I usually try to compose with Doggiebox alone, played through my computer speakers, with my guitar on my lap. I'll get the basic structure down, then spice up later, just like you guys are talking about. I don't see the point in comitting anything to disk before I'm ready, even though I could easily swap a new doggie box file into place for an old one. That's a personal choice. Exported files always seem to have the same start point, making the swapping easy for those of use using file import, provided that the drum track is structured properly first. Short anecdote: I had my singer/lyricist "sign off" on a basic track, allowing me to build from there. When it came time to lay the vocals down, he stops in mid-singing and says "that ain't right". I had to take an entire section out of my song, cut and paste style. I was eventually able to pull it off rather seamlessly. The moral of the story is, I guess, that even when you think you've got the drums nailed, you just never know. On Fri, 23 May 2003 10:01:00 -0400 "Patrick O'Donoghue" <pdiddyod@hotmail.com> wrote:
One thing I try to do is this....I always add the 1-2-3-4 (I use the rim-shot or side-shot) at the beginning of the Doggiebox drum patten WHEN I'M BUILDING IT in Doggiebox, it then allows me to count-off the exact same way whenever I swap out drum tracks on a particular song. (I'm careful not to duplicate that opening bar -- i.e., the 1-2-3-4 count-off -- when cutting and pasting for an extended drum loop.) After I have a basic (i.e., repetitive) drum pattern imported into Pro Tools, I'll record the guitars, vocals, etc. Then, after the basic song structure is in place, I'll go back to the original Doggiebox file (which still has the 1-2-3-4 count-off intro), make changes to the body of the file adding fills, crashes, etc.. at points where the song needs it, then import that newly revised drum track into Pro Tools. (If you do it on a new track, and leave the original drum track in place, you can mute all other tracks and listen to see if the two drum tracks are in sync. They should be.)
Then I delete the first repetitive drum track, and also delete the 1-2-3-4 count-off prior to mixing out to the Master Mix.
From: Carl Edlund Anderson <cea@carlaz.com> To: Doggiebox <doggiebox@lists.zygoat.ca> Subject: Re: [doggiebox] Doggiebox and other instruments Date: Fri, 23 May 2003 10:02:31 +0100
At 18:31 22/05/2003, Hermiteer wrote:
I have a (now rather old) Roland VS-1680 and Doggiebox is my drummer :) For my set-up, the best technique _seems_ to be to assemble a basic percussion track in Doggiebox, export it as an AIFF, playback the AIFF and record it on the 1680, then record guitars, etc. on top of that. The trick is that I often want to change the details of the percussion track as I work on the song (add fill here, extra cymbal there), but it's difficult to synchronize the start of play to rerecord the drum track directly (thus my MIDI feature requests some weeks back :) It works out (at present) a little easier to simply slap a whole new AIFF over the original percussion track on the 1680 to get it on the machine and roughly in place, and then "nudge" the whole thing into synchronization with the other instruments. It's still a little tedious, but not impossible.
I do basically the same thing, except that I've found it invaluable to add a measure of "count off" cymbal hits before the drum track starts. This ensures that the other tracks start at the right time and allows you to swap out the drum track with no ill effects on the timing of the other tracks.
Well, I generally add "count off" hits at the beginning anyway, just so I can tell when to start playing the other instruments when overdubbing :) But I kind of see what you mean, except that if I were swapping out the whole drum track, I wouldn't be able to hear the count off if it were part of the rest of the drum track that was being swapped out (assuming I read what you're doing right). In any case, the trick for me is to always get the drum track starting at Time N, where N is however many units of time measurement into recording process the music is supposed to start.
I suppose, though, if I just think of the the Play button itself as just another instrument, if I recorded a separate count-off on a separate track from the "real percussion tracks", I could use that as my aural cue for 1-2-3-4-Go, pressing play on "Go" :) That ought to result in a new percussion track that is _pretty_ closing in timing to the one that's being replaced (and I could always then shift the resulting new drum track a few units of time one way or another from the VS-1680's interface). Might be able to skip the AIFF step that way .... Kind of obvious, when I think about it :)
But that's why I asked some while ago about adding MIDI features in Doggiebox: so that I could essentially slave it to the MIDI time clock on the VS-1680, meaning that, at the appropriate moment, the 1680 would tell Doggiebox "Go!" and go Doggiebox would, the same time, everytime.
Cheers, Carl
-- Carl Edlund Anderson mailto:cea@carlaz.com http://www.carlaz.com/
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