How does one create a drum track?

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Nutdotnet

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I don't have drums. I know there are programs out there like Fruity Loops, Acid, Battery, etc....that allow one to use loops and what not to creat drum beats but all the sounds I have heard from at least Fruity Loops and Acid have been very "techno" and "electronica" sounding.

I play acoustic rock type stuff. I know a program isn't going to sound like a real thing but there has to be sounds out there that sound close.

Plus, is there like an on-line tutorial or anything like that that would go over the basics of getting drum tracks laid down?

Thanks!
 
how much moneyt are you willing to spend and how much time are you willing to spend in learning?
 
Wel, nut.net...

That's a big question. A really big question. How you lay the tracks will depend on which program you use so I'll leave that aspect of it alone.

How about "How do I learn to write drum parts?" That's a question that I can take a stab at.

The best advice I can give is to learn to play drums enough to get a sense of what drummers do- even if the mouse pad is your hi-hat, the floor is your kick and the desk is your snare. Get a sense for the physics of it. There is only so much that can be done with 2 arms and 2 legs.

I also do a lot of listening to drum lines in the music I listen to and see if I can figure out why they are doing what they do. Play along on your computer desk drum kit. :D

Then when I go to create a drum track for a song I'm working on, I'll record a scratch guitar track with the best dynamic playing I've go in me (to accent the rythmic feel of the song) and play my computer desk drums along to it.

Then I half-arse my way though hi-hat finesse and drum fills because I couldn't actually play them to save my life. :)

I hope that was helpful. Programming decent drums tracks is difficult at best. It takes a lot of attention to detail and a lot of time.

This will take more than one post to explore, and more than one perspective. This will hopefully be a good conversation.

Chris
 
you need to check out some of Meshuggah's stuff to see what Fruity loops can do....the trick/beauty of FL is that you can use any samples you want and customize your drumkit...sticking with the included samples of FL is death.....
 
Okay, but where does one find these samples. Because like I said before. I had tried out Fruity Loops and most of the sounds are too electronic sounding.
 
i was playing with a program called digitonix element, very realistic sounds, it had a humanize function which randomised the dynamic and pitch of the snare drum ever so slightly... my only quam with this program was the inability to save to .wav.....its very realistic sounding though, my girlfriend thought i was playing miles davis on the c.d. player and when i told her it was electronic, she couldn't believe it!
 
1.Check out sample CD´s in the musicstore.
2. Sometimes magazines give away sample Cd´s. I have a great CD I got from the november issue of Futuremusic for example.
3.Or go into a drum store with a taperecorder and mics and bang on their drums after miking them up good. They might throw you out though...

Dr. C - Where can I find that program you´s telling ´bout?
 
Yeah Dr.C not only where can you find that program, but how bout a girlfriend who is into Miles?


Laj
 
How about a girlfriend like mine, who makes music with me!

(Tralalalla la la, I´ll shut up now)
 
You can buy the digitonix stuff for $13 including shipping. Comes with 300megs of wav drum samples. I just got it. Worth the samples alone.
 
That digitonix program sounds interesting......but if cannot do waves how would one incorporate it with say tracks from Nuendo?
 
I'm wondering that myself. I'll probably just use the samples in another program that is more usable.
 
I feel your pain Nutdotnet

I just posted a similar question in Computer Recording and Software. A loop of techno beats just wont cut it for me.

I have an Alesis SR 16 drum machine. It is very versatile. It has hundreds of different sounds, bass, snare, high hats, reverse high hats and all kinds other percussion noises.

My only problem is I dont know how to record it in stereo. I'm using Cakewalk Guitar Studio and tried everything. It'll only record to one track, which doesnt sound terrible, just not as good as it would in stereo. Its not the drum machines fault, its probably my sound card or something with the Cakewalk program.

I think I'm sticking with my drum machine until they come out with software thats more versaltile.

Marc
 
Marc Miano said:
My only problem is I dont know how to record it in stereo. I'm using Cakewalk Guitar Studio and tried everything. It'll only record to one track, which doesnt sound terrible, just not as good as it would in stereo
Click to expand...

Why don't you just use your EDITOR (i.e. Sound Forge) to convert the MONO WAV. file into a STEREO WAV. file?

p.s. Most percussion is in MONO, anyway...

;)
 
Ok.. I use Fruity Loops a lot when I make music. I use it for drums and on occation a little bleep or bloop from the samples that comes with it.

Some good samples to start with can be found at
http://www.soundbank.hu
or
http://www.soundbank.web.services.hu/

so what do I do?

1. I build a set of drums.
- I pick a kick and a snare that will go well with song.
- An alternate snare with less attack
- Some different hi-hats (I'll explain how to make an open hi-hat 'close' on the bottom of this page)
- A ride. BOTH cup and flat-hits
- Some cymbals and toms.

