creating the song's drums and bass (explanation in two parts)

boss281

New member
John here. 59 years old, been playing guitar and performing in classic rock, variety and blues bands since I was 14. Mostly the rhythm guitarist, but some leads, and am going through time investment learning to become a much better lead guitarist. Also sing primary and harmony (not so good, but no one ever complained to me so far).

Retired in October with 35 years, last 25 years in IT, want to start a band that plays good driving blues. Keys, drums, bass, 1-2 rhythm guitars, lead guitar, possible front person singing all the tunes. No problem, been there, done that. With all previous bands, we have always had good sound techs that recorded our music. Last band evaporated about a year ago, and I thought it would be cool to record a 10 song "resume" by playing guitar and singing against backing tracks. Hey, I was in IT, simple, right? Was I wrong or what!

Did some research on audio interfaces, went with AudioBox (one xlr, on guitar line in but I don't use that, I just mic the amp). Should have got one with two xlr and two guitar in but that's ok for now. Studio One Artist comes free with the hardware, but it seemed a bit daunting out of the box,and the help kind of useless, so I was told by another guitarist to try Audacity. Recorded a couple songs against imported backing tracks in Audacity, cool, it works but I found myself struggling with an better but still quirky interface. Tried Ableton Live, I couldn't even get the guitar signal to show up in the software!

Went back to Studio One Artist since the HW manufacturer seemed to support that well enough, and have been forcing myself to understand the modifying and editing of guitar tracks, and will work with added voice tracks next. Ok, I'm good with this approach but two questions for this part:

1. Where can you get good quality backing tracks that actually match studio released music (the right intro, verses, chorus, outro)? Willing to pay.
2. Do any backing tracks let you separate the actual instrument tracks?

With this approach I can satisfy Part One.

Now Part Two
Once I started getting the hang of things, I have to admit that for the first time in my life I wanted to experiment creating my own riffs and songs! Better late than never. Studio One lets me capture lots of riffs that might come in useful some day. Cool. But I hit the wall with drum tracks.

1. Let's take a simple 12 bar blues? With these small drum loops, how in the heck do you create a full drum track against the 12 bars, complete with fills, changes in intensity, adding intro, adding outro? Where is the damn manual for this approach? I don't play drums and can't say I ever attempted it, so how do you even start?
2. Same goes for bass. I'm happy to simulate a bass on my guitar, and can get away with riffs, but how do you change the guitar signal to emulate a bass and possibly the cabinet/amp as well?
3. Guess I should throw keys in there too! I can't play piano, so am I able to emulate this?


For drums and bass, I think my Digitech Trio+ drum/bass line generator and looper can give me a partial, half ass solution to drums and base. For now, but I would really like to figure out the building a drum track on my own when I start drifting to new song ideas...

Thanks so much, hopefully the length of this wasn't too much a turn off.

John
 
Hi John,
Welcome to the forum!

Getting straight into the drum thing - With loops, you've got what you've got.
If there are parts for verse / fills / bridge / chorus then that's great and you can jigsaw something together, but as soon as you don't have something you need, you're sort of stuck.
For more control and creativity you could use drum sample software instead of audio loops.

Drum sample software like DrumCore 4, SSD, XLN AD etc have samples of every piece of the kit, at varying velocities.
They will have preset 'loops' that you can use but they are midi loops.
That means you can add/change/remove notes or simply write your own drum parts from scratch.


Bass : Yeah, I guess you can get away with recording using a guitar and trying to eq and what not to get a bassy sound.
Alternatively you can use a virtual instrument/synth that has a bass patch. Unless it's something 'pro' it'll probably sound like fake bass, though.
If you're a guitarist and have an interface I'd recommend just buying a cheap bass so you can play the real thing.

You asked about amps/cabs/emulations. Again, that's a software suite.
If you google 'guitar sim' you'll find a bunch, like Guitar Rig etc. They are just suites that take a clean direct guitar/bass input and emulate running it through X cabinet with Y microphone.

Piano :
Same deal as drums. You'd want a synth with piano patches, or a dedicated piano virtual instrument. These work on midi input.
Unlike drums suites, such suites don't usually come with riffs or generic loops bundled in; They're just virtual instruments expecting input from you.

Drawing piano parts is going to be clunky and not very human. Quite honestly the same is true for drums but it's probably more obvious to average joe on a piano.
If piano is going to be a major part in your music it might be better to hook up with a musician who can play for you.
If you can get someone with a midi keyboard that'd be cool because you'd retain full control over the performance and the sound of the instrument!


I don't know much about availability of backing tracks, particularly in parts, but it might end up being cost/time effective to pay someone to make up what you need?
Something to consider.

Hope some of that's useful to you. :)
 
Thanks Steenamaroo, for taking the time to answer several questions. For the drum track issue (90% of my next learning curve), you are suggesting drum loop software such as SSD and others. I'll have to look at some free versions to get a better understanding of how they work. For now I'll hack the bass, and eliminate the keys. That still let's me get to my outcome of building a digital catalog of my work.
Appreciate the guidance!
 
From what I've heard, EZDrummer2 is probably the easiest one out there for building whole songs from their loops. I have no need for that, so haven't upgraded, but the new version seems to be designed with ease of use for the relatively clueless. :)

You might also look at something like Band in a Box or Soundtrek Jammer. These are more or less "generative" programs where you choose a style, lay out the structure of the song with chord charts and mark where you want intros, verse, choruses, fills, which instruments you want, and then it spits out multi track MIDI that you can send to whatever VSTis you end up with.

Edit - But I actually completely agree that you should look for a cheap bass guitar.

If you've got a bit more cash left after that, look into a Guitar-to-MIDI solution. With a (semi-permanent) hex pickup and one of a number of "brains" you can play an instrument that you're actually familiar with and have it sound like about anything you want.
 
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