Lessons

Lesson Info

Bonus: EZDrummer - Introduction

Well, you can see this is definitely not a lecture to the conversation. So any of you guys here, any of you in internet land, please ask questions, interrupt me let's talk about this stuff. I'm not here to give him on a log at all, finn you to just interrupt away, and with that let's talk about some virtual drums so you can see I've got easy drummer up, and I've got pro tools up. I won't talk about why you guys would even be here in the first place. What are virtual drums? Haven't you guys ever had a situation where you hear a really bad drum machine or written something? Maybe where somebody else said sounds like a terrible drum machine, something kind of like this again, just like a sink in if anyone's familiar with that kind of sound? Yeah, I've been guilty of it myself. I hear it all the time, and I know I know plenty of people who don't know howto not great that but, you know, that's, basically what people associate or have associate up till now with fake drums, and for a long tim...

e, fake drums weren't even something that would be considered legit in styles of music, where riel instruments happening something for hip hop elektronik music. But if you wanted you do rock or metal or something like that that involved real players you're pretty much out of luck because that's what it would sound like so that's all changed you could do amazing sounding stuff with your laptop now uh this right here here's an example of something that maybe two years ago you guys tell me if you would have ever thought that this is a drum machine you hear that one more time because it was short so anyways I know that me personally if I had heard that I would have no clue that that was a drum machine no way and even now I hear some things like that that was fake no way so I think we're in a much better place to where you can do this stuff on a laptop I did this all on my laptop, which means you guys didn't do it on your laptop and I did it with a program called easy drummer now there's lots of programs out there but honestly I think the rest of them suck we're going to focus on easy drummer made by a company called tune track because it's the best and like the name says it's pretty easy to use so I won't ask you guys some questions we'll start with you I'm listening awesome you got any, uh, frustrations with your current setup or with programming drums traditionally anything that's you solved recently or that is still an ongoing problem not really because of amusing easy drummer for the last four years maybe before that I had a like a drum machine and reason that I was using that sounds exactly like that first clip that's what I used as well back then and yeah well it's that call redrum red room yep yeah yeah yeah I remember that you use easy drummer I'm pretty much all your anything that sounds like real drums thatyou produces all easy drummer right? Yeah almost all the drums even if it doesn't seem like real drums okay just sources from he's german it's easy it really is yeah I'm goingto explain the title later but it actually really is super easy it's not cheap easy either that easy sometimes might throw some people off but it's well yeah some people might think it's a toy because of that but it's definitely not it's a really, really serious tool and pretty serious professionals like yourself or like me or you know the list goes on you got people like brendan small from metal aka lips so on arrested development that tv show devin townsend used it you know there's the list goes on and on and on of serious professionals who use it obviously there's something there I just think that sometimes people see the name and they think it might be some intro level software and while in it is intro level in the fact that it's super easy to use and it's super light on the computer but that's where it ends I mean you can get amazing results from it pretty fast but really fast yeah ah I've had a little bit of experience trying to program drums but the drum machines that I've used are the actual drum machines that you have toe plug in and I'm so sorry yeah it's ah I think it probably cut a few years off my life tryingto figure those ones out they were just the worst I could ever deal with once I actually dig figure amount there is nothing easy about him fire up the boss dr rhythm yeah yeah I don't know it's a lot of a lot of yeah, exactly a lot of punching in lot of trying to figure out stuff and little screen and by the time you got anything done, it was just like, oh, well, I guess this is something nothing too special it also very frustrating and how did that affect your work flow as faras I'm assuming that you wanted to actually get a song done with guitars absolutely it killed the work full flow one hundred percent because I was spending the entire day trying to figure out a couple bars of drums so just getting that going and then try to figure out the guitar parts where the snares go it's it just killed all creativity because once you had something down how easy would it be to change it? Oh, not at all you got to go in and pretty much I mean maybe there's an easier way but and what I'd have to do as I had pretty much have to scratch the whole thing and start fresh so if I had some stairs in the wrong spot or anything or the temple was a little bit off scratch yeah, well, those days are over yeah that's that's how I started this well, I will never ever go back to that yeah, what about you? I'm so my background is piano and so I'm like, oh my musical pieces I make their super melodic and I will just lay down the ascent there keys first and then go to drums and I hate drums that's kind of why I was like super I'm excited for this class because I wanted to see, you know, kind of behind the scenes and into your life and how you actually layer drums down and get your perspective on on this because drums from here like there I just don't like him um so I mean they're just like a nightmare for me I mean, I think they're or they have been a nightmare traditionally for lots of people who who try to write music and create their own stuff kelin the drums don't really have a lot of great things to say about you either so I know I know they don't use the same kid and I'm just like playing the scene seeing patterns that's that's what they told me yeah well uh no longer e that used to be mia's well and it's funny that you said redrum I think that that was my fifth drum machine though I got to say like you are on one of your on one of those that you d r seven seventy yeah yeah I was actually using ah analysis releases ok yes so I started with a program called making waves that proceeds acid pro than one tacit pro then to reason and redrum yeah I mean, I've been through everything you guys were saying and so I can see just from having done all that this just trounces it and I'm sure you would agree with me on that so yeah so basically we just talked about what virtual drums are and there's basically two ways