On 30/07/2006 08:33, Sion Morris wrote:
That's excellent - you prog-monster :)
_Well_ it's kinda 3-chord rock'n'roll with the addition of Dr. Who noises ... but we can call it prog and no one will know the difference :)
I know you'll be tweaking the db on this - so to my ears the bits that need work are: The super-fast hi-hat start before the 4 slower ones and snare start. Perhaps a kind of soft rising cymbal would work well here (Fleetwood Mac, Albatross style) (keeping the 4 slower beats). I don't know how easy that is with ns-kit, but I think it would more natural feel to the rising pace of the start.
Yeah, that skittery hat intro was actually the first thing I programmed for the song in DB (largely to play around with the range of hat samples at different velocity levels). It doesn't really quite fit with what follows, and could probably use replacing! I'm embarrassed to say I'm not familiar enough with "Albatross" to recall its intro cymbal work (though I'm sure I've heard the song various times). I think I know someone who has the "Live at the BBC" album -- I'll have to try to borrow it to check out that version, if I can. ns_kit has a pile of available cymbals with different velocities, with both sticks and mallets. I'm sure I can cook up something plausible if I can work out what it should be ....
I'd be tempted to put a second strike of the crash cymbal (or other crash cymbal) on the second bass drum beat in the second bar - so it fits in with the bass/guitar. ( |x------|x-x----| or something like that)
I'll have a go at that. Also, I want to drop in a few little fills and variations into the fairly generic "verse block" and "chorus block" that get repeated over and over at present. I've got a few rolling snare fills in obvious places (for extra melodrama :) but there's more that can be filled in here and there to make things feel a bit less mechanical.
I like the idea of the ride at 7:18, but for some reason it sounds a bit distracting to me. Maybe its a bit high in the mix or you need to drop a few strikes where the 'real' drummer would be hitting the snare. Or maybe a different ride sound is needed?
At 7:18? That's where the song ends :) though I had though that a few soft cymbal slaps at the end after the main drum part finishes would sound good. There's a bit were the ride cuts in around 4:39, 4:57, and 5:03 for a few seconds, then more constantly from around 5:09 to around 5:34. I think that's about it for the ride at present. It's a mix of ordinary hits and hits on the bell. It could easily be an issue of being too high in the mix. ns_kit7 offers _very_ loud hats and cymbals (the range of velocity options goes from "gentle tap" to "whacking the sh!t out of it"), and one doesn't _really_ need the latter end of the spectrum that much! In my dbkit for ns_kit, I've dialled the hats/cymbals back a long way, but the ride may still need to come down a touch, perhaps especially on the bell hits which cut a bit more. (I remember reading an article about drumming that advised watching good drummers to observe that even if they are manically whacking the sh!t out of the skins, you'll see the cymbals often move much less than you might expect, showing that a little bit of brass goes a long way in the mix .... But achieving this balance through gauging different samples by ear, especially when one isn't a "real drummer", has been tricky, to say the least :) Alternatively, maybe the bell hits are too strident, and I should aim to use all ordinary hits in there on the ride ....?
Looking forward to hearing v2 with the other tweaked drums you have planned anyway.
Yeah, I do like the ease of making new sections of versions of sections in DB to drop into a song and try out. It may be hard to achieve anything close to the vibe of a live drummer, but at least DB takes instructions very well and never forgets the parts :) Cheers, Carl -- Carl Edlund Anderson mailto:cea@carlaz.com http://www.carlaz.com/