Intresting Subject, Drums and musical ideas Options

[ElHombre]

Hello

I have chosen to compose a full instrumental song as my next project.
This leads me into an intresting subject I never really got my head around.

When we get a musical idea, we often get it in our head. We have practiced guitar so we will easily
get it out on the guitar, from the head to the guitar, put the metronome in and get it to tempo.
That is fine and so for me, works well.

But when adding drums and messing with time signatures. Its always like I have to change up the original idea
a bit to fit the rythm, regardless of time signature and tempo

I dont have problem writing anything in different time signatures, but then I do it like this:
I can listen to the groove, and record over it, by listening, sinking in and grooving
So, I can put a drum loop on in lets say 7/8 and record something cool. that fine

But what is difficult is when u get these brilliant ideas in your head
And you want to put them in context right away with the drums.

I struggle a bit with that.
It never becomes as I expected

Your suggestions?

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[StaceyD]

Something I should learn is to just program the most basic simple beats in every time signature.
I think with this knowledge, drum writing wont be a problem when composing.

Sounds to me like you're have some odd time based ideas initially, and then having to compromise them to fit the drum loops you have?
If you want to keep the creative process flowing you could do as you said above and have a small library of basic drums for each time sig to hand. But as you jam to them to find the right one you may risk adapting the idea naturally to whatever you're playing to, this sounds risky to me if you'd like to keep it as close as possible to what's in your head, or what you originally intended.

If you can jam the idea ok to a metronome why not record it, and then figure out the time signatures on playback, then make a basic beat to that signature, to make sure it fits properly. That way you have the idea captured no matter what. The idea of adapting ideas to make them fit something that isn't quite how you wanted it to go could get really frustrating!

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[SirJamsalot]

Sounds to me like you're have some odd time based ideas initially, and then having to compromise them to fit the drum loops you have?
If you want to keep the creative process flowing you could do as you said above and have a small library of basic drums for each time sig to hand. But as you jam to them to find the right one you may risk adapting the idea naturally to whatever you're playing to, this sounds risky to me if you'd like to keep it as close as possible to what's in your head, or what you originally intended.

If you can jam the idea ok to a metronome why not record it, and then figure out the time signatures on playback, then make a basic beat to that signature, to make sure it fits properly. That way you have the idea captured no matter what. The idea of adapting ideas to make them fit something that isn't quite how you wanted it to go could get really frustrating!

I second this! +1

I've had some recording sessions where I knew how the guitars were to be, but couldn't find *any* loops with the breaks I needed, so I layed out a basic beat, recorded the guitar parts to the basic beat, then went back and filled inthe drums on the timeline based on the guitar riffs! Then I re-recorded the guitars to the drums. It's a lot of work, but it works.

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