Ableton Forum

This may be a stupid question to some..

Does anyone know of any online sites that can help with drum theory? I am trying to learn where to place rims and tablas in a drum sequence. I can only rely on my ears so much, without some theory behind it. I am pretty good with the standard kick/snare/hi-hat/tom routine, but I want to liven my drum tracks up a bit, and short of having actual drum lessons, I am a little stuck. Can anyone help?

Thanks so much in advance..
E

http://www.tweakheadz.com/how_to_make_o ... tracks.htm

http://www.drumsdatabase.com/rudiment.htm

http://www.virtualdrumming.com/drums/fr ... ssons.html

Maybe these provide a little help..

resample
chop
resample the chop
re-chop

quick question.....is this how you process your breaks>? Say you start out with a 1 bar break, do you slice each hit or sections of hits....or basically whatever you want? resampling then chopping the resample sounds like a bad ass idea

if you've got some spare cash - a hand sonic , or drum pad, or even some ye olde fashion flavor bongos will help immensely. you'd be surprised how natural it is to bang it out rather than getting confused over a bunch of dots on the screen.

I like to add in rough with a midi controller - the more velocity sensitve the better, and then tidy/chop it up a bit with the mouse afterwards.

another method might be to "beat box" the rhythm in as you'd like it, zoom in on the wave and then replicate it with the impulse or drum racks

the above suggestions are all great. something I did recently that was eye opening was load some of my favorite breaks/beats/songs from albums and mp3s I have into an audio track in Live, then program these beats on another track in midi on BFD2 (you can use impulse or whaterver virtual drum instrument you want).

If you analyze the type of music you like in this way, you can pretty quickly start to understand some of the nuances that make certainly styles groove--and you'll be surprised at how not aligned to the grid stuff can be and sound funky in a good way. Once you start doing this in Ableton, I find I am better at analyzing stuff I'm just listening to during the day and picking stuff up just listening. The only catch is then try to distill some basic concepts out of the exercise and make it your own, and not just copy/re-program other peoples beats.

I'll check out those links, thanks!

Etain

Youtube is an amazing resource for everything. And this applies to drum lessons too. Just search for drum lessons or drum theory, and you'll find lots of user created videos.

quandry wrote: If you analyze the type of music you like in this way, you can pretty quickly start to understand some of the nuances that make certainly styles groove--and you'll be surprised at how not aligned to the grid stuff can be and sound funky in a good way.

that's what funky is, messin with your idea of what the grid is... surprising you with hits that come "early" or accents in "odd" places, making you wait and anticipate things that land "late"...

Make sure the timing isn't too rigid, but not too sloppy either.

Make sure there's lots of velocity variation on drums that fire more rapidly (like hi hats, rolled snares, tablas, etc.)