Literature: understanding drums (deepishly)

http://www.scribd.com/doc/33852257/200-Drum-Patterns-for-Drum-Machines#scribd

wouldnt mind a pdf of this :stuck_out_tongue:

Waldorf has usually incredibly well-written User Manuals, especially pre-Blofeld days. The Waldorf Rack Attack Manual has the MOST in-depth tutorials on deep percussive synthesis and the whole science/physics and more…here’s the direct link to the archived User Manual, take your choice of English or Deutsch. This really is the holy grail on various percussive synthesis and it’s application.
http://www.waldorf-music.info/en/hardware-archive/rack-attack/rack-attack-downloads/category/258-Documentation

Note: I hope it’s obvious you do not need to have a Rack Attack hardware or older VST or brand new iOS App iAttack, this really is like an ‘Alchemist’ Guide ’ deeper through this user manual, enjoy!

Non-traditional percussive elements can be really wonderfully incorporated through samples of rain sampled from a good storm and off the tile from your roof and eve. Industrial machines, to include engines, can be stretched, as well as recorded ambience sound of Grand Central Station at 7 a.m. and all the reverberations of voices and footsteps off the cavernous environment can be made into non-traditional percussive elements and mixed with your snare, tom, what ever.

My Spectralis has a bunch of Samples of various things in the kitchen…you get some really cool metallic reverberations on certain flat griddles/skillets, that are hanging from a hook on wall so free to vibrate, almost incredibly better than regular cymbals, open/closed, because then I can flavors of noise or analog filters to that.

So start with that Rack Attack stuff and there’s also some great stuff in Howard Scarr’s, “Programming Analog Synths”, which was written for Access Virus and used to come with all the other manuals, it’s extensive, so is his wealth of knowledge…it’s like a MA Course in synthesis: Again, you do not need a Virus of any variety, these are from the days user manuals and companies really provided wealth of info to get the best from instruments and your talent and practice.
You can download that “Programming Analog Synths”, by Howard Scarr on the Access site or a Google search.
This info really helps with the Elektron Analog Four as well because there’s a good reason the A4 really can do outstanding percussion and IMO a bit more versatile that the AR.

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I recommend everyone interested in drums to play a bit on a real drumset. Playing acoustic drums gives you a very tanglible idea on how just a few simple elements can be made to interact with each other to build a holistic groove, much faster than with just a drum machine IMHO. You don’t need to become a “real drummer” to start grasping the fundamental filosophies.

thanks for chiming in and supplying that linkl… looks good! …cheers bro …

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Yes the Rack manual is great. I remember looking at this way back when investigating purchasing one for remote SysEx Programming/Control. One fun section on page 24.

After you have bought your 128th RackAttack, please contact Waldorf-Music. You will receive a personal device number that authorizes you to have dinner with our Board Of Managment.

:joy:

good stuff namnibor, thank you!

by the way trabant, the viewer on scibd just shows (downloadable) graphics :wink:

Sorry but for me this is crap… And I browsed it all.
Funniest part is :
“First, do not make your patterns any longer than 2 bars”
“Second, the snare is always placed on numbers 5 and 13 of measure…”
And no, I didn’t quote something out of context, these are THE rules to make kick/snare patterns :wink:
Just have a look at the examples he gives and you will see that you’ll only make shit music with this… Waste of time, people !

Just listen to normal jazz, rock or pop-beats and recreate them with a drum-machine… it needs carefully listening.

Then mix it with your personal style …

PDF download: https://app.box.com/s/vcfw52tmm5xie19nips1jhvvu7zpxkxm

Sorry but for me this is crap… And I browsed it all.
Funniest part is :
“First, do not make your patterns any longer than 2 bars”
“Second, the snare is always placed on numbers 5 and 13 of measure…”
And no, I didn’t quote something out of context, these are THE rules to make kick/snare patterns :wink:
Just have a look at the examples he gives and you will see that you’ll only make shit music with this… Waste of time, people ![/quote]
may I ask for your drum pattern please takadoum ?

Yes of course TribanT. But don’t know in which format I could post them. I haven’t read the midi dump part documentation yet, I just use C6 to load samples, and in fact I don’t use samples at all at this time. I’ll have a look maybe tomorrow night.

I could try to write them down by hand, but it’s a bit of a pain in…

As soon as I get a “decent” live tweaking ability (and a working sound card), I can record a few. For now I start to be happy with the sound and patterns, but not very confortable at recording :wink:

Sorry but for me this is crap… And I browsed it all.
Funniest part is :
“First, do not make your patterns any longer than 2 bars”
“Second, the snare is always placed on numbers 5 and 13 of measure…”
And no, I didn’t quote something out of context, these are THE rules to make kick/snare patterns :wink:
Just have a look at the examples he gives and you will see that you’ll only make shit music with this… Waste of time, people ![/quote]
This IS completely out of context! He goes on to explain (in the same paragraph) that the 2 bar recommendation is to conserve memory at a time when memory was expensive and manufacturers expansion cards were out of reach for some people. The guide was written in 1991 - with this context we can safely ignore the 2 bar limit and rest easy.

:+1: … where did you find them in the first place? r u a drummer=? are you just gifted? .-… since I am such a noobish character, I am always on the hunt for proper rythmic beats … cheers takadoum

Hey, yes I’m a percussionist, playing and teaching a bit, Turkish, Arabic, Eastern Europe, African percussions. Sorry if i sounded arrogant, but I am deeply bored with poum tss tchak tss poum tss tchak, even if sometimes I must admit there is a cool grove. I can listen to really “square” music, but I can’t make it so much.

