Lessons

Lesson Info

Bonus: EZDrummer - Part Writing Part 1

Well yeah now we're going to actually get into how to write with easy drummer and I think it bears noting that we haven't really talked much about the plug in itself and its components are going to give you a brief once over about this if if you want a really detailed detailed look on howto use the drummer I mean the plug in there are plenty of tutorials out there which will take you very little detail however you have your drum set you have this menu right here you can select different drum sets right now we're on rock exclamation point easy xx it's an expansion you have the drop down menus where you can select different symbols like or this one for instance right here you have your mixer right here is as open grooves we'll get to that human eyes just always leave that on don't even bother with that right here when we talk about grooves I'll talk about what this stuff does basically right here is where you would save your pre sets now it was important because there's so many different...

drums here like just from looking at this one two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten different toms looks like ten different snares I mean you're going to end a frankenstein ing a kit and then forget what it is and if you switch it over to something else tio just listen to what it was sound like on the jazz, get hugo back, your kid will be gone and that's ah, very disappointing and heartbreaking situation you definitely want to avoid so right here or says drum kit this save as button it's pretty cool and, uh, notice already saved his creative life rock, but just teo illustrate how important this is. I'm going to save it again as this is important, so do it because you don't want to lose your drum sets and one thing that's important to note, which could also break your heart after a lot of work and we're trying to minimize heartbreak here is see how there's presets on the mixer. I don't really use thes, but you might and we're going to go through over we're going to go through when you may use these, but the point is the presets on the mixer have nothing to do with the presets on the drum set, so this is important. So do this preset is not what's on the mixer, so if you go through a lot of trouble to get something going with this mixer and then you changed drum sets and you didn't save it it's gone, so this preset menu save it as don't forget to save this two and you can always pull it up right there now. I hope that that's uh that's clear enough how important it is because I've definitely had my heart broken a few times before I realised that so let's get into part writing let's start by playing you guys a song that uh that I wouldn't really call it a song but it's a song because it's got three different part it's got something that you could call a verse there vocalist was on it they reverse has got something where there's little modulation something of a pre chorus and then it goes into a chorus kind of thing and then back to a versus your basis for a song so we'll call it a song and I literally wrote this in elapsed time of twenty seven minutes thirteen seconds from the point from starting up the software to tuning my guitars to getting the grooves in everything getting into sound good twenty seven minutes thirteen seconds and mind you you guys may not be able to do that right away but it's totally possible to move that quickly so this one's not meddle don't freak out if you're expecting it blast beats okay so there that is twenty seven minutes thirteen seconds now let me jump back really fast to what I was saying before about drummers not having multiple well not having more than two arms and two legs I don't know if you guys were watching but there's a section right here in the middle on the toms where there's a high hat going ways that possible well that's the hi hat being clicked with his left foot and that's one of the cool things about the many options in aa easy drummer and that the level of detail that to go to so that's certainly possible now if I had to be that I'm going to get to part writing a second I just I feel like this is a uh this is a point that is carried over from the last segment like let's just say that I moved this high hat over too open high hat you would need a hand play that wave entered the land of crappy drum machines and fake drums once again so this is why kevin telly doesn't like you yes conceal stuff like that yeah yeah just uh how looking at this well that's playing how is someone supposed to be hitting that high hat this high hat this tom and this tom at the same time it doesn't work so but I can understand why you would want the pulse going of the hat throughout the tom part keeps it together drummer plays tighter whatever plenty of reasons so oh hi hat foot that's that and no you hear it again go to the and also I think it bears noting that if the part is a realistic part it probably will grew better there's something about writing realistic parts with that are arranged for a real drums and a real drummer that will have more flow to them that's how if you were listening to a record played by a top session guy and he was doing a part like that that's what he would do if he wanted a high had to be going you'll be playing it with his left foot, clicking it while doing the times, so I figured that it was worth uh, expounding on that for a moment, so we're going to do the thirty minutes song now and, uh, I'm gonna open up a version of what you guys just heard, but it's got no drums on it, so here goes while that's loading that you can see what we're going