you can use easy drummer use it as a writing tool raises a replacement for a real drummer or that one in the same thing um say you're in a situation where you have toe right something quickly or like you tyler you just want to get some tracks down you have all night and a song you want to record and there is no drummer in sight here you go you khun get your drums done within a few minutes of these examples that you just heard or that you will hear later the elapsed time on them everything is under an hour most of them under thirty minutes to get the drums done so a cz faras a writing tool goes you can get that part of the way and get straight to writing the music which is fantastic and quite quite a breakthrough I think and also it could be used as a replacement for a real drummer because uh let's face it it's ah it's a pain in the ass to deal with real drummers sometimes if they're not up to par or the studio's not up to par whatever whatever the case may be or a combination thereof the studio and the drummer are not up to par there's a lot of work that goes into fixing ah what you end up getting it's just not worth it this summer a hassle and this is easy because it's easier to use the software than to book the time go in there like the drum set recorded uh edit the hit the crap out of these tracks that basically end up sounding like a drum machine anyhow with bad tone because the drummer doesn't hit that well you skip all that just use this within thirty minutes or so you can have entire songs mapped out sounding great so I think those are the two ways to use it how do you want to point out one more thing which you mentioned before is uh you know, dealing with other musicians is not always super fun so you know, maybe you're somebody that wants to be a one man band and I think there's a lot of people who are use easy drummer for that reason because they don't want to deal with anybody else yeah actually the one man band situation is something that I've seen come up more and more these days I'm getting a lot more clients at my studio where there's one guy that does everything or one guy that does everything except for the vocals but it typically the one man band situation for whatever reason they don't want to deal with anybody maybe they can't afford a drummer or they can't afford a band or just they have their own musical vision and don't want to interface that with anybody else's vision you know, getting super expensive session drummers is not in the equation maybe the style of music doesn't even need real sounding drums that's a possibility it's well, whatever the case maybe not everybody even needs a drummer what they do need is a way to get drum sounds and tracks done quickly so it would be two ways to use this I'm gonna talk really quickly about who I am and why you should care and, uh, is not because I dropped out of berkeley. Um, basically, I've been playing music since I was three years old when dad's a symphony conductor I was basically listening to music from the wound, started on violin and piano and played those till I was about ten, then started on guitar. I've been formally educated and self educated. Uh, since since high school went to berkeley, dropped out of berkeley, started a band started studio band, got signed to road runner and eventually central media fight over a thousand shows all over the world. I mean, the whole bit tons of tours, van tours, bus tours played on other continents, japan, europe everywhere you can think of in front of ten, people in front of fifty thousand people have done the whole thing recorded with huge producers. Ah, on one album, I remember going to england and watching colin richardson, who some of you may be familiar with had him mixed my stuff on a nen or mus need board, which is really, really cool and worked with andy steve jason suk off before he was my business partner, my band went and recorded with him, and now now I am a partner over it all you hammer and this is some of the stuff I've done recently that you can see a help produce and part of the mix on the latest black dahlia dis amended nearing on this devil driver anyways this is some of the stuff that I've been working on since I made my transition out of touring some studio has become my life and we work all the time on this heavy stuff so so explain who I am any thing else you want to know uh well I think that you know, people know you mostly as a producer but um you know, it's important to point out you're also a really great songwriter you know you're not always just recording other people stuff you write your own stuff and you're a pretty great at it teo you know, in a variety of different genres and since you know the most important part of getting real sounding drums is writing the right parts you know, I think that's another reason that you are the right person to be teaching this today well we will be actually covering a lot on how to write the right parts but yeah, I guess it does bear mentioning that my main focus and music is composition and writing everything else I've done has been supplemental to being able to write so for me a program like easy drummer is super great because I don't have to worry about the studio end of it that's all secondary to me when it comes to writing writing is the number one and uh so you can find me on the internet, the instagram twitter's at the relay levy my q and a tumbler you guys have any questions after this meaning over the next few weeks, you goto my tumbler? I'm always answering questions about recording or anything, so I'm sure lots of questions they're going to come up there's I didn't learn how to program drums in six hours and neither will you. This is basically going to get you to a place where you can start learning how to do it for real and hopefully avoid some of the pitfalls that come along the way of the learning curve. So anyways, future questions about anything related to this course or anything recorded, just go to my tumbler hit the ask box and I will most likely respond if the question is intelligible, that's awesome! I mean, we will be peppering me with questions all day today, but just for all you folks at home, if your question doesn't get answered that's really cool that you do that? Yeah, I mean, I'm sure also that the despite all the questions we get today one week from now, someone who took the course will find some issue that we didn't cover or that is unique to their situation or whatever and that that's the avenue hunter of how to reach me and hopefully get an answer I'll try. So you say that now. But what happens when you get five hundred, emails? Because the creative live audience has been known to do that five hundred good questions, you'd still be willing, well, if it's five hundred good questions, that's okay, five, five hundred emails could go either way, you know, if they want to send me five hundred good questions, that's fine. I mean, I get I get quite a few a day already. I can't answer all of them, as is, so we just try me.