80s drums .... programmed or live?

[endserenading81]

Hello,
I am recording an 80s style new wave, dance album .... and love bands like INXS and New Order. I was wondering ...
were most of those 80s drums programmed, or hand done to the drum machines. I am asking because there is a big difference in the feel and off timing of hand done drums, and gives a different feel to dance music. .
Which technique is the most impactful for dance music? Should it be perfect to the map/sequencer, or hand done using a MIDI controller?
Thanks!
Rob

 

[Dags]

Hi mate, and a big shout out to all the other people who grew up listening to '80s synth rock

A long time ago in a music studio far, far away.......
MIDI was still a fairly new technology in the '80s, but many drum machines already had internal clocks which would set the tempo of the song. These clocks could stray a little off the 'exact' BPM during the course of the song but for the most part they were pretty good for setting the tempo of the track. The drum patterns were programmed into these devices, the sequencer fired off and the analoguey goodness printed to tape.
So by the early '80s, drum emulation devices or drum sample players were starting to be used to augment live drums (played to a timing pulse or click set by a drum machine) OR were triggered using Control Voltage/Gate 'played' percussion pads to use instead of real recorded drums for studio albums.
I believe that in many cases, drum emulators were used for kick, snare & toms and a real kit used for cymbals & hi hat overdubs for studio albums around this era in the world of new wave music.

To answer your question, either way is acceptable. If you have drum pads you can play and trigger samples, this will give you a better groove in most cases and will enable the drummer to add embellishments or changes to the standard rhythm as he/she so desires instead of having to program them in later. Any timing errors can be adjusted by moving the MIDI note back into place.
If you don't have a drummer available or for simple drum lines which aren't going to change much (which is typical of dance music), note-entry or step programming them in MIDI from the get-go will work too as you can create a few different versions of 8 bar grooves and then copy-paste them to where they sit best with the option of further modifying them later.
Gotta love MIDI!!

I'd love to hear some samples when you have some ready. I was a big '80s new wave music afficionado back in the day!
Dags

 

[TexRoadkill]

It can be a combination of both, especially on kick. You can use a drum machine kick/snare and real high hat and cymbals. The most obvious 80's drum effect would be to gate the snare and toms. You can also be creative, New Order even used an aerosol can spray as a snare sound.

 

[witzendoz]

Just get this guy, watch it to the end:

 

[Justsomeguy]

Just get this guy, watch it to the end:

that's incredible! i would hire this guy in a heartbeat to fulfil all my drumming needs. no more pesky multi-micing some crappy kit with some wannabe holding sticks like baseball bats beating the life out of the cymbals

 

[endserenading81]

OMG, what I was looking for

Hi mate, and a big shout out to all the other people who grew up listening to '80s synth rock

A long time ago in a music studio far, far away.......
MIDI was still a fairly new technology in the '80s, but many drum machines already had internal clocks which would set the tempo of the song. These clocks could stray a little off the 'exact' BPM during the course of the song but for the most part they were pretty good for setting the tempo of the track. The drum patterns were programmed into these devices, the sequencer fired off and the analoguey goodness printed to tape.
So by the early '80s, drum emulation devices or drum sample players were starting to be used to augment live drums (played to a timing pulse or click set by a drum machine) OR were triggered using Control Voltage/Gate 'played' percussion pads to use instead of real recorded drums for studio albums.
I believe that in many cases, drum emulators were used for kick, snare & toms and a real kit used for cymbals & hi hat overdubs for studio albums around this era in the world of new wave music.

To answer your question, either way is acceptable. If you have drum pads you can play and trigger samples, this will give you a better groove in most cases and will enable the drummer to add embellishments or changes to the standard rhythm as he/she so desires instead of having to program them in later. Any timing errors can be adjusted by moving the MIDI note back into place.
If you don't have a drummer available or for simple drum lines which aren't going to change much (which is typical of dance music), note-entry or step programming them in MIDI from the get-go will work too as you can create a few different versions of 8 bar grooves and then copy-paste them to where they sit best with the option of further modifying them later.
Gotta love MIDI!!

I'd love to hear some samples when you have some ready. I was a big '80s new wave music afficionado back in the day!
Dags

Thank you so much! This is the information I was really searching for. Good stuff indeed.

I want to ask another question about synths in the digital realm. Using soft synths in the DAWs themselves seems cold, especially when using the built in synths (I will use third party for all my synths). Are there special steps and recording techniques to emulate the way that synths were invented, recorded, mixed, and given reverb back in those days.

