Drum challenged and Program Help

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ShawnMullins

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Hey everyone!

I’m new to recording digital music and was hoping to get a little help.

A couple years ago I recorded an album using LIVE sounds but this is a whole new beast and the programs have changed.

I’m having trouble with 2 areas:

1. Drums beats: How do you create them? I know you can use loops that are premade but I’d much rather learn to just make my own. Right now I’m using Cakewalk Home Studio 7 XL which is fantastic but I don’t see much playability with the sequencer such as FL Studio 9. Is FL something I should be investing in or is Cakewalk more than applicable?

Next is how to actually write a drum beat. I’m not a drummer by any means so it’s pretty confusing for me. Such as where should the kick go, snare and high-hat (the three essentials). Any guidance here or a book to turn to would rock. Basically I'm drum challenged haha

2. I’m looking into writing “pop” music much like what can be found on the radio. Simple, catchy with an electronic twist (Owl City, The Read Set, Postal Service) but with some hip hop influences (Mike Posner, Cee-Lo etc.). If FL Studio more geared for this kind of creation? And is the learning curve easier (I’ve heard it marketed as a good beginner software). Like I said I have Cakewalk Home Studio XL and an Audio Interface for my Guitar and vocals etc. but I’m not sure if it’s what I need for what I want to do.

Thanks for any help!!!!!
Shawn
 
Hi there ShawnMullins

I'm going through the same thing at the moment, although I'm a bit further along than you and have previously owned drum machines etc.

What I'm doing is using Addicitive Drums via Reaper - I don't know your budget, but this set up cost me $350 AU - probably the same in $US and that was including a retro pack of more drums which you may or may not need..

Essentially there's a MIDI editor in Reaper, which you use to access the Addicitve Drums samples. Now don't worry about not understanding MIDI if you don't... I don't either, and so far it hasn't been an issue.

What you also get with Addictive Drums (and maybe with other sample libraries) is thousands of pre-programmed beats - now you may or may not want to actually use them, but what they do give you is a pictorial map of exactly how a particular drum section is played, via the MIDI editor - awesome - you can see the kick goes here and the snare goes there and the hi hats etc. etc. and you'll quickly work out how to make drum patterns of your own.

Depending upon how complex you want to get, you can do all sorts of minor alterations to make the things sound more like a real drummer - although I'm sure you won't fool any real drummers listening, but you can fool your audience.

The other major piece of advice I'd give you is that drummers have two hands and two feet and so they're limited by what they can physically hit at a time - if you're doing pop music, as I am, then you'll probably want it to sound like a real drummer, rather than a more techno approach where no-one is under any illusion that it's not programmed - so thus hitting a crash, ride, hi hat snare and 3 toms all at the same time is not possible in the real world... remember this when you're programming and understand, from a visual study of a drum kit, what physical possibilities exist.

There's a HR guy here called Rami who also has some basic drum tutorial type stuff on his website that's useful for beginners as well.

I would assume Cakewalk has a MIDI editor - and you can download a functional test kit from Addicitive Drums for nix - it's limited, but you'll get the idea - as well as various beats etc. so that you can start visualising how a drum beat is put together. Awesome fun as well..

Hope this helps...
 
I tried out the addictive drums but the VST wouldn't read for some reason (it said compatible with Sonar so I'm assuming it's the higher end edition). I'd like to stick with Cakewalk or maybe move to FL Studio (which has a nice sequencer).
 
Also I'm trying to keep my wallet in mind here too haha.

The reason I'm leaning towards FL is because of the plug ins (such as vocodex) plus the better drum sequencer. So trying to stay under 300 is important.
 
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