How to add drums to a meandering rhythm.
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- kbongosmusic
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How to add drums to a meandering rhythm.
I want to add percussion/drums to my mix. The typical thing is to follow the drummer, but, hey I'm a one person band, and I ain't a drummer, and I don't want no stinkin robot drummer So, I'm not real sure what I'm after here, but I know what I don't want - I don't want your typical drum track that has the exact same timing each measure. And in particular I want to try adding it to my sloppy guitar playing say. I'm not very good at that either, and my timing has always been challenged. I'm not completely writing off the synthetic robot drummer, I had a blast trying to keep up to the default 120 beats per second hydrogen demos, and it's probably something I should do more of. And I have heard good music that I swore had a real drummer in it, but it's all synthetic, which is neat that you can do that.
So in my imaginary world, I am a gifted musician, whom rules supreme over all the others in my imaginary band(including the robots). In this imaginary world I am the conductor, the percussion section needs to follow my rhythm(no matter how hap-hazard that may be). I can't wave a baton, because my hands are busy playin the guitar. So the percussion section is just going to have to look at my tapping foot..
So I'm wondering if there are any tools to add some synthetic drums but make it fit an existing meandering rhythm. Maybe make a MIDI drum track, feed it to synth, put it side to side with my analog meandering rhythm, stretch out each measure to match my imperfect-ness.
Be able to edit it next to the meandering recorded guitar part, re-use drum measures, tweak them out, stretch them to fit. I would think staying in the digital(MIDI) like realm for the drum parts would be nice, I'm thinking MIDI along side DAC recordings. I don't have any experience with DAW's that can do both MIDI and recordings, so maybe some have capabilities in this area. For that matter I don't have any experience working with any DAW's. It's not easy to try out these things like Ardour(I understand it can do mixes of MIDI and recordings). There are plenty of other DAW's popping up left and right, maybe some of them could be made to do this, or maybe I need some other tools, or other ways of attacking the problem. LMMS, qtractor, lillypad,.. the list goes on, I just don't want to spend the time getting intimate with all of these, I mainly just want to play the stupid guitar for pete's sake. I could try and craft my own solution to some of this. I have ideas of adding a basic bass part, that could be converted to basic digital, timing, measure info. But I need to try and stay away from that if I can help it, use existing tools, or I will be programming too much and not making music. Unfortunately, just evaluating some existing tools can be almost as time consuming as programming.
Any ideas, experience, brain storming, welcome. Thanks for your time!
So in my imaginary world, I am a gifted musician, whom rules supreme over all the others in my imaginary band(including the robots). In this imaginary world I am the conductor, the percussion section needs to follow my rhythm(no matter how hap-hazard that may be). I can't wave a baton, because my hands are busy playin the guitar. So the percussion section is just going to have to look at my tapping foot..
So I'm wondering if there are any tools to add some synthetic drums but make it fit an existing meandering rhythm. Maybe make a MIDI drum track, feed it to synth, put it side to side with my analog meandering rhythm, stretch out each measure to match my imperfect-ness.
Be able to edit it next to the meandering recorded guitar part, re-use drum measures, tweak them out, stretch them to fit. I would think staying in the digital(MIDI) like realm for the drum parts would be nice, I'm thinking MIDI along side DAC recordings. I don't have any experience with DAW's that can do both MIDI and recordings, so maybe some have capabilities in this area. For that matter I don't have any experience working with any DAW's. It's not easy to try out these things like Ardour(I understand it can do mixes of MIDI and recordings). There are plenty of other DAW's popping up left and right, maybe some of them could be made to do this, or maybe I need some other tools, or other ways of attacking the problem. LMMS, qtractor, lillypad,.. the list goes on, I just don't want to spend the time getting intimate with all of these, I mainly just want to play the stupid guitar for pete's sake. I could try and craft my own solution to some of this. I have ideas of adding a basic bass part, that could be converted to basic digital, timing, measure info. But I need to try and stay away from that if I can help it, use existing tools, or I will be programming too much and not making music. Unfortunately, just evaluating some existing tools can be almost as time consuming as programming.
Any ideas, experience, brain storming, welcome. Thanks for your time!