to be talking about. We're gonna basically start from the beginning, get the plug in and stan, she hated question real quick. Well, you're loading that up. I think we have a couple of shout out some people in the chat rooms who are also watching. We have a shout out to michael montoya from goliad and keith marrow are in the chat rooms talking to people and people are reuniting like, oh, hey, man, haven't seen you while so I'm michael and keith try to get devin townsend come down from vancouver, but he said it was too early, so when you say two we're not on rock and roll time right now like this is so not rock and roll time not at all like what someone said to me recently was noon is eight a m and in the rock and roll world I like the rock'n'roll people yeah so devon maybe next time you know but I hope you're watching yeah jeff too you know maybe next time we'll do it at two in the afternoon which is ten in the morning and see if this is loaded up yet get in there okay so to start by uh listening to the music now when I write riffs I try to not write with drums in mind I try to write with music in mind reason and I know you may argue and say drums or music but I feel like if the parts can stand up on their own without having drums than their real parts you know you could play them on a piano at a bar or hear them at the dentist's office playing a saxophone or played by the band it was intended to be played by doesn't matter you can change the instruments and I'll still be music so that's why I typically try to just write parts to a clique um then add drums later I don't do that is not a hard and fast rule it's just most of the time kind of thing now you'll notice some of the transitions in this are not a hundred percent worked out? I did that on purpose because I want to talk to you guys about drum fills, and I want the trend really explain how drum fills at transitions to the music, so the riffs our little stuck together and that's some purpose. I feel like if I started throwing in guitar fills and all that, it would minimize the need for good drum fills and that's not what this class is about. We're not talking about guitar fills well knew a whole other a week on that, so here it is when no drums, and I believe you will be able to hear it click, and actually I will create the click real faster you to hear sorry if this click track is annoying, check it probably a lot mormon, annoying if this was the nineties orderly to thousands, I agree wholeheartedly has got pulling one setting real quick guys, you don't like those old click tracks not not fan. I hate the sound of click tracks. I actually like to make mine some sort of sound that's more soothing because they'll be listening to it for a long time because I literally right to a clique, I just feel like it's very, very easy to write with drums playing cause, but you, khun you can really trick yourself into thinking that what you wrote is better than what it is it's kind of like with guitar player's guitar players that play with too much gain or reverb and stuff and trick themselves into thinking that they're better than they are you strip all that stuff away nothing but crap your psych minimizing earlier yeah it's it's a good thing to minimize restoring one source exactly having restraints in your writing is very, very important and so how that relates to this is all right so these risks were written into a click and then I added the drums so let you hear what we're working with musically you get the idea so obviously that's meant for a vocalist another shot out sorry moshe was shot out time a meal worse lor is in the chat room I go away hey buddy for anybody who doesn't know any more I played guitar in a couple projects with aylin is well known as literally the best guitarist in metal yeah I would say so wow pretty much yeah yeah heart again I'm have somewhat I haven't found someone who disagrees with that statement yet so I'm going teo in stan she ate easy drummer so stereo instrument track hey and named it easy to see multi channel plugin I'm going through this because I remember that some people I know had trouble finding where it was so as you can see, I'm in multi channel instrument easy drama did you talk about why you're using multi channel in pro tools yeah rather than just one channel I don't know if there's another option so in in some d w's there are so yeah I don't know anything about that like in pro tools basically right here we have the option for multi mano plugin but when you go to instrument you see it it doesn't exist so I think we're talking about is the stereo or multi channel the other options just motto okay gotcha yeah yeah I don't know how it's worded in ah other dawes remember in logic it was they haven't hysteria or in multi channel it didn't come in the same one like it does and pro tools okay all right. So that's that's probably what you're thinking of I don't know. Okay all right fair enough. Well that's how you get it? A kid going it's ah once again it's multi channel multi channel under instruments you'll see easy drummer so here's the basic kit already sounds pretty good. Um so let's ah figure out some grooves real quick. This is kind of like a queens of the stone age e riff so I'm gonna make a loop of that riff and just kind of experiment with a few different things uh it's important to note that the tempo is ninety because a lot of the grooves were recorded certain tempus of a groove was recorded at one fifty it will not necessarily work at ninety bpm because it would be way too slow I'll give you guys a few examples of why it won't work real quick so I just get a good luv