On 02-Feb-2005 11:51, Charlie wrote:
On 02/02/2005, at 6:21 PM, adrian.delso@btopenworld.com wrote:
if you write songs, then I would strongly recommend that you always write your drum parts, afresh every time. If you like to hang the melody and lyric together and fit your drums to that afterwards, then write to a metronome or click track. Otherwise, creating new rhythms can really ignite your song construction and phrasing. Also, you need to put the fills in at the appropriate moments and these should not always be in the same place in all your material! Should they?
Agree with everything here - it's just that every time I try to write a pattern for a specific song, it ends up as a 4/4 rock beat D'oh. Hence the need for some sort of push start from a book etc.
Indeed. My situation is very much that of a non-drummer, and I've learned a lot by sitting down with drum tabs and programming portions of them to get that "Oh, so that's why it sounds like that" kinda thing. So programming up patterns for different basic styles is quite educational for me. And when I'm composing, I have always found it works best for me to start with some basic pattern ideas (whether for drums or guitar or whatever) and then start twiddling them in different ways. Now that I've done a few demos using DB for drums, I find it a real time-saver to have the pattern libraries of those songs so I can use different ideas as starting points. (And since I have anything but unlimited time to spend on my music hobby, time-saving is extremely important!) It's nice not to have to re-enter a a dozen or so hi-hat hits across a basic 2-bar pattern when doing a new song (and after all, a lot of rock songs _do_ use similar keep-it-simple-stupid patterns). So, yes, I certainly wouldn't want to compose everything based on kit-assembly from a few dozen 1-bar loops, but for me anyway have a pattern library is a big practical help (and programming the library gives me ideas just by itself!).
Then again it's the same with my guitar playing - I was given the heart and soul of an Eric Clapton, but the fingers of a Leslie McKeown
Heh, I hear that :) I have all the finger dexterity and technique of a one-flippered walrus. But hey, it's only rock'n'roll (in my case :) Cheers, Carl -- Carl Edlund Anderson http://www.carlaz.com/