In EZ drummer the permade loops sound pretty realistic. When looking at the loop in Piano Roll some of the notes are a different color and accented. I can't find how to place accents on a specific note. Any tips on writing drums to an already established rhythm And should you remake the rhythm guitar or bass after the drums are written to match the new accents etc. How do you write drums?

Thanks

It's a pretty broad topic. Personally, I've gotten quite used to writing percussive lines in the piano roll editor, but a lot of it depends on the music you want to put it to. The velocity function is probably the second most important feature of the piano roll, and doing ghost notes on the snare can help make a beat 'fuller'.

I guess as a starting point you could have the snare hits on the rhythmic accents and have ghost notes on the other beats. It's hard to give specific advice without hearing your track or knowing what you want it to sound like, but it's all about experimentation.

Also, there's probably a 'Humanize' function or something similar in your DAW... it'll slightly shift out your velocity and timing so it doesn't sound like a machine triggering the sounds

It can be quite hard to make the machine sound human.. over the years I've learned to alter the velocity of the hi-hat, especially the open hi-hat so the hits in between the snare hits are lower. If you think about it, if the drummer's playing a typical 4/4 beat then their right hand usually emphasises the hi-hat at the same time as their left hand hits the snare. So keep the hi-hat at the normal velocity during the snare hit and reduce the rest of them.

Altering the velocity on tom fills can also help. It can be difficult to know which notes to lower and stuff but if you can get a visual image of a drummer playing it then you can often work it out. It's laborious but it does help.

I always re-record rhythm guitars after I've created the drums because whatever I've played to the metronome is always slightly out when the drums arrive.

As others mentioned - velocity is your friend. You need to click on the drum element you wish to edit and you'll notice vertical lines below the piano roll which represent velocity (this is the case in Cubase DAW). When you can adjust the velocity of each hit to try to make it sound more human. The higher velocity value the stronger and louder the hit on the particular drum element. In real life, the drummer will never hit two notes exactly the same way and with exactly same force. This makes the beat sound realistic. Another thing to consider also is the actual placement of the notes on the grid. For most human feel, you might want to move around the different hits around on the timeline/in relation to the tempo. No drummer will play exactly on the beat with milliseconds precision, unless he is a machine To do this, set the piano roll grid to show 1/32 or 1/64 time and move around some hits slightly behind or ahead of the beat and see how it feels. Finally - you also wish to make a logical sounding drum track. This means that you wish to create it in such a way real drummer would play - for example don't hit 2 toms and 2 cymbals at the same time (unless you are trying to emulate octopus ). When it comes to layout out midi grooves, its easy to forget to add the smooth transitions/fills between sections to make them flow better and feel connected.

Hey Taka thanks for advice, I know its a broad topic but luckily got my questions answered!



Thanks Ben, I will try to think about sitting at a kit and how I would play the drums when I write next time and re-record the rhythm after. I'm guessing that some of the drum beats or licks I hear that I cant seem to write has a lot to do with the velocity function.

+ 1 for velocity importance. Also remember - drummer has only 2 hands ...and...sometimes drummers play not so "in timming" especially when You want effects like "both stick on the snare" accents" and 2 toms hit together. You can turn of the quantize and move on of the hits a bit out of sync. This is exactly what happens in real life

Hey Bogdan this was a perfect answer to my questions working in the DAW. I play a little drums and even the simple drum beats I can play seemed impossible to write but with some of these questions answered it seems possible now. Thanks a lot for your advice.