... Laughing ). Works well enough to track with, although some of the sounds on the D-4 (cymbals, ect) are a bit limiting these days.

The sounds in EZ & BFD are very good, although I haven't really looked closely into the editing functions of either program yet, so I'm not sure what sort of looping or sequencing options they offer. There's a pile of programs like this out there, but the samples in these two really sounded phenomenal; if they also allow you to construct a track, they might be worth looking at for what you want to do.

I use an old (mid-80's) Roland CR-1000. It has hundreds of pre-programmed beats including a decent "Surf" beat and some Latin beats that work well for Surf Music. Unfortunately, it doesn't have "Wipeout" in it. It has an on/off footswitch and a footswitch for "fills" which are pretty basic. My Bass player and I perform live with it as a duo. We're so dependent on it that I advertized for another one on Craigslist. I now have a backup if the original fails and an electronics tech who can fix anything.

I understand what you're trying to do, but I personally could never play live or record without a real drummer.

The Mill Valley Taters used drum loops to great effect on their recordings and live.

Ted James
Deep Eddy Records http://www.deepeddy.net
The Nematoads http://www.nematoads.com

I'd much rather use a live drummer, but volume & space restrictions at several venues prevent it and the pay scale at some discourages it. The plus side is that we are able to play Surf Music at a lot of places where otherwise it would not be heard.
AND........."Roland" doesn't drink, do drugs, or borrow money-always shows up when I do, and isn't married to a stripper.

Without a real drummer, instrumentals just don't work. It's like just going through the motions or connecting the dots if you will. There's just no energy in a surf band without a drummer. YMMV

Regarding volume, our drummer George has an amazing command of dynamics and can play at virtually any volume level. If nothing else, have your drummer use brushes instead of sticks.

Regarding pay scale, we're (my band) all in this together. It would be wrong to exclude one member so the others can make more money.

Ted James
Deep Eddy Records http://www.deepeddy.net
The Nematoads http://www.nematoads.com

1st post here, Hi all.

to the OP:
I've struggled with it too, a lot. Been moving little MIDI dots on all kinds of little dusty LCD displays all my life. Never got anywhere with it...:tumbleweed:

And for Surf... Whoaa that's so hard to get it right. Sounds and samples are just a matter of owning a good library nowadays, but Surf drums particularly seem like so much fun to play live- it's all about feel anyway. How do you get that across? Happy, emotional, complex rolls... atmospheric fills... just altering the groove and strength lightly across the whole track...listening to the other players... being just crazy... trying to MEAN something... all that is human, all that is SURF.

Certainly, regular MIDI editing does not come even close.
It can pass for pop, commercial rock, R'n'B... barely. Depends on the engineer's talent, knowledge, experience and above all musicality.
Doesn't hurt to have some nice quality hardware gear too to back all that up.

This is a quest, full of disappointments ,channel routings, lousy user manuals, unbelievably complex GUI's and forum debates. You'll have to research yourself, learn a lot and work your way through it to get adequate results. You can take some drum lessons to educate yourself musically, and to know a drummer's limitations.

I just wanna play my guitar man... Rock

You can always have a drummer (real :wink:) tap it out for you on some pads or MIDI controller... you'd be able to change samples & tweak it later.

If you wanna go the all digital way :evil:, this is a typical setup. The cherry is no 4.- I'm checking out now:

  1. Hardware: an dedicated audio interface or sound card of some kind to minimize latency and provide basic audio quality. MIDI controller of some kind. Good fast PC configured correctly. Good monitors.
  2. A DAW-Digital Audio Workstation software, preferably for both Audio&MIDI (Cakewalk; Cubase; Pro-Tools; Logic; Amplitude; Reaper; Acoustica Mixcraft;... the list goes on). Many have demos, so check out which best suits your workflow and application. A recommended free DAW: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
  3. A good acoustic drum samples library (random list: BFD2; RealDrums; Superior Drummer; EZ-Drummer; Reason Drum-Kits2; Drumagog; Drum Masters; Addictive Drums; Ocean Way Drums; Steven Slate; Superior Drummer 2; Kontakt; etc.), most are VST instruments which are hosted by your DAW program, also include separate drum samples you can apply anywhere.

  4. and the NOVELTY part: >>>>>Jamstix 2<<<<< just got to know it, a VST drum humanizer/sequencer/auto-player available at http://www.rayzoon.com/
    Download the demo and play with it till sunshine Laughing and then some more...

It is a has a very nice and original AI engine, manipulating the drum track according to style, feel, player etc... of course everything is editable to the bone and you can integrate your own templates, but you can just supply JS2 with a basic song structure and it will do the rest. Controlling parameters that are not usually found in drum software renders real funky and original results. It can even auto-jam with audio! (and MIDI of course), all around a given style.
You can then export the MIDI loop to your DAW for further editing and sound management.

It's far from live of course, no experienced ear would mistake that, but with careful tweaking and using quality samples and mixing, it can put a smile on your face Smile
Nice to have program that was developed with the wonderful observation that MAN has 2 hands and 2 legs. What further developments down the road Hmmm

Oh Yeah: http://www.pgmusic.com/ Band-In-A-Box is not the "Professional" choice audio-wise, but it's cool as an idea starter.

Also recommended on sg101: http://stevesspringysurfdrums.com/default.aspx -very nice surf loops

Hope that helps, cheers.

