Programming Drums Help (for a non-drummer)

[acroberts]

Hey guys - I am going to be stepping in as an interim worship leader and am going to have to rely heavily on Reason/Ableton to help me out.

Depending on my volunteers for any given week, I will be putting together loops to cover everything from drums to bass to keys, but the drums seem to be the most intimidating to me.

Here's the kind of thing I'm looping for...should I start by building HH, then kick, then snare, etc?

I'll be using a lot of loops that you guys have shared to help give me ideas, but if anyone - drummer or non-drummer - has some insight on building drum loops / beats / grooves, that would be really appreciated.

Thanks!

[StephenMoose]

For most worship songs, I think you'll be able to get away with just a simple 1 or 2 bar loop. If you can, loop a bar of the song your trying to emulate while your creating the beat, and focus on one drum/cymbal at a time. As far as what comes first, that's personal preference but I like to do kick and snare. Once you get kick and snare it's easier to see the "big picture" of the groove and then the cymbal work will come easier. One of the secrets to making drum tracks feel more real is varying the dynamics (individual volume of each hit). For instance, straight ahead, chunky hi-hats might work for some songs, but on most songs some beats should be accented. If you can, get ghostnotes in on the snare too. It might be a little hard for a nondrummer to do that but it fills in the groove a lot. And most importantly, listen to the loop at least two times after every note you program. If anything sounds out of place or awkward, take it out because it probably is.

[TroyP]

Agreed. I'm in the same boat (not much of a drummer). Here are some links that have helped me immensely:

Greg Lackey's articles on Ableton Live in worship
http://digitalworship.wordpress.com/...orship-series/

Write drum tracks fast and furious
http://www.tweakheadz.com/how_to_mak...rum_tracks.htm

Make MIDI drums come alive
http://www.tweakheadz.com/midi_drum_tips.htm

The non-fill
http://www.drummingweb.com/lessons/lesson21.htm

I'm no expert, but I'll give free opinions if you ask. However, all these links lead you to experts who will answer most of your questions.

[custodianboy21]

My advice would be to refrain from trying to get your drum loops to sound like an actual drum set. Unless you have the reason 2.0 drums (maybe). The reason is because they just sound really cheesy, at least in my opinion. Dynamic variance does help, but I would drums electronic-ish.

[jamesp]

Originally Posted by custodianboy21

My advice would be to refrain from trying to get your drum loops to sound like an actual drum set. Unless you have the reason 2.0 drums (maybe). The reason is because they just sound really cheesy, at least in my opinion. Dynamic variance does help, but I would drums electronic-ish.

If you want realistic sounding drums I would suggest getting EZDrummer. They sampled a drum kit and made it available in this handy plugin. You can use their built in beats or create your own. They also have a "humanize" function that will make it sound like a person is playing. You would use ReWire to utilize this plugin in Reason.