blaklynx
thanks for checking this one out.....
as far as writing drum parts, i'm just a frustrated drummer at heart!
i'd give up playing guitar, if i could play drums as well....
i can hardly keep a 4/4 hi hat beat and play a one-two kick-snare groove.
LOL........
i spend as much time as it takes, to find the Superior and EZdrummer grooves that work.
sometimes, i'll write the entire drum track in advance, based off of a previously recorded demo, that i usually play to a click or a simple straight time groove, to write the song and fix the arrangment...
like a template of the song.
it's real easy to just play to a click track, IF your DAW has a good metronome: in sonar, i can use the superior kick and snare sound to trigger the metronome, so even tho it's technically a 'click', it feels like i'm playing to a drum track.
if you play to a click, what that affords you later, is to go back and replace all your 'endless repeating drum groove' loops, with either custom loops you write on the fly, or drag and drop loops that you just spend lots of time demo'ing as you 'create the drum track' to go along with your music you've already recorded with your 'metronome drum track'.
does that make sense?
so, as i build my final drum track, i change the velocity settings, the 'humanize' settings, all that....... knowing that i can later edit it all i want, but it feels more natural if you change up the velocity setting on a 'loop by loop' basis.
then, i'll go back and take out cymbal stuff i don't like, or add cymbals wherever i want them to coincide with the music, by using a PIANO ROLL view of the midi information (this is so easy in Sonar)
if i have a particularly good riff or fill, i'll use it multiple times, doing a simple cut and paste..... but never back to back, and never in such a way where it happens on the same part of the song later.....
for example, if i find a good fill, that starts on the snare, moves across the toms, and finishes with a crash........ i'll cut and paste it later, but edit it so the snare beats happen on the low toms, use the rest of the fill, and move the cymbal strike from one cymbal (say, crash) to another cymbal (say, hi hat, or china, or another crash)
you can edit these fills to FEEL different too, you can actually take the snap function in sonar, put it on 'absolute time'.... which means you can drag a section of loop and place it, in real time, anywhere you want....
so say, you want a fill to beat super back beat..... you can slide that one fill 5ms later in the song, so it has a bit of drag to it....
or just the opposite, push a fill forward to give it energy...
sometimes, downstrokes at the beginning of song section changes, feel better coming in almost late, than on the beat..
you can go into piano view, take that one hit, and slightly drag it backwards in time, by just a millisecond, and it gives it a completely different feel.
it's infinite, how much you can edit the midi data, only you can decide how much time you want to take, but every edit makes a difference.