Re: How to add drums to a meandering rhythm.
Check out my "Band in a box" type of auto-arranger software for something you can use to quickly/easily create backing tracks to play over. I still need to write docs for making your own "songsheets". But for now, you can play with the 80 preset styles, and make your own styles.
https://sourceforge.net/p/backupband/co ... ster/tree/
Click on "Download snapshot".
https://sourceforge.net/p/backupband/co ... ster/tree/
Click on "Download snapshot".
Author of BackupBand at https://sourceforge.net/projects/backupband/files/
My fans show their support by mentioning my name in their signature.
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Re: How to add drums to a meandering rhythm.
I use the Rosegarden sequencer and always hold tracks in MIDI form.
The method I use sometimes for both percussion and counter melodies is to copy the track with the most notes into a new track, then without moving anything 'sideways' cut out the ones that don't appear where I want them, then move the others pitch-wise to get the drum/sound I want.
The method I use sometimes for both percussion and counter melodies is to copy the track with the most notes into a new track, then without moving anything 'sideways' cut out the ones that don't appear where I want them, then move the others pitch-wise to get the drum/sound I want.
The Yoshimi guy {apparently now an 'elderly'}
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Re: How to add drums to a meandering rhythm.
Record/aquire a decent drum loop of ten measures. As dry as possible. Import it in audacity.
Insert a chunk of silence every two measures, to ease select/copy/paste operations.
Use the 'amplify function' to make five '2 measure' sections,
each slightly different in volume. You can also tinker a bit with the two most
prominent sounds in measures, as time allows. Track one
You don't want the differences to slap the listeners, just keep them awake.
Now import a rythm guitar track, and create a new stereo track
for pasting drum measures. Tracks two and three.
Begin pasting the edited loops in the new track, lined up to the attack portion of the guitar beat.
You can then, as needed, cut or add bits of 'noise floor' between to drum hits,
to line them up to meanderthals 'unique' rythyms.
It's much harder to edit/modify the guitar part, or heavily processed loops, as you'll
go nuts with mismatched ambience, tailing sounds not aligning smoothely etc.
Not that i can't be done in a pinch.
Once you've got a flow that you like, you can add effects to the drums.
Develope a precise naming scheme, and save things for as yet unanticipated future uses.
Set filemanagers to display fell names. Deleting the unused years later, is far easier than recreating.
Name often used folders so they appear atop filemanagers. Scrolling is needless work.
and It adds up to 'war against the muse' ...hey, that's not a bad song/album title.
Bet it's been taken, though...
Look at the makeup of the hydrogen demo patterns, and how you can structure your guitar playing
into more modular recordings, instead of streams that meander with fatigue. Practice on a
beefy acoustic with piano strings, record on the sphelt tele or lespaul.
Concert recordings can be useful guides. 'Sade' has some great live recordings,
with masterful musicians not overdoing it,
interesting blends of drum & percussion, and general skilled arranging.
Insert your favorite bands in concert...
Cheers
Insert a chunk of silence every two measures, to ease select/copy/paste operations.
Use the 'amplify function' to make five '2 measure' sections,
each slightly different in volume. You can also tinker a bit with the two most
prominent sounds in measures, as time allows. Track one
You don't want the differences to slap the listeners, just keep them awake.
Now import a rythm guitar track, and create a new stereo track
for pasting drum measures. Tracks two and three.
Begin pasting the edited loops in the new track, lined up to the attack portion of the guitar beat.
You can then, as needed, cut or add bits of 'noise floor' between to drum hits,
to line them up to meanderthals 'unique' rythyms.
It's much harder to edit/modify the guitar part, or heavily processed loops, as you'll
go nuts with mismatched ambience, tailing sounds not aligning smoothely etc.
Not that i can't be done in a pinch.
Once you've got a flow that you like, you can add effects to the drums.
Develope a precise naming scheme, and save things for as yet unanticipated future uses.
Set filemanagers to display fell names. Deleting the unused years later, is far easier than recreating.
Name often used folders so they appear atop filemanagers. Scrolling is needless work.
and It adds up to 'war against the muse' ...hey, that's not a bad song/album title.
