Lessons

Lesson Info

Bonus: EZDrummer - Intro to Fills

Uh I know what I'm going to say about phil's bar there any specific questions anybody has right off the bat before I get going with that okay cool let me move this over too phil's and ah you know people out there feel free teo correct me if I'm wrong and let me just say actually one more thing on the uh on the writing from scratch thing once again I don't think that there's any magic bullet with it and it's a very tedious thing it takes forever and it kind of sucks I hate doing it but I'll do it I know how but I won't do it if I don't have to and most people I know won't do it if they don't have to usually the only people who do it either our wishes or dues with pride problems who feel like they're cheating because they're using grooves or whatever there's one third scenario which seems to make sense say it's a drummer the drummers in the band and he has to come up with demos quickly but he can't record himself but his band's going to go in the studio there song writing okay so drummer...

program some stuff out to the demos to the preproduction demos to give you the rest of the band this is what I'm going to record all right that makes perfect sense why would a drummer who's going to go record everything need to bother teo get amazing or why at programming drums and also why would a drummer want to use somebody else's grooves that seems seems now like the drummers I know probably wouldn't want to do that so that that's another scenario we're going from scratch makes sense but I really do recommend using grooves I think the whole uh if you're a drummer and you're learning virtual drums at the same time I think what they don't realize most times they get fresh really quick programming the drums like the first time the cocky just play this really easy but they don't really it's not obvious that you're learning a whole new instrument even though it's very similar to you know it gives you similar musical results that the instrument itself is yet you still gotta learn it from baby steps yeah sure it's an electronic instrument with similar with a similar output as an analog drum set it's not the same thing at all yeah even though the musical results air very somewhere okay so phil's um I'm trying to figure out what the best way to say this to you guys because it almost seems to me like phil's air such an obvious thing but maybe they're not to me they obviously are the marker of an event on event that's happening or about toe happen and basically they glue sections of music together uh like in one of the previous examples where I put no fills in the music the rift just went from one to the next without any sort of transitional material. It was the drum fill that made a sound fluid because if you just listen to the guitars by themselves that just sound cut together drum fill gets you from point a to point b that's the main thing lots of drummers have now adapted them to be some sort of spectacular extravaganza. But the real point of the phil is a transition peace or to market event like the intro or something is building into something. But then again, all that is's leading you from point a to point b it's the intros leading you from zero intothe song if it's just a build up in the bridge it's leading you from zero into where the drums play. If it's in the middle of the verse like versus going and you have a short little fill in the middle is leading you to the second half of the verse where say, another element would come in there's always a transition involved. Otherwise you just gotta drummer wanking, which I think is bad question for you that I've heard a lot of people ask before us. How do you know when the phil should start and how long it should be? You know, because you sort of know that at some point in this part the drama goes, but who like how do you know when he should start doing that? And when it should, how long it should be that's kind of like like saying, how do I know these lyrics are right? Um, you don't you just kind of take a stab at it and hope for the best you really don't know with any of this stuff there's no hard or fast rule, but that exercise I recommended earlier not only will teach you how to program drums realistically, but also you cover so many filles and transitional pieces that really drummers do that your instincts will kick in, and what a lot of great drummers uses their instincts when they're playing fills a lot of them while they could tell you exactly what they did, they're not thinking about it then is this well? Do something fast here to get to the next part? Or it would be cool to do something along here where that thinking comes from beats me and I don't know any drummers who actually have verbalized it to me either. So there's a couple things where say, you're switching your going to slow things down so you're in sixteenth notes and then the field's gonna goto halftime and you want to have a phil that transitions you into half time you might want to put in eight no triplet phil because eight no triplets are slower than sixteen nose so it's going to lead you in but again that just goes to that goes to what I said earlier it's a transitional piece so with the fills you you have to ask yourself is it helping transition right? And so if you want to go to a halftime part you're in sixteenth knows and you put some sort of really fast phil that doesn't fit at all you're kind of defeating the purpose so it can get super as speaking as a producer musician it can get super annoying dealing with drummers who put fills everywhere for no reason too much because it's good defeats the purpose of what therefore they're totally just musical devices so how do you know where to put them in? Well, first of all, start with listening to a song from the beginning where is your attention start to wander like when you meaning a song that you're working on at what point is your attention to start to wonder when you notice yourself checking your texts or not really paying attention or like suddenly facebook is on while you're listening, something needs to happen there that could be a fill it could be that the partners to change but a good way to judge that is tio pay attention to when your mind starts to wander I personally come from the less is more school so I I don't believe that you need to clutter music were too much stuff I just think you need to keep it interesting so I always just do the keep it interesting test now I realize that's not a definitive answer but there is no definitive answer toa where phil should start people need thio people need to learn music and have a huge I'd say vocabulary of musical information stored in their brains that their tastes are refined enough to pull that out of their subconscious. So I thought your example about using the sort of using the eighth note triplets I think he said the transition from something faster to something slower was really helpful or there that's helpful but it's yeah, but that's not I mean, I was saying do that every time but like that kind of idea of like where you're going from this to this so you know here's one way of doing that that's but that's one of like eight million ways to do it that's the thing um the mohr important thing the more important point is that you're trying to transition and you're setting up the next part so when you have a part coming in, what if it's not popping hard enough the