How do you create your drum patterns.

lyfie

Active Member
Joined
Sep 15, 2007
How do tou make you drum patterns?

Do you use all your one shot instruments in a piano roll or do you drop them straight into your daw?

 
i tried midi and shit, but the easiest way for me is audio
i make a folder track in cubase w/ audio tracks for kick/snare(s)/all cymbals, breaks...
that way i can use envelopes to shorten/fade samples in, i can adjust volume easily and
i can pitch/tune them easily as well.... i'm not missing anything about the MIDI approach,
but after all different people have different working habits... (cutting up & rearrangeing is easy as well...)
 
Drag n drop for me.
I use fl studio and that makes it easier to adjust the transients, cut stuff up, that stuff...
And I find it easier like this... Personal preference...
 
redrum drum machine and dr rex and loops an generally anyway i can.lol
 
I used to just put the drum hit wavs straight into the arrangement, but making drums that way was becoming really boring to me

Now I use the drum pads on my midi keyboard to play and record the drums into midi, its a lot more fun that way!

Plus you get a bit more control than using audio, and using midi for drums is a lot easier to change sounds when you've already got a pattern down
 
I've been using audio tracks all collected together with a folder track as mentioned above. each drum hit having its own audio track. I love to see the shape of the samples when working with them.

This was does make you commit to your sample choice more. Back when I'd use midi, if you didn't like the way a kick or whatever sounded, you could just drop a new one in the sampler and still have it maintain the same pattern as before. I wish I had that option with audio. Now if I need to change my snare or kick sample, I have to go back and place the new sample in the pattern all over again.
 
I find myself really working with audio channels most of the time these days for percussion. There's a key feature I take advantage of though which has become a staple technique and one that I don't often see people use, simply because it doesn't exist in other DAW's. That's the ability to shift the waveform left and right within a static audio clip, meaning that I can place a sequence of parts and shift the audio on the fly to get vastly different results. It's the sort of thing you'd be able to do in a sampler anyway of course, but I do like being able to see the waveform as I work with it chopping and messing with the fades and overlaps.

I do find midi to be useful though as well, so usually I'll add an instance of Battery and load up a bunch of one shots so that I can still come up with some sort of Midi controllable sequence which can be switched about at any time. There are pro's and cons with both methods really and so I just try to use both.
 
I use audio for things like kicks/snares/breaks and all that, but I use midi when I want to add in something more "live" like shakers or something.
 
ableton push with drum dracks & session view here. Its changed my approach to production dramatically, all for the better. Getting shit done has got a whole lot easier and more fun!
 
I find myself really working with audio channels most of the time these days for percussion. There's a key feature I take advantage of though which has become a staple technique and one that I don't often see people use, simply because it doesn't exist in other DAW's. That's the ability to shift the waveform left and right within a static audio clip, meaning that I can place a sequence of parts and shift the audio on the fly to get vastly different results. It's the sort of thing you'd be able to do in a sampler anyway of course, but I do like being able to see the waveform as I work with it chopping and messing with the fades and overlaps.

I do find midi to be useful though as well, so usually I'll add an instance of Battery and load up a bunch of one shots so that I can still come up with some sort of Midi controllable sequence which can be switched about at any time. There are pro's and cons with both methods really and so I just try to use both.

What DAW and function are you talking about that performes the left/right sattic audio shift?
 
I use my launchpad as a drum machine linked up to record into a midi drum rack so I can play out my beats in real time. I also quantize my record settings to 16ths so I get the humanized feel of patterns but theres never anything that will stand out too offbeat.

I can swap out samples easily and by using the overdub setting on ableton midi mapped to a controller I can re-record a patch on the fly without losing
focus.
 
I find myself really working with audio channels most of the time these days for percussion. There's a key feature I take advantage of though which has become a staple technique and one that I don't often see people use, simply because it doesn't exist in other DAW's. That's the ability to shift the waveform left and right within a static audio clip, meaning that I can place a sequence of parts and shift the audio on the fly to get vastly different results. It's the sort of thing you'd be able to do in a sampler anyway of course, but I do like being able to see the waveform as I work with it chopping and messing with the fades and overlaps.

I do find midi to be useful though as well, so usually I'll add an instance of Battery and load up a bunch of one shots so that I can still come up with some sort of Midi controllable sequence which can be switched about at any time. There are pro's and cons with both methods really and so I just try to use both.

In Ableton you could turn on the delay tab (That little D on the right hand side/bottom near the master), for that particular audio track and shift it by a few milliseconds to give it that more of a human feel. Good for percussion like hats or something

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One way is to replicate a motive of a break sample, i.e assigning your drum hits on exact same spots as in the break. Then tune your hits and to add extra flawa so to speak try using riff machine for your percussion. Basically the more original your percussion work the more original the whole drum pattern will sound. Usually I find it hard to design my own drum pattern and so I rip ideas from other samples which will serve me as a backbone. And I also work mostly with audio but if I knew more about drum machines and synthesized kicks/snares I would definitely give them a shot.
 
One way is to replicate a motive of a break sample, i.e assigning your drum hits on exact same spots as in the break. Then tune your hits and to add extra flawa so to speak try using riff machine for your percussion. Basically the more original your percussion work the more original the whole drum pattern will sound. Usually I find it hard to design my own drum pattern and so I rip ideas from other samples which will serve me as a backbone. And I also work mostly with audio but if I knew more about drum machines and synthesized kicks/snares I would definitely give them a shot.

Yeah I definitely also use this technique, great idea!
 
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