I have examples of using both programmed and live playing MIDI drum sounds here> STARGRAPH MUSIC
That's my musical act. Let me know what you think.


Thanks again! I love professional know how!
R

 

[Dags]

Oh yeah!
Checked out the tunes. The style sounds a lot like OMD (Orchestral Manouvers In The Dark for those born after 1975) and definitely '80s. Great work. The drums you have are fine - hell, they could have been recorded in the '80s
Drums on "The Call" and "Model" are what I can remember to be very typical of dance music at the time, and "3 miles...." is very early INXS.
The bass patches you have chosen and the sequencing pattern for bass and the synths is also very typical of songs coming out of that wonderful era of synth pop.

Nothing wrong with the synths you're using in the tracks. Most early '80s synths used in songs were 'cheesy' string and pad patches, though later on the beefier Oberheims, Roland Jupiter 8, Juno 106 and Prophet 5 synths added some real warmth and fatness to the synthesis domain. The Yamaha DX7 was a must have for FM synthesis and contributed the bell sounds and some of the strings to many songs of that era. (I didn't own any of these - I was just a poor boy with big dreams at the time)

[quick edit - towards the end of the '80s the Korg M1 digital synth hit the shops with REAL sampled pianos, killer drum samples, a built in sequencer with an enormous note/event memory and 16 note polyphony as well as the ability to tweak the sounds & add digital effects all in the one keyboard. It changed the world of programmed music and synthesis forever. This was the first synth I owned - and still own! - and started my love affair with music creation]

Reverb was applied to nearly everything. Choose the simplest reverb plugin available and drop it onto a string track and you'll have the '80s sound Though I think what you have in these tunes is perfect.

After listening to these I feel like growing a mullet and getting it permed

Well done indeed!

Dags

 

[endserenading81]

Thanks so much Dags!
I am taking all of this into consideration, and it really is helping finish my new album. Thanks for the compliments! It really helps validate that I'm doing it right... I think the 80s was the last great decade of just straight up, catchy, no apologies pop dance hits.
I have another question. A song I always thought fit this bill perfect was "The Promise" by When In Rome. It is just short, sweet, ... has all the elements to get people on the floor.
I have a song I wrote that needs a sequenced BASS line, similar to the one in that song. ..... When bass tempo sequences were produced in this music, was in hand done, then sped up? Or was it a built in, press-one-key synth you can patch in?
R

 

[Dags]

Greetings again!
The great thing about MIDI programming is that if you need to change the tempo of the song, the notes will follow without any problems.
In-built arepggiations for synths weren't all that common, so most were programmed in MIDI.
The drums & bass in this tune (and in a large slab of tunes back then, if not all of them) were undoubtedly programmed using step sequencing. Real time programming is your standard 'press play and record' and quantise the hell out of everything beforehand and again later on for anything that falls out of time. Step sequencing had the sequencer in record mode, but wouldn't do anything until a note or control event was entered.
For example, on my old Korg SQD-1 I'd set it up for step sequencing and hit record and nothing would happen until I pressed the first note when it would click forward a 1/2 note, 1/4 note, 1/8 note, 1/16 note or whatever I had the quantise value set up to be.
I could then hit 'hold' or 'rest' a number of times to determine of the note was sustained (hold) or ceased playing for that next 'pulse' (rest) or another note played straight after it, and as long as I was able to hear the line I wanted played in my head, I'd kind of sing-step my way through the programming.
Bass riff 1/4 note programming: note-hold-hold-rest | note-rest note-rest | would produce a sustained first note then two shorter notes in the bar.
Drum programming was the same - 1/8 note steps: kick rest rest rest snare rest rest rest | kick rest rest kick snare rest rest kick
Piece of piss
If you then needed to add hi hat you'd use the same track and append the hi hat step sequencing to it. This was occasionally a bugger if you made an error as you could erase the entire track by mistake if you wanted to clear the new notes, so they were usually held in memory buffer until you saved the new info into the same MIDI channel as an append instead of a replace.

In your DAW, you can use the matrix editor (Logic) or note editor or whetever it is called in other software to do the same thing except it is very visual and easy to see what you're doing. I have been using the matrix editor for making groovy bass/synth/drum patterns across 4, 8 or 16 bars, slinging them in whatever order works and you also have the easy ability to make a variation to the pattern if you wish later on.
Love MIDI!!

Have fun programming!

Dags

 

[endserenading81]

Hey DAGS,
did you get my folder invite to my project?
r