Midi Drum Patterns

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glowrak guy
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Re: Midi Drum Patterns

Post by glowrak guy »

This pic is a little windows 32bit dual-arpeggiator plugin.

Dualism-all-steps-active.png
Dualism-all-steps-active.png (35.78 KiB) Viewed 3085 times

With wine, you can make it a 'standalone' app using
Tone2's Nanohost, and use qjackctl to connect it to Hydrogen. The pairs of liitle square widgets
let you cycle through options, single widgets are on/off, so you can have totally different settings in
each arpeggiator, with all kinds of beats and syncopations at your beck and call.
In the pic, I have activated all 32 steps, and invoked 'latch mode' (far-right widgets in the gui)
which means I can start 'finger-drumming', and whenever I like what I hear, I record it with Timemachine,
or Audacity etc, long enough for my intended use or to make a loop, and then resume finger-drumming
for different results, adjusting the many arp-controls at will. You of course still have the Hydrogen pattern(s)
and song which can be blended or ignored as suits the case. Linux synths are also at
Dualism's happy mercies 8)

Hydrogen has lot's of kits, and you can buy fabulous sounds on the cheap in the upcoming
Black Friday events, sample your favorites in Timemachine, export them as desired,
replace sounds in an existing Hydrogen kit with what you now are licensed to use,
and rename the now modified kit, for your personal use. It's also not rocket science
to take existing acknowledged free samples, and modify them to the hilt, using
Rakarrack, Guitarix, Calf, Zam or yadayada effects, and make new kits.
Doesn't even have to be drums samples :wink:

Morally, people can always find ways to justify the embrace of piracy, but how much more rewarding is it
to employ the freedoms that software creativity and tedious work make possible?
The pursuit of mastery is fun. and you'll likely hear birds chirping musically in the background,
from either end of the clock, as you pursue it.
Cheers
TygerTung
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Re: Midi Drum Patterns

Post by TygerTung »

A piece of plywood and a rubber mallet could create a good bass drum sample.
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Re: Midi Drum Patterns

Post by tavasti »

TygerTung wrote: Sat Oct 17, 2020 5:29 pm We are concerned with patterns here. Why sample performances these days when it is so easy to synthesise drum sounds or make your own samples, or use some PD samples. Synthesisers with drums on them are so common these days, one is almost tripping over them.

It does make sense that one cannot copyright patterns though, as there are not that many, unless one wants to use really weird patterns. Most songs probably use a variation on a few basic patterns.
In this thread we are talking about midi, and midi is only note on information, there is never sound in that. 'Drum pattern' mostly means mechanical, deadly on beat timed drum beat. These are most useful in electronic music, where feeling 'machines are playing' is ok. Certainly there is very limited amount of sensible and commonly used patterns.

When talking about performance, then it is played by some human drummer, and and it has some variation. Timing varies, there pattern can have some variation between bars, etc. Performance can be in midi, so that producers can use what ever sounds they want. Drum midi which is created by human are commonly sold, and they are used in musical styles where commonly real players perform them.

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Re: Midi Drum Patterns

Post by TygerTung »

Yeah, electronic music typically is happy with a strictly on time rhythm. I guess if one just wanted the pattern, and as these can't be copyrighted, one could just select the pattern they liked, quantise it, and then randomise slightly, just a few percent, that way it certainly wouldn't infringe anyone.
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Re: Midi Drum Patterns

Post by tavasti »

TygerTung wrote: Sun Oct 18, 2020 6:48 pm Yeah, electronic music typically is happy with a strictly on time rhythm. I guess if one just wanted the pattern, and as these can't be copyrighted, one could just select the pattern they liked, quantise it, and then randomise slightly, just a few percent, that way it certainly wouldn't infringe anyone.
Randomize is not same thing as great human drummer. Human musical timing difference is not random.

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Re: Midi Drum Patterns

Post by TygerTung »

No, but that way noone is getting in trouble for using patterns.
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Re: Midi Drum Patterns

Post by tavasti »

TygerTung wrote: Mon Oct 19, 2020 1:15 am No, but that way noone is getting in trouble for using patterns.
There is no point taking humanly played great performance, then quantize it to death, and then randomize.

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Re: Midi Drum Patterns

Post by TygerTung »

I couldn't find any patterns on there which were longer than 8 bars anyway, so I doubt there is going to be any amazing human performances which are going to last for a whole song. Most of the patterns were much shorter that anyway. I would think that midi drum patterns would be more used for a certain style of music anyway, for other styles one would use a real drummer.
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Re: Midi Drum Patterns

Post by merlyn »

I'm not sure where the idea that a performance can be copyrighted is coming from. I took a course on the music business and it taught that there are two kinds of rights -- performing rights and mechanical rights. Performing rights go to the writer of the song and what can be copyrighted here is melody and lyrics. Mechanical rights go to whoever paid for the recording (usually the record company). This is how lifting a sample off a record can become a copyright issue -- it's the recording that's copyrighted.

Copyright is only an issue when there's a court case :) You may have heard of the Spirit vs Led Zeppelin case. It seems that Jimmy Page ripped off the intro to Stairway to Heaven from a Spirit song. Listening to the two songs it's fairly obvious, but the case has been going on for years. So I doubt using an eight bar MIDI file, even if it was played by Steve Gadd would be a case that a lawyer would take on. :D
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Re: Midi Drum Patterns

Post by tavasti »

merlyn wrote: Mon Oct 19, 2020 5:55 pm So I doubt using an eight bar MIDI file, even if it was played by Steve Gadd would be a case that a lawyer would take on. :D
I fully agree! :-)

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Re: Midi Drum Patterns

Post by sjaehn »

tavasti wrote: Sun Oct 18, 2020 1:17 pm In this thread we are talking about midi, and midi is only note on information, there is never sound in that. 'Drum pattern' mostly means mechanical, deadly on beat timed drum beat. These are most useful in electronic music, where feeling 'machines are playing' is ok. Certainly there is very limited amount of sensible and commonly used patterns.
Thanks, this is also what I wanted to say about drum patterns before. I think the differences between a binary drum pattern (instrument on/off), a MIDI drum loop (instrument on/of, timing, velocity, but still without instrument) and a human played drum loop are best shown in Jazz music where you have so many dynamics and fluctuations in timing and intensity. Therefore, I think drum patterns may make sense for electronic music but are a kind of ridiculous in Jazz.

Note: Of course, there are books with drum notes for Jazz. But even drum notes contain much more information than plain binary drum patterns. Therefore, drum notes make sense (for me).
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Re: Midi Drum Patterns

Post by LAM »

Just out of curiosity, how do you preview these files?
I tried opening with timidity but i hear piano sounds, not drums. Do I need some special soundfont or setting to change intrument?

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Re: Midi Drum Patterns

Post by tavasti »

LAM wrote: Tue Oct 27, 2020 8:43 am Just out of curiosity, how do you preview these files?
I tried opening with timidity but i hear piano sounds, not drums. Do I need some special soundfont or setting to change intrument?
Ardour/Mixbus import preview has possibility to select which instrument is used for preview.

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Re: Midi Drum Patterns

Post by LAM »

tavasti wrote: Tue Oct 27, 2020 9:01 am Ardour/Mixbus import preview has possibility to select which instrument is used for preview.
Thank you very much, it works very well.

I wasn't aware of this function in Ardour. :oops:

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Re: Midi Drum Patterns

Post by alexson »

Here are the 9 drum patterns.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33Fk1G1DKRY
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