part's not transitioning right if it's not establishing itself well enough that's where the phil comes in, and the reason that I don't think that it makes sense to really like, say, okay, you want to use this phil here, this phil there's, because you go to guitar center and buy a book of phil's, and it doesn't tell you you can learn them all, but there's, no context attached to them, so the context always has to be within the song, and, uh, where you're going next, uh, makes sense, who? Yeah, I was just going to say that it seems like you can almost use, um, the last theory of, like, going back and listening to your ten favorite songs, or a genre, going back to a song that sounds similar to the song that you're working on and listening to those translate transitions and getting a good idea of like, what you want hears a sound like, or take ideas, bits and pieces from d if songs totally so, say you're in a pop punk band, and travis barker is one of your favorite drummers, he's, one of my favorite drummers, say I had to produce a pop punk record, I've had to programme the drums authentically, I would grab the five biggest blink when eighty two songs that would program the drums from start to finish, so that I would know exactly what kind of fills he plays where that would be the most important thing and also when you know when he goes to the hats when he goes to the ride all that stuff timeout fills if I was doing something in that stone yes, I would learn exactly where he does it um you know, I was doing a death metal record uh and the band says were a cross between cannibal corpse morbid angel suicides silence I don't know I would uh you know, I learned some songs but we had to program the drums even if we didn't have to program the drums I would still do this I would still learn some of their songs on the piano roll so I could suggest fills to the drummer so backto what you were asking me finn, I really do think that where phil's come in if you're not a drummer has a lot to do with your musical background and that and I don't mean education like school I mean, how actively do you listen to music like are these people actually analyzing the music they're listening to and where their favorite drummers are putting fills in? If not then they should start because other or they should learn how to play drums then several come natural but we're talking about adopting an instrument that's not your native instrument here so it does require some self education I think and uh how phil's work I think that would be the best way to do it and I can tell you that what you're saying about studying other drummers are studying drummers because I'm not a drunk studying their parts studying their methods doing that has made it pretty natural for me tio know what goes where uh again we're talking about music and art so this this isn't like e q ing a scenario where like you know that there's a bad frequency so you cut it out this this is a whole other thing and you have to definitely develop your tastes and refine your tastes so well q and a time unless if you guys want to see me program some fills if that would help you guys kill stillson kuna well susan q and a so way have lots of questions from the chat room so thank you for all those so first one uh which I think kind of touches a lot of things you've covered today is from ivan as fan when adjusting velocity levels is it better to perform the step while you're creating each part or is it better to wait until the entire track is complete and adjust them in relationship to the rest of the instruments of the song I say a little bit of both um you want to get it sounding good relative to itself obviously because it's performing a piece of music so you know if you're doing if you know that that's what the drumbeat supposed to be doing velocity wise then yes by all means go ahead and program that in but then obviously you will need to refine it further when the other instruments are there so both I have a question from khan bought any tips for programming symbol swell ls and clothes high hat patterns I've always found these to be the least forgiving they're definitely the least forgiving with symbol swells that's a toughie is definitely a toughie with it if you can find a symbol swell midi I'd go with that I personally don't know of any um with closed I have patterns I wonder of the person means patterns that are opening and closing and opening and closing on where there's side stick action happening basically the way to do that stuff realistically is too you know what we were saying about using multiple notes on the kick drums? Well it's basically it's basically that times eight so excuse me for a second while I find some hats here so one thing that would be helpful would be within easy drummer get the map up, get your maybe map up so the chat rooms they're telling us that they definitely want to see you make some phil's got it, I'll finish answering this first um you see right here at the other end of the spectrum you got a bunch of different types of hat hits tight tip meaning tip with stick tight edge as you the hat closed tip these air all things that happened during close high hat patterns, these air the different variations that you're playing with um I'm just looking for other high hat stuff on here, okay? The open ones are at the bottom, so we're focussing on closed so you see that basically we've got c sharp four is where it starts so you go to your piano roll e so there are closed hats I would treat it much like treating the uh the bass drums, the multiple bass drum scenario but also I would do what we've been saying this whole time, which is emulate because that's how you really get good at this but the elements involved when you go to emulate, I'm just getting rid of some of this other midi information so it'll play no one thing that I would do is go on youtube and look up some some videos of how a drummer actually hits these these types of parts well part of the stick is he hitting with well part of the hat is getting hit how closed is it really? Is he striking the top of the symbol beside of the symbol? Is it varying what speed is using his pedals as well? All these air factors that you've got to keep in mind when you're studying how to do this and then so once you know that via watching it because you're not goingto be able to go on a recording and know exactly what's going on with a high hat it's too quiet so go and watch some videos and try to analyze exactly what the drummer is doing then apply that to everything else we've done uh random velocities not random but varying velocities as well as emulating the parts that were written and you have something for you ll have something far more real um I believe in this song out of party here which which was a closed high hat situation it opens but as you can see right here we've got these this sounds like the side of the stick and then it's more open there but check it out how it goes from side stick to tip and check out the velocities once again I feel like a broken we're talking about velocities but look how very they are all over the place I don't mean all over the place in terms of what's this guy doing it doesn't know what he's doing it's all over the place in terms of loud too soft allowed to soft allowed the soft even these soft hits right here first three before the loud one this this and this that's a big variation so that's what I would do