songblog

120 Ways, Take 9

Once again I tackle the rhythm beast, and make a little progress there...

Saturday and Sunday - I actually have some time to do a little work on this piece of music.
Looking back at the comments, it seems like the weakest point are the drums. Oh, I just have to get this off my chest: I don't seem to be able to come up with a damn decent drum part by myself. Let me be specific: I can do OK with electronic grooves that don't have to pretend that they are played by a real drummer. Plus I find on the ER1 its a great help to have the effects, really gives more swing than any of the quantizing programs I have used, software or hardware for that matter.
But like a real, flesh and blood drummer? That is a whole different ballgame. As I said, the comments on the drums made me listen to them again, and I didn't really like what I heard all that much, sounded kinda mechanical I guess, so I begin my search thru the literally thousands of midi drum files I have to see if something fits.
Now it would be easy if all these files were set up the same way, but that is not the case so I spend some time on each getting them set so that they will come out on the right track and with a normal drum kit. This makes everything take so much more time for the first crack, but its worth it later.
I spend quite a bit of time on this, more than I would like to think about. Finally I find something labelled as a bossa nova beat. Nothing could be much farther from the truth, but there it is and it works, especially on the refrain, where there is a bit of a rhymthic shift. I play around a bit with the drum kit I am using, and do some deep listening.
That was pretty much all I was able to accomplish on Satruday. Sad, ain't it?
Sunday I am back at it, this time searching for a beat for the verse section. Its another long slog. I finally come on something from a set of hip hop midi files I actually bought (!) and this works fairly well, considering its being slowed down from 160 to 120 BPM.
Again I have to play round with the drum kits - I have been fairly hooked on the XL7 kits from the Pure Phatt Rom, but I think its time to dig in and do some programming on them. For the moment, I am happy with how this kit sounds, with the possible exception of the kick; it could also be that the kick needs to be moved back a few ticks, but I tried that once and it just didnt do it. I did however write some cymbal and snare variations. You can listen to the new mix by clicking here and judge for yourself. Once again I would remind you this is on a slow server, probably better to just save it locally. I finally tried to find an intro drum beat. but ended up just writing some cymbals, which give the intro a lighter feel.
I also was playing around with the refrain, and added a bit of a repetitive synth part. Again I will have to work on the sound of this part a bit, but I think it works well. Like in a lot of my music, I am trying not to crowd things up, and make the melodies work as part of the rythmic scheme also.
Back to my main question - how bad is it not to write your own drum parts? Am I just giving myself some stress that doesn't count? I used to do this same sort of thing with samples that I ran thru Recycle, but these weren't as flexible as simply having the midi notes. And maybe I am beating myself up too much: all those years that I played in bands, I never troubled myself with trying to write drum parts, I mean, that is what the drummers are there for, right?
Still, after all these years of cutting up loops and using every tool I can think of, it just doesn't seem right that I can't whip up the beat I want to, no sweat.
So what do you think about this???