Do you use drum grooves to help spark ideas while jamming on another instrument?

spantini

COO of me, inc.
Does anyone using a drum program (e.g., MT; SD; EZ) just start a groove and jam along on guitar (or whatever inst) hoping a good song will somehow pop out the other end?

I get lost sometimes because I'll want to add more grooves and that just puts the brakes on the whole creative process. So I have an idea I haven't tried yet. I'll record 4 or 5 drum tracks.. #1 will be the first lonely groove. #2 will add the bridge or chorus. #3 ... etc... Then I'll quickly solo them in progression as I feel it coming together. Or even line them all up on one track and loop it - that might work better so I won't have to stop at all.

I get a lot of drum grooves popping into my head throughout the day and (mentally) throw in guitar and bass, maybe a vocal or at least some kind of melody. These drums just trigger all kinds of compositions of just about all genres of music.
 
All the time! As often as not, I start with a Kontakt pulse generator and percussion sequencer (The list is large and some of the most inspiring are stupidly inexpensive). I've been messing around with the East-West drummer libraries lately for quick drum grooves.

Paj
8^)
 
I have an old Band in a Box pedal that I've used only a very little bit in the living room (for when I get tired of being at my desk), but most often, I really enjoy the AI drummers in Garageband. They really are intuitive and gold, really. Just need to tweak up the sound around them to make them sound natural and good.
 
I've only worked that way once, I had a repeating drum pattern in MT. Later, I started deleting chunks and putting in other patterns to add variety, and at one point, just started to edit some "transistion" bars, changing to 1/4 note hits on the high hat, and bass and snare hit at the end. It was basically a glorified click track to start with.

When I did Inner City Blues, I used patterns on my SR18, played a scratch guitar track while "playing" the Alesis, hitting pattern changes as I went. Once the drum track was finished (recorded on my AW1600), I started adding bass and layering guitars. Only then did I delete the scratch track and do vocals.
 
[h=2]Do you use drum grooves to help spark ideas while jamming on another instrument?[/h]
But I have been known to be playing drums in my head and coming up with a pattern has led to the creation of a song. That's happened a few times.
Strangely enough, it's easier to do it in some exotic time signature.
One thing I have done though is to set a metronome to some bizarre time signature and work out a pattern on some percussion, then set another odd time signature and work out a pattern to that and get the two time signatures to somehow work together. Then on that comes the difficult but enjoyable and ultimately rewarding task of finding a melody or a rifflet or some kind of musical sequence that can somehow make sense and seem coherent. The funny thing is that when all put together, it doesn't sound complicated at all........until one tries to work out how to play it and what was done.
Good old multitracking !!
 
Yes, most of the time. I have a MIDI drum controller and use that sometimes, but with SD, I find the groove, use their Verse, Chorus, variations, ETC. and build from there.

One one i am working on now, I was using some AI driven drums (this in Ableton), with this funky kit, I got the sound I was looking for, then I had to go back and load in SD and just get some basic grooves because I just couldn't play to funky. Laid in the traditional SD with the funky kit and started laying the baas.

So far I think I moving in a direction that shakes me out of my "formula" mode. I was getting bored with what I was coming up with and had to figure out a way to move in a new direction.
 
Lately I have been jamming to EZDrummer and recording whatever I get with my iphone. Quick and simple. Then I can go back and develop ideas from those jams.
 
Not so much anymore since i have real drums to record.

I used to use the sequencer in the ol' Korg M1 to create my own drum patterns which i would play into the 424 and record either bass or guitar with the drums and then go back with more instruments. Sometimes i would fill up fifteen-twenty minutes of tape coming up with different riffs to the same sequence.

I did one all "in the box" experiment where i used SD , DI'd guitars and bass with amp sims and VI's.

I do like to mess with things like Battery but i usually only use them with synths and keys.
 
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