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Drum Beats/Programming


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Hey everybody - I'm a long-time listener, fan, and advocate of OCR. Good to see things are spiffy as ever!

I've just started working on electronic compositions in FruityLoops, Sonar, ProTools, Audacity (Why both? Because I don't have consistent access to the ProTools machine! Boo!) and Sibelius. I'm an undergrad student musician/composer/saxophonist/arranger/technician, more accustomed to arranging for small jazz combos.

My question: how do you get into drum programming? I'm a saxophonist myself, but I can't quite fathom the inventiveness of guys like po!, Quinn Fox, Scott Peeples, Dale North, J:/Drive, and The Wingless (and countless others - I'm just rambling off folks from the top of my head). Usually, I can just dictate a feel and the drummer/percussionist works it out.

This isn't the sort of thing they teach at school, you know? Thanks for taking a moment to point me in the right direction.

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BAsically, listen to a lot of influences, I'm currently taking drum lessons from this guy and the best way I've learned is to basically, jack other people's beats until you start to get a feel for how they're made and start making your own. Its kinda like using synth presets, you use presets when you first start out until you see what all the knobs do so you begin to program your own. I reccomending getting a lot of funk breaks to sample, they can be found fairly easily on forums like www.dogsonacid.com --> the grid. Funk is probably one of the best places to hear ideas for beats.

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in terms of sequencing, you could start out with really simple experimentation

for example, start with a 2 measure loop and put hihats on every eighth note beat, put a snare on the 2nd and 4th beats of each measure, and put a kick drum at the beginning of each measure.. just a really basic beat

then randomly add 2 more kicks for each measure. play it back so you can FEEL what that sequence sounds like

then keep moving the 2 kicks around and see what kinda rhythms you can come up with

when u get a feel for that, add more kicks in. then add some snares, and then change up the hihats with extra notes or open hats

also try listening to a beat and recreating the kick/snare pattern

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I have an old method of doin rythms that I am starting to do again that is similar to what po! is describing.

I build a basic structure, but then I move around each percussive element to really flow with the composition as well as possible. I usually take my song in fl studio and set up ghost channels to see common points where chords or the really moving notes in a melody/harmony reside. Once I find those common points I map out the different percussive elements to match and enhance the composition. Doin this way I have found almost endless variations to rythms, bc it really forces me to match the rythms with the ever changing feel of the composition throughout the piece.

Overall finding some basic struture to follow throughout the song that you can add and subract from easily will make it a lot easier on you to make rythms.

Also I def 2nd about lookin and studying beats and rythms done by artists. You can find lots of midi files that contain rythms from songs, then with the midi you can actually see how those sweet rythms are established.

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