For some reason every thread about drum machines has someone to say don't do it...get a real drummer. Not very helpful for someone who is going to do it. Of course playing with a real drummer is better and way more fun but sometimes that isn't possible. Since I've used a machine a lot I disagree with those who say it doesn't work, it works very well if you do it right.
You guys sure make it difficult and it doesn't have to be. I've had a Zoom RT-123 for about 13 years and just got a second one on ebay for $50. Very simple, easy to make patterns with bass and drums, you tap the keys in real time, delete if it is wrong and try again til you get it--you can enter one beat at a time. It is touch sensitive and can be quantized or not to get some "off beats". I programmed backing tracks for about 50 songs into one, no removable memory is the biggest limitation (hence a second unit).

Stormtiger: That is the same unit I have.. I just can never manage to program the beats properly. I always do it off time and it gets scrambled. Hmm.. any advice on step programming is that advisable?

surferXmatt
Stormtiger: That is the same unit I have.. I just can never manage to program the beats properly. I always do it off time and it gets scrambled. Hmm.. any advice on step programming is that advisable?

I turn off the quantizing and just keep trying til I get it right, one beat at a time if necessary. I have never used the step programming, always tap it in in real time. If you have no sense of rhythm it could be a big problem. Slowing the tempo can help. It is like using a computer keyboard to play piano, awkward but a little practice makes it easier.

I think that is my problem.. I have quantizing on.. probably throwing things off. I am okay at tapping real time drums along with my tracks.. but I get slightly off time occasionally and ruin the whole thing.

Back to Ted's dislike of drum machines:
I appreciate your band loyalty, but our situation is different. We are essentially a duo and add the drummer where the situation permits. Our drummer and bass player are full-time professionals with other bands who started "The Fabulous Woodies" as a "side" project. It is, however, my only project. It must be working, because I am playing my wife-imposed limit of gigs per month, we get asked back, and our tip jar is usually pretty full. At a party I played this weekend, a guy stuffed a $20 in the jar and remarked that he loved this music and didn't think anyone played it any more. Well, now he knows differently.
Since you're out here this weekend, come to the Coyote in Carlsbad & see what you think. I'll dedicate "Tailspin" to you!

Ted:
In another post you mentioned Squid Vicious. Don't you have a track on "American Graffiti Revisited"?

surferXmatt
I think that is my problem.. I have quantizing on.. probably throwing things off. I am okay at tapping real time drums along with my tracks.. but I get slightly off time occasionally and ruin the whole thing.

That's something I forgot to mention in my post; it's probably best to throw quantizing out the window for Surf stuff. Having said that, I'm using a midi kit for tracking; I imagine it could probably be trickier to keep in time tapping buttons on a drum machine.

Does your machine allow you to edit the tracks once they're recorded? That's what I do with the sequencer I've been using (an old Korg workstation); I can play the track into it in real time, & if I miss a hit or stuff up the end of a fill I can go back in & fix it up. Like I said before I'm a pretty average Drummer, but I only use drum samples for demos that I do myself so it doesn't worry me too much (for anything serious, it's better (& probably quicker) to hire a session drummer).

If your unit doesn't allow you to edit the tracks, there's a number of PC based midi sequencing programs out there (some of them freeware) that might be worth looking at?

elreydlp
Back to Ted's dislike of drum machines:
I appreciate your band loyalty, but our situation is different. We are essentially a duo and add the drummer where the situation permits. Our drummer and bass player are full-time professionals with other bands who started "The Fabulous Woodies" as a "side" project. It is, however, my only project. It must be working, because I am playing my wife-imposed limit of gigs per month, we get asked back, and our tip jar is usually pretty full. At a party I played this weekend, a guy stuffed a $20 in the jar and remarked that he loved this music and didn't think anyone played it any more. Well, now he knows differently.
Since you're out here this weekend, come to the Coyote in Carlsbad & see what you think. I'll dedicate "Tailspin" to you!

I understand your reasoning, and it makes sense for what you are trying to do. And those $20 tips are always great!

Yeah, I do have a lot of loyalty, especially to my drummer, whom I've played with for about 10 years. We write and arrange many of our songs together.

Would love to see you play this weekend, but unfortunately our plans won't allow us to go that far south. Hope it's a great gig, though.

Ted James
Deep Eddy Records http://www.deepeddy.net
The Nematoads http://www.nematoads.com

elreydlp
Ted:
In another post you mentioned Squid Vicious. Don't you have a track on "American Graffiti Revisited"?

Yes! We recorded a heavy, fast instrumental cover of Johnny Burnette's You're Sixteen. That was a good compilation. I miss OMOM's off the wall projects.

Ted James
Deep Eddy Records http://www.deepeddy.net
The Nematoads http://www.nematoads.com

Have a safe & enjoyable trip.

Has anyone ever considered something like this?

Roland SPD-6:
image

The touch dynamics are crude...but things like rolls and flams and ride cymbals sound pretty cool...works best in a recording application, but, it might be cool in a live setting...thing is, if you have someone available to play this thing live, well...then they are the drummer, right?

I've had moderate success with drums from a Roland synth, played manually and not quantized afterwards (so it doesn't sound too mechanic). The bad part is that you have to actually play the entire drum part on a keyboard, and sometimes you have to go back and edit/fix some parts that don't sound quite right -- so it's good for recording but doesn't work for live, real-time playing. Also stock drum sounds in most keyboards tend to be quite bad, but the Roland Studio SRX card has some pretty good drum sounds, including flams and rolls.

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