2. I program all the different patterns I'm gonna use

Here is the time to export the whole song if you want to divide your export in different groups of drums and edit them in your main editor. By doing this, you have the advantade of being able to do modifications to any group all the way through you recording-session. If you only export a stereo-wav of the song, you have to go back to Fruity Loops to edit a single drum/group.
To export in groups, just use the 'mute-function'. Fruity Loops export 'what-you-hear'. This will result in one wav for each group. Don't forget to set the bit-rate to the highest value possible for you.

3. I do some modest FX in Fruity Loops
- Fruity Loops have a Master FX and 16 different FX-groups you can assign each sample to. So Kick, Snare, Hihat, Cymbals and Toms can have their own FX.
- You can also use external DirX and VST plugs. Just add them to the 'favourites-list'
- Every group goes through the 7 band EQ (if needed). I usually give the snare some 500Hz for 'punch' and 3 and 5 khz for 'edge'. Kick gets modest boosts and cuts. Just do small cuts and boosts with this EQ, and BEWARE of the 63Hz control.
- Kick, snare and toms can use some compression. Fruity Loops own compressor works well. I usually set an attack around 25-50ms, and ~200ms release. Experiment with threshold and ratio to get the right amount of 'punch' in the sound.
- An important thing to make the drums sound more real, is to tie them together. This is where a good reverb comes into play. Set the reverb in the Master FX, and find a good reverb that makes the drums sound like their all in a normal room (or church..). This helps the fidelity a great deal. Don't pan toms and cymbals too hard.
- DON'T use Fruity Reeverb. It sucks beyond belief.

4. 'Humanizing'
I really don't do a lot of humanizing. I usually only set different volumes on the hi-hat, and rarely I use a bit of filter-cut on the lower hits.. It's more important to think about how a drummer plays.. double-hits (flams?), 'ghost-hits', dynamics (volume control). I don't use the 'shift-function' to make it a bit un-perfect. I only use it to make double-hits (e.g. both sticks hitting the snare, one a blick before the other).
It's good to use different sounds of the same drum. e.g. Two different snares, ride-cymbals which alternate between cup-hits and flat-hits. et c.

5. Export and insert into your multitracker.
If it turns out the sound didn't fit the song in the end, you can just open up your saved song in Fruity Loops again and do some editing. Then just export it again and get it back into your multitracker...

6. Making open hi-hats close
- click out 2 open hi-hat samples. One on the 'hit', and one where it is supposed to close.
- Set the volume of the second hit to zero.
- By clicking the button with the sample-name to the right of the channel, you open it's 'edit-window'. Click on 'misc'. There is a button called 'cut itself'. This will cause the sample to stop playing as soon as another sample in the same channel starts. You only need to do this once.
- If it sounds weird when the open hi-hat just gets quiet, add a 'normal' closed hi-hat at that position.


I hope this helps.. I'm not used to writing this much and often get lost somewhere in the middle...
 
Last edited:
Wow, Mesh. Great post. Makes me want to go check out Fruity Loops even though I'm happy with what I've got.

Nut.net- I use a VST Plugin made by Steinberg for Drums. Called the LM-4. The XXL version comes with some pretty darn good sounding kits and the drum editor in Nuendo (if it is anything like the one in Cubase) is fairly easy to use. You can also buy more kits and create your own, but I haven't gotten into that, yet.

The neat thing about it is that the sounds in the high quality kits are set up in layers. When you "hit" it hard it plays a sample of the drum hit hard. When you "hit" it soft it plays a sample of the drum hit more softly.

I love that its all in Cubase. Even after all the audio is finished I can go it and change the drum line, tweak some hits to fit with little timing mistakes...er, idiosyncracies in the song, change the tuning of the drums, and even change which kit was used. Its pretty darn snazzy in my book.

I never used anything else (other than a hardware drum machine), though, so I'm just sharing what works for me.

Chris
 
Hey spinsterwun,

I dont have soundforge, but wouldnt that just put the same thing in two different tracks?

What I want is to spread out the drum set. High hat to the left, ride on the right, toms left to right. Stuff like that. All recordings I heard, the drums are panned one way or another.

Marc
 
Meshuggah- thanks a ton!!

Alright, so one gets some decent sounding samples and then creates different drum programs in fruity loops. But then you say to export the programs. Wouldn't one want to apply the fx and what-not to the samples before exporting?

And what would be a good program to incorporate Fruity Loop Programs and then the Acoustic Guitar, etc....that I have recorded? Acid? Or would a program like Nuendo be better?

Thanks!
 
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