fat_fleet
Swollen Member
i thought he's a multi-instrumentalist?
i thought he's a multi-instrumentalist?
YellowDwarf
Dismember
That happens to me all the time on a smaller scale. I write my own drums to go with my music, while I'm tracking and mixing. If I'm not happy with samples, I send the track to a drummer for his take. Usually it's very, very different than what I started with, sometimes it's so different that I can't stand it and have to revert.
Beat Poet
New member
Yeah it's always interesting when you hear different drummers' takes on songs, though in my work I find I don't tend to stray away from what's already been programmed - which is a testament to non-drummers being pretty good at programming the right beats! Drum machines have certainly helped there.
grimtraveller
If only for a moment.....
You know, 98% of the time, if I start playing the part of the song on guitar or bass and the drummer starts playing along, it won't be what I've envisaged. In fact, it'll usually be way off. In the old days, I used to, in the spirit of fairness, go with it and try to adjust to what the drummer had come up with.
The old days are gone !
Now, I will direct the person playing the drums on the kind of rhythm and feel and where to put a few accents. Once they've got that, they can have all the freedom they need/desire. It's got to feel right to me playing it or I can't do my song justice. And I've remade too many songs down the years to be going there again. I'm a benevolent dictator and the sands of time are running out for me.
Beat Poet
New member
Yeah there are alot of bar drummers out there who play for themselves, rather than the song. The problem with the drummer having a strong idea for how the drums should go is that more often than not, the music needs to be virtually rewritten to accommodate the changes. Obviously that conflicts with songwriters who are protective over the music, but it depends on the genre - heavier music benefits from the drummer having a bigger input, while in quieter music it's more important that the drummer just follows along.
Generally in bands I would play for the song, but offer ideas and pointers to the guitarists so we could spice up the general rhythms of the songs, particularly the strumming patterns if they were just playing chords. In my paid work though, the songwriter is king.
Generally in bands I would play for the song, but offer ideas and pointers to the guitarists so we could spice up the general rhythms of the songs, particularly the strumming patterns if they were just playing chords. In my paid work though, the songwriter is king.
fat_fleet
Swollen Member
Huh. I always felt like a dictator having a certain tempo or groove in mind for a song. And no matter how much of a no-brainer a certain groove seemed to be for a certain song, drummers would always want to play it half or double or just different from what I pictured.
When I say something like "Well, the way I picture it, the groove goes like this and the snare hits go here....", most drummers would acquiesce but at the expense of band relations down the line. And with original music, there really isn't much of a paycheck or anything to keep some drummer dude wanting to show up for a band where some other dude tells him what to play and his creative contributions get rejected.
At a certain point I realized I had to either get used to software or learn to play the damn things myself. Unfortunately I was pretty fucking old by the time I realized that.
Beat Poet
New member
Yeah that's the problem with bands, unless there's a degree of success or money coming in, the "backing" musicians (drummer, bassist, rhythm guitar) are not so content to be advised on what to play.
Hakea
New member
My version of events is that it’s not necessary for my songs to have a drum track, but a sense of the the timing, pulse, rhythmic structure (or whatever you've like to call it) is essential for a song-writer. Drums are a useful tool for sketching that out (and learning more about it) even if you don’t eventually use an actual drum track. But I also used to underestimate the potential of seeing drums as instruments, rather than just treating them like some kind of underlying chassis to hang all the fancy bodywork on.
I had actually got pretty bored with the sound of the rock drum kit on pop songs, as plenty seemed to have got into a fairly repetitive rut with what sounded rather like the same old noise crashing away behind so many songs (not just true of drums of course...). I also had the influence when younger of hearing great drumming that wasn’t just on a rock kit. Things like orchestral percussion, jazz drumming, Jamaican steel bands, and groups like Osibisa, etc. So I did feel that there was a whole area that I needed to know more about, especially as writing songs is my hobby. I thought I'd better take a few lessons just to find out what went on - even if it was only so that I could get a better idea of how to program drums in software.
Well.... what an ear opener, and mind opener, that was...
Sitting alongside a pro drummer, with a decent kit, and being able to not just hear but 'feel' what he was doing was a revelation. His timing was immaculate, but the sound was excellent and the punch and energy that he generated was worth the lesson price just to experience. Plus, he could also be subtle and somehow more 'musical' that I had expected So I bought a kit to help learn more. It's an electronic kit (Roland TD-4) because I want to be able to explore more than just the drums in a regular kit. I has a bunch of inbuilt kit sounds but can also be used to trigger a more or less unlimited range of drum and percussion sounds (such as the ones in in the Garritan World Instrument software).Perhaps it's just a peculiarity of the way that I like to write songs, and we all do it differently, but my initial experiences were with lyric writing. I'd write the words to somebody else's music. But once I started doing the whole package there's always the issue of what to do first, and how to pick your way through such a hugely open ended range of possibilities. I'd also seen a heap of lyrics on song-writing forums that were not much more than lame attempts at poetry, because they weren't built to fit any particular musical structure. Whereas I like to establish pretty quickly what the underlying pulse is going to be. Then I can hang the lyrics on it in such a way that that the key words punch along in step with the right peaks in the structure of the music. (That might sound like a load of waffle, but I expect you know what I mean!
