Some tricks I use for drums

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challism
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12 Nov 2015

I have a couple tricks that I have developed for drums. I thought I would share them with the forum. Maybe you guys can use them, maybe you can't. I think they are pretty cool.

First technique: Create a basic drum beat for your song (this will be the foundation). Then create a new Kong. Call this the Snare Drum Kong. Load in a bunch of different samples. Then record yourself trying to play the foundation drum beat on your keyboard (you can add some extra drum hits the the foundation doesn't have). Don't forget to use the different pads. Keep playing and recording for about 5 or 10 loops. If your timing not perfect, that's a good thing. That is what you want. Once you have recorded it, give it a listen. You will notice that you have some human sounding drum fills and rolls that can be used throughout your song. When you are finished, do not quantize it. If you find that you were playing mostly one pad, try to move some of the notes to other samples to keep it more interesting. Delete or manually correct the timing of some hits that might have really bad timing. Then, cut your recording up into smaller parts that sound pretty good and try to move them to parts of the song where they fit. Apply some regroove shuffle. Mute or delete the parts you don't want to use. Repeat for toms, cymbals, hats, kick, other percussion. By using this method, I think you can come up with some very interesting beats and add variety to a basic drum pattern. It also humanizes the sound.

Second technique: Create a basic drum beat for your song (this will be the foundation). Create a Kong. Load kick, snare, hat samples. Create a Redrum. Route the Redrum to trigger the Kong pads. Create an alternate drum beat with Redrum (triggering Kong) that sounds good playing with the foundation drum loop. Make some different patterns (3, 4, 5, 6 whatever) of different beats that also sound good with the foundation beat. Use some different timing resolutions and maybe some shuffle. Once you get some beats you like, play around with the "run" button on Redrum. Notice by turning it on and off you can create some pretty cool fills and rolls on top of the foundation beat? Try it with different the different patterns and different timings. Now hit record and record yourself turning run button on and off when you want a fill (or changing the patterns). I'm sure you will come up with some cool and interesting fills using this method.

Third technique: Another couple things you can do to make this second technique even more interesting and unpredictable... #1) put Redrum in a combi. Program Redrum's "pattern select" to be controlled by CV1. Hook up an LFO to CV1 (Subtractor, Thor, Little LFO, Ammo, Pulsar). Adjust the LFO speed and shape how you see fit (or if you want to get really complicated, you can use another LFO to control the input LFO's speed for some really interesting and wild variations). #2) Since you can not seem to control Redrum's "run" button via CV or a combi (stupid missing feature), you can get the same result if you solo one of the channels that isn't routed to trigger any of the Kong pads. So program drum 10 solo to CV2. Then plug an LFO into CV2 and fine tune it how you like.

Well, that's it. I hope this helps someone. :)
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Tincture
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12 Nov 2015

Nice ideas, thanks. I kind of do #2 already but in a different way. I'll be giving #1 a try for sure.

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ebop
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Joined: 15 Jan 2015
Location: NZ

14 Nov 2015

Yeah some nice ideas challism, will give some of these a go, thanks. It's the kind of experimentation I should do more of instead of just reaching for a REX drum loop to save time. These kind of semi-random processes is probably how the companies selling refills make their loops and sell them for big bucks.

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philosurfer
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Joined: 05 Aug 2015

28 Nov 2015

Another way to create some creative drum patterns I picked up from a blog post somewhere in the past was to:

- build a pattern in kong or redrum or combination of the two. (or any drum machine)
- Bounce them to an 4 bar rex file
- Load it up in Dr.OctoRex
- Copy pattern to the track (remember to turn patterns off now :)
- Select a block of notes in the pattern copied to track
-- I tend to select a half bar's worth of pattern in the beginning or end of a bar
- Open up the tool window, find "Alter Notes" and keep the 22% default there...
- press apply and listen...
- repeat applying until you get a good little shake up of the drum pattern.

I might also pitch bend or reverse some of the slices in the Dr.OctoRex to shake it up a bit more. :)
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