So I write rhythms and polyrhythms from scratch, and as I’m not so much into harmony and melody, I like when my drum parts are interesting enough by themselves. I plan to only use AR for a while and forever if possible, so I want a consistent drum part to add a few blips and boings.

Lastly, for me the drum parts also have to support the rest of the tune and tell the same story, so I write them from scratch for each new tune according to what I want to tell. If you use snare 5 13 and the examples in the book, your rhythm will tell approximately the same as millions of tracks and I don’t like it.

But well this is all theory and personal matter, after all.
And my mistake was forgetting he may have written this to reproduce a drumkit with drummachine for some kinds of music, and not to make some electronic stuff creation :wink:

@Housecliche, for the 2 bar limitation, the memory was not the only thing, he writes : Also keep in mind that most all song parts are generally multiple of 2 bars. I find this so reducing, sorry ! (Ok sometimes I can be of very bad faith)

I keep you updated as soon as I have recorded a few pattern tweaks ! And hope you’ll be as critical as me, then :wink:

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Hey, yes I’m a percussionist, playing and teaching a bit, Turkish, Arabic, Eastern Europe, African percussions. Sorry if i sounded arrogant, but I am deeply bored with poum tss tchak tss poum tss tchak, even if sometimes I must admit there is a cool grove. I can listen to really “square” music, but I can’t make it so much.

So I write rhythms and polyrhythms from scratch, and as I’m not so much into harmony and melody, I like when my drum parts are interesting enough by themselves. I plan to only use AR for a while and forever if possible, so I want a consistent drum part to add a few blips and boings.

Lastly, for me the drum parts also have to support the rest of the tune and tell the same story, so I write them from scratch for each new tune according to what I want to tell. If you use snare 5 13 and the examples in the book, your rhythm will tell approximately the same as millions of tracks and I don’t like it.

But well this is all theory and personal matter, after all.
And my mistake was forgetting he may have written this to reproduce a drumkit with drummachine for some kinds of music, and not to make some electronic stuff creation :wink:

@Housecliche, for the 2 bar limitation, the memory was not the only thing, he writes : Also keep in mind that most all song parts are generally multiple of 2 bars. I find this so reducing, sorry ! (Ok sometimes I can be of very bad faith)

I keep you updated as soon as I have recorded a few pattern tweaks ! And hope you’ll be as critical as me, then ;-)[/quote]
thanks for the extensive explanation … unfortunately ur profile shows no utube or soundcloud link… even more awaiting your tracks now… cheers dude

Ha ha, calm down, I just began with this unit… You’ll be disappointed !

OK so here is a short recording of two patterns with some kind of rhythmic stuff. Not very “lively”, I was even bored recording it, lol, but I go on holidays tomorrow and wanted to post something before I left. Took me ages to have something descent (I mean for the mutes/unmutes, cause there are tons of work left) !

https://soundcloud.com/takadoum/ar-b01-02

But you can hear different rhythms, polyrhythms, and even with some basic 4/4, four on the floor, you can add some cool phrases.

My three cents if you want to write cool and original patterns :

  1. Listen to all kinds of music… A LOT !

  2. Try to keep each track sober (not filled too much) so that when everything is unmute, it’s not a mess. I learned this from EMX, where you could by accident hit the solo button while in solo mode, and activate ALL tracks at once ! But actually my goal when creating a pattern is that every track can be played with any other without conflict, so that even after a few months when I have forgotten everything, I can play and mute/unmute without too much fear :wink:
    And of course it’s more musical and there’s more room for other tracks.

  3. Experiment ! Use off-beats and syncopes, use short and long hits to reverse rhythms, etc.
    Sometimes I even throw my fingers randomly on the step buttons in grid recording to find some cool phrase, especially for CH/OH and RS/CP. If it’s crap, I start again, or I can also adjust a few trigs, and let’s go on with the next one :wink:
    You can also try Storm if you have an iPad, it’s fun and sometimes you can generate some crazy stuff, very inspiring ! Problem now is I use USB for overbridge recording. And when I want to write my own stuff, I do Storm myself, like, don’t want to cheat… so… random madness myself !

Sorry for my english and bad levels on the recording.
Feedback welcome !

Nice rhythms. I am completely bored by 4 to the floor, and the majority of AR videos and demos are just that. Thanks!

Nice one takadoum, really good stuff :wink:

I actually learned a fair bit about creating good drum patterns by applying grooves from Ableton’s groove pool to simple midi drum beats then listening and looking over the modified piano roll. Just keeping an eye on velocity patterns and what different shuffled hits around beats sound and feel like.

Thx guys !

@giftown : Very good trick :slight_smile:

I also use accents a lot. Same idea as with Ableton, fill the whole pattern with trigs, then apply random accents and adjust velocity and accents positions to your need, to the song, to what you feel.

Most useful tricks for me :

Use 2 and 3 intervals, so that it’s not too regular.
332 is the most common, or 664 on 16 steps, and it has a natural grove you will find in every culture, works with everything.
Then use it on different scale, like 12 12 8 for 32 steps.
Then try random intervals like 332323 on 16 steps, etc.

Write a pattern on a track and add the reverse version at the end, very effective.

Then sometimes use very regular intervals to create more repetitive or trancy effect.

Use ternary delay on regular stuff to create good bouncing feeling.

Use the shift function to rotate patterns when something is wrong or to create variations on the fly without losing the first idea.

To conclude, you should begin with 2 and 3 intervals, it’s the most creative and most pedagogic approach, I think. Very rewarding because it creates very natural rhythms, natural and musical groves, though always different and sometimes weird, in a good way.

And then just experiment and forget about these “rules” !