Drum Programming Thread!

[IBNYX]

Hi!

So I'm back to actually producing/recording music instead of just making patches on various synths and pedals, and I'm just now getting into the world of programming drum VSTs.
Before now, when I wasn't doing much guitar/vocal based music, I would just programming static samples as beats and whatnot, but early in the year I picked up Addictive Drums 2 and have been having a blast with it bringing some demos and full tunes to a higher caliber.

Anyone else in here use this workflow? My understanding is that a bunch of metal players will use programmed drums in their music, either for replacements or just full-on tracks.

[coldbrightsunlight]

I spend a lot of time programming drums and I hate it

In my main band I just do it for demos so I don't put much effort in. Whenever I have to make it sound more like it like a real drummer I find it exhausting. Addictive Drums is fantastic though, I use it all the time.

[goroth]

Yep. I use AD2.
I write all the notation in Guitar Pro then export the midi to AD2 (had to map stuff to get it to play right though).
I then adjust the velocity of the hits, and humanise stuff a bit.
I write all my own music in Guitar Pro, so the drum programming is a natural part of the workflow. I struggle a bit outside of that context.

In the end it's decent for demos.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSP7vEva8Ho[/youtube]

This is a killer instrumental metal tune, written by a killer guitarist. It's not with AD2, but to me it just shows the problem with programmed drums. These drums are programmed pretty nicely, and software has gotten a bit better since this was recorded, but I'm just completely allergic to that sound these days. So um.. it's a good idea but there are so many awesome drummers out there. If you're playing to a click I'd just send the notation to a rad session drummer. Hannes Grossmann is a god-level drummer and he'll do a song for 300 euro, including writing recording and mastering all the drums.

[chromandre]

just another option, I don't know I just wanted to point out how much I love working with the MPC. If you can ever settle on a set of samples and just explore all the available features they actually designed it so its easy to recreate drummerisms like the feel of ride cymbal(swing feature), closed- middle-open hihat (decay switch), ghost notes(velocity -> attack) a bunch of other things. Its a really fun drum machine.

[coldbrightsunlight]

Interesting, MPCs have looked cool to me for years. I also like using hardware sequencers but I use them for more electronic stuff and go to DAW for trying to make decent sounding "drums" drums.

I agree with goroth in that I can never make anything anywhere near as good as a proper drummer. But in making my solo stuff I don't have a budget to pay anyone so I go with what I can do

[IBNYX]

Interesting, MPCs have looked cool to me for years. I also like using hardware sequencers but I use them for more electronic stuff and go to DAW for trying to make decent sounding "drums" drums.

I agree with goroth in that I can never make anything anywhere near as good as a proper drummer. But in making my solo stuff I don't have a budget to pay anyone so I go with what I can do

I feel like in more electronically oriented music it may not be that big of a deal ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I’m def gonna be using the humanizing features in my DAW and in the plugin itself though. Also taking advantage of the massive fucking midi library and that a lot of my editing/part writing can be done right from the same window.

[Faldoe]

How does AD compare to superior drummer? I’ve been using the latter.

[coldbrightsunlight]

Never used superior I'm afraid.

Interesting, MPCs have looked cool to me for years. I also like using hardware sequencers but I use them for more electronic stuff and go to DAW for trying to make decent sounding "drums" drums.

I agree with goroth in that I can never make anything anywhere near as good as a proper drummer. But in making my solo stuff I don't have a budget to pay anyone so I go with what I can do

I feel like in more electronically oriented music it may not be that big of a deal ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I’m def gonna be using the humanizing features in my DAW and in the plugin itself though. Also taking advantage of the massive fucking midi library and that a lot of my editing/part writing can be done right from the same window.

Really late response to this I totally agree! A lot of my music at the moment is electronically oriented for that reason. Humanising things is something I'd love to, and I was playing with midi banks from recorded parts recently and it was very fun having the more natural timing

[Kacey Y]

I used Toontrack Superior Drummer 2.0 to program drums for some aggressive and heavy recording projects in the past and also all the pedal demos I ever made. For some things I started with midi packs and then customized them, edit things together, made my own fills and whole parts from scratch, etc. and it worked pretty well. I have SD3 now, but I haven't actually had a chance to use it yet. I will probably program something with it, when I get on writing solo music again.

[Faldoe]

Any Midi packs for SD2 you would recommend? I'm mostly just writing drum tracks from scratch which is kind of limiting as for more complex stuff, I'm not a drummer and its difficult for me to program in more musical/drummer like sounding stuff.

[JereFuzz]

An out of print book by a drummer for drum machine programming was written back in the 90s, by BADNESS!

https://www.amazon.com/Drum-Programming ... =8-1-fkmr0

There are some pattern books out there but this book gives some of the WHYs in drum programming from a drummers perspective, in super simple language. I don’t know that there is any book like it. It is platform agnostic. There are some rhythm pattern books that are worth looking into.

[crochambeau]

An out of print book by a drummer for drum machine programming was written back in the 90s, by BADNESS!

https://www.amazon.com/Drum-Programming ... =8-1-fkmr0

There are some pattern books out there but this book gives some of the WHYs in drum programming from a drummers perspective, in super simple language. I don’t know that there is any book like it. It is platform agnostic. There are some rhythm pattern books that are worth looking into.

Awesome, thank you for the tip!

I found a pdf on a reputable site, FWIW:

https://archive.org/details/DrumProgram ... keADrummer

[JereFuzz]

An out of print book by a drummer for drum machine programming was written back in the 90s, by BADNESS!

https://www.amazon.com/Drum-Programming ... =8-1-fkmr0

There are some pattern books out there but this book gives some of the WHYs in drum programming from a drummers perspective, in super simple language. I don’t know that there is any book like it. It is platform agnostic. There are some rhythm pattern books that are worth looking into.

Awesome, thank you for the tip!

I found a pdf on a reputable site, FWIW:

https://archive.org/details/DrumProgram ... keADrummer

Glad I could help. Give me some thoughts after you've browsed it.

[coldbrightsunlight]

Ooo that does sound interesting. May peruse later. Thanks for pointing it out!

[JereFuzz]

I spend a lot of time programming drums and I hate it

In my main band I just do it for demos so I don't put much effort in. Whenever I have to make it sound more like it like a real drummer I find it exhausting. Addictive Drums is fantastic though, I use it all the time.

What’s so painful about it? Don’t you just call up patterns from a bank of patterns to create your song? I’d imagine the hard part is creating a new pattern or slight variations of a pattern to add variety to a drum track.