)So, no matter what comes first - a phrase or two of lyrics, a bit of melody, some chords, etc - I can sit down reasonably early and play around with some scratch rhythm ideas on drums too. I would find programming a drum track far too tedious and mechanical for that purpose. It would also lock things in more than I want to at that stage. I need the freedom and general hands on 'feel' of doing it myself, to play around with ideas. I don't always do it that way, and there's also no guarantee that I'll want a full drum track for a song anyway - in fact I often don't . But can be very useful in the early stages to record some drum ideas and to have some kind of re-playable rhythm reference, even if it's only so that I'll remember it the next day!
I’m a long way from being a decent drummer yet, but from a song-writing perspective, it now seems to me that drums can be as interesting and enjoyable to explore and use in different ways as any other instrument . And you really can’t go past the fact that hitting things is fun....
Cheers,
Chris
grimtraveller
If only for a moment.....
I remember them well with songs like "Sunshine day". They were called Afro rock in their day but they never really took off after the initial novelty wore off. There used to be this TV series that was on when I was about 11 called "Seven little Australians" which my sisters, brother and I jokingly renamed "Seven little Osibisas" !
I think alot of people start off writing songs that way. I certainly did.
Even when there is big success and big money rolling in that's the case. By 1981, the Police were huge but Sting was coming to the studio with his songs pretty much already fully realized and Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland sensed a shift in the dynamics of the band. They felt that the music was no longer a band effort and that their suggestions were basically ignored because Sting was coming up with strong songs that people liked.
Beat Poet
New member
When you have players of the quality of those two in the band though, they don't want to be sidemen. I guess with my original statement I meant it more in reference to less-skilled players.
grimtraveller
If only for a moment.....
It's an age old dilema. A real difficult one that, having been on both sides of the coin, I can see from both points. When someone has a song, I can immediately see all kinds of possibilities and many a time, those ideas get rejected or thrown out. Sometimes, the writer was definitely right ! But not always.
On the other hand, while I'll take on suggestions for things I've written and I think I give alot of freedom there, I also know pretty much what I'm looking for. That doesn't mean that I won't change bits that others suggest, but it's increasingly rare.
So I can see both views and the daft thing is that I support both !
Ah, the joys of the paradox !
Beat Poet
New member
Depends on the song 
YellowDwarf
Dismember
Well put!
I wrote the song. I played the synths. I played bass. I played the guitars. The song requires some off-beat stickwork and innovative playing on the hats. You will not try and put a straight 4/4 beat to it.
B
bongoboy
a clown without a circus
Both feed off of each other. It's chicken/egg type of thing. You start writing a song, start putting pieces in this spot or that, then you think "gee, a tasty drum fill on the intro to the pre-chorus would be sweet", or maybe "let's have no drums in the bridge". And off you go. Contrary to some voices around here, drums are not always necessary. Not to be a voice of the department of redundancy department, but both feed off of each other.
N
Naze
New member
^^^ this. Feeling the lyrics and imagining what kind of drums would go best with them always works.
D
dreib
Active member
Ive kinda skimmed over most of this thread but thought I would add this.
Any good drummer should be able to follow as directed what the song writer wants in their song, but at the same time be able to add in what the song needs as the song develops, undetected. That is the key, undetected, for the most part. If you work with a drummer who cannot do this , you should find one who can.
Any good drummer should be able to follow as directed what the song writer wants in their song, but at the same time be able to add in what the song needs as the song develops, undetected. That is the key, undetected, for the most part. If you work with a drummer who cannot do this , you should find one who can.
Supercreep
Lizard People
Cool thread, GT.
I think that drums can really support a melody and also tell a story of their own, if done right.
I think that drummers should incorporate melodic elements and play figures that play with, against, or across a melody or musical structure. Sometimes, as RAMI said, that just means following a simple pattern. Other times you need to piss off the bass player and play across or against his part.
With that in mind, I think that while guitars and pianos are great tools for writing music, behind the drums is an ideal place from which to arrange it.
I think that drums can really support a melody and also tell a story of their own, if done right.
I think that drummers should incorporate melodic elements and play figures that play with, against, or across a melody or musical structure. Sometimes, as RAMI said, that just means following a simple pattern. Other times you need to piss off the bass player and play across or against his part.
With that in mind, I think that while guitars and pianos are great tools for writing music, behind the drums is an ideal place from which to arrange it.