Drum Programming for Tabbing Purposes....What is your approach to it?

[blitzer]

Hello everyone, not really sure if this is where to post this, but it seemed the safest choice.

I have recently been trying to do some drum programming for tabbing purposes. I was trying to do the drums for Sad but True by Metallica (which doesn't seem like it should be all that difficult as far as "metal drum pieces" go). About 30 mins later.....I had about 2 mins of decent midi recorded (but only for the bass drum) and I thought to myself, "I must be doing this wrong."

My setup:
DAW: Reaper
Drum Kit: an Addictive Drum setup
Input device: keyboard (qwerty, not a piano)
Input Tracks: bass, snare, cymbals, toms (recording each track in sections, in real time along with the song).

I figured most people probably try to track all the drum parts at once (theoretically cutting tabbing time by 4- at least compared to my way). But it seems for me, that no matter how many times I try, I'm always a little off here and there, and trying to track everything at once either ends up missing some hits, or gets out of rhythm.

I'm sure that just "playing more keyboard drums" will eventually make me better, but if there is a tested or proven approach to programming drums, I would be interested to know what it is. (I'm thinking maybe 1 track with all parts, 1 for fast double base (sections too fast for hands that have to be punched in manually), 1 for fast snare, and 1 for fast toms, or something like that). Honestly, it seems like it would be faster just to learn the real thing (which I would like to do), but money and space constraints just don't make that practical right now.



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[Manslick]

After your take, use quantization. That will line up the hits, maybe right, maybe wrong, depending how close you are. The velocity won't be affected. Then you can edit those hits that quantize incorrectly.

 

[DM60]

On the surface, this seems as much of a workflow issue as a drum issue. For me, I start with my analog recording (guitar or base, it depends on the music) and try to get what beat I have in mind. Get my BPM set. Then I start the drums. Now depending on the music, I have read if it is dance music, it moves in measurements of 8, if it is pop or others, then it is more around verse, chorus, bridge. So tracking all at once could be an issue. If I am doing a traditional type of song, I will work with three primary sections. If it is dance style, I think in 8's.

Once I get that all done, then I usually go back and have to re-record the analog parts or edit the hell out them to get it all to align. As stated by manslick, for the midi part, editing these tracks to hit correctly (unless you want it not to be perfect) is key to get the analog to sound correct.

My two cents.

 

[Sax2]

Well, I use TuxGuitar, which is a program a lot like GuitarPro. When I tab out drums I individually input each note to make a basic pattern, which could be one measure or maybe 4, or 8. Then I copy/paste it and edit it where I want to change it, like going from a verse -> chorus or adding in variations. I've never tried tracking MIDI drums.

 

[blitzer]

Thanks for the ideas, I'll keep working around on it and see what happens.