Bet it's been taken, though...
Look at the makeup of the hydrogen demo patterns, and how you can structure your guitar playing
into more modular recordings, instead of streams that meander with fatigue. Practice on a
beefy acoustic with piano strings, record on the sphelt tele or lespaul.
Concert recordings can be useful guides. 'Sade' has some great live recordings,
with masterful musicians not overdoing it,
interesting blends of drum & percussion, and general skilled arranging.
Insert your favorite bands in concert...
Cheers
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Re: How to add drums to a meandering rhythm.
A cheap Yamaha keyboard will have an array of drumkits with some overlap,
but they often allow playing two kits as selected 'dual' sounds,
and you can offset them one octave or two, so each keypress
will play different pairs of percussion sounds. If you add some pronounced delay,
you can fingerdrum some fun parts not heard before. And play them
on top of the 120+ internal XG rythyms, if so inclined, each of which will have an intro,
conclusion, and alternate beat, and some busier patterns get more intersting at
slower tempos, and easier to supplement in fun ways. Some good sound mining
is available without having a fire sale. Some older alesis keyboards/racks
have a D4 drum module inside, that will dance to a good midi-out signal.
Lots of 90's gear made hits, and is still useful, sans a high pricetag.
Cheers
but they often allow playing two kits as selected 'dual' sounds,
and you can offset them one octave or two, so each keypress
will play different pairs of percussion sounds. If you add some pronounced delay,
you can fingerdrum some fun parts not heard before. And play them
on top of the 120+ internal XG rythyms, if so inclined, each of which will have an intro,
conclusion, and alternate beat, and some busier patterns get more intersting at
slower tempos, and easier to supplement in fun ways. Some good sound mining
is available without having a fire sale. Some older alesis keyboards/racks
have a D4 drum module inside, that will dance to a good midi-out signal.
Lots of 90's gear made hits, and is still useful, sans a high pricetag.
Cheers
Re: How to add drums to a meandering rhythm.
If you haven't already, check out the drummer on this song of mine. He's pretty good. Unfortunately, he doesn't exist. Bass player's no slouch. He ain't real either. In fact, no one's real except the keyboardist. This entire performance is contained in one single 64 kb midi file. I loaded it in Muse. Then i loaded all the instruments into a single instance of linuxsampler and played the mix "live", capturing the performance with jack_capture. It took all of 10 minutes to create this recording. And that's because the song itself is 8 minutes.
The instruments? All of them are from the completely free "No Budget Orchestra" collection at http://www.bandshed.net/sounds/sfz/
The point? Don't waste time/money trying to get something cohesive out of many tools, especially old tech. Instead, pick just a couple modern tools that suit your workflow, and learn them really well. I used just 2 tools here:
http://wikisend.com/download/986902/JoanOfArc.flac
oh and here's the midi file for anyone who wants to see exactly what parts these "guys" are playing:
http://wikisend.com/download/160358/JOAN.MID
The instruments? All of them are from the completely free "No Budget Orchestra" collection at http://www.bandshed.net/sounds/sfz/
The point? Don't waste time/money trying to get something cohesive out of many tools, especially old tech. Instead, pick just a couple modern tools that suit your workflow, and learn them really well. I used just 2 tools here:
http://wikisend.com/download/986902/JoanOfArc.flac
oh and here's the midi file for anyone who wants to see exactly what parts these "guys" are playing:
http://wikisend.com/download/160358/JOAN.MID
Author of BackupBand at https://sourceforge.net/projects/backupband/files/
My fans show their support by mentioning my name in their signature.
- kbongosmusic
- Established Member
- Posts: 109
- Joined: Sun Mar 06, 2016 9:14 pm
- Location: Minneapolis
Re: How to add drums to a meandering rhythm.
Thanks for all the suggestions, this is going to take a while for my brain to process and try a few things.
glowrac - I like the 'meanderthals' term
j_e_f_f_g - nice midi compositions. The wikisend site you use looks neat too, and it says it's free, could be handy.
glowrac - I like the 'meanderthals' term
j_e_f_f_g - nice midi compositions. The wikisend site you use looks neat too, and it says it's free, could be handy.