happening okay so I went to gru's and uh just looking through stuff I have not found one at ninety yet but let's just said one fifty for the sake of having fun so bad now one thing you should know is that right here you see has a one half and one times and two times that's the speed of the groove so if I put on two times it's playing at double time or half time okay that's important to do ahead of time before you select your group because the midi that you pull out will reflect that change your look at me like you know this already but I know you know this already all of you probably know this already but we're going to go through it all right? So I'm going down to rock solid he's got some good beats and uh see funky at ninety let's see what it's got halftime which I don't want to be so okay so I know from that riff that I kind of want something that's got more of a back seat to it like I don't want something where the scenarios on the downbeat I don't want something that's overly halftime just a cool rock backbeat to and for ish kind of feel so that's the first thing that determines what kind of beat you want in the first place and this is true whether you're starting from scratch of their many or if you're going through the grooves and for those of you who are wondering about starting from scratch don't worry we will get to that right now we're dealing with grooves that might be a little bit too busy on the kicks but we can check it out anyways so terrible it's not great either, but still you get the idea of how easy it is to just get something going there's a million more of these to choose from so you picked that one might be better it doesn't seem quite so cluttering still not straight enough for me though I'm going to look at some other ones wait let's hear that works pretty close now, mind you, these aren't meant to work exactly right out the box I mean if they do that it's just lucky you won life's lucky groove lottery these are meant to be altered, but they're just supposed to get you in the ballpark of what you're looking for this is pretty much what I'm kind of looking for for this right now usc this velocity knob right here right now zero now so negative on twenty seven or keep going higher and higher this I don't ever mess with it because it only effects the groove that I'm on right now so say that I chose this groove right here and then we go to the next section of song of a different group um I would have to make sure that this velocity is in the same spot like it's not it doesn't carry over necessarily so I just leave it at zero and I deal with my velocities manually that's what I recommend everybody do but just to give you guys an example that I'm going to jack the velocities on this and then bree out real dragon I don't think it sounds nearly is good because the symbols are overwhelming and the kick disappeared because the symbols air overwhelming now is give you guys an example real quick of ah another extreme which is the velocity all the way down on that knob I would say that's not gonna work either. Now, obviously now on ly reason I'm pointing that out is so you know it exists not wondering why there's a velocity knob over there but also secondly one more example of why velocities make all the difference in the world you could hear that those examples sound radically different just trying to get that to zero out so command on an apple command click and it'll zero out so so you command click zero um so I was using variation five at whatever velocities they gave it to me at and it seemed all right all right, now we're on to the second riff now this doesn't make sense to keep going with sam I mean, you could if its in time but in real life if this was a real song, this first riff would go away more, it will go for way longer at least three more times every vocals over it ever be all kinds of stuff happening maybe lead elements, so by the time we got to the second riff there would need to be a change, so what I'm feeling is that it would switch to the ride because the momentum of the song is pretty good feel cool backbeat rockfield won't want to really change it up. The rift isn't too different anyways for the second riff I'll let you hear the second riff again it is not too different, so I'm going to look for a ride beat like maybe keep the same type of feel the switch over the rise so let's see what I can come up with quickly ride theo since that's the first ride but I found when I just see if it works see if it works uh hijacking the velocity just to see your kind of wimpy I know and that's why the music I write sounds wimpy sorry to disappoint by jacking of velocity all the ghost notes suddenly got really loud and it sounds like crap so don't do it um do your velocities manually so I'm going to look through here and look for something with a ride wait that's better and a side note really quick for ah those ofyou and pro tools land if you're wondering how the hell I would remember what beats I use out of these gru's that's a good question and maybe cam you can explain you use a bilton uh I'm going to explain for pro tools but maybe you can explain for able to users have anybody else in here wants to chime in on how it would work and logic I think this is a very valuable thing but I don't use those two so here real quick just so you guys can see right here um the name e r s easy ex rock solid corresponds right here straight for four. So is from this first packet of straight for four beats you see that? So this corresponds to the first column right here that's how you figure out right here this corresponds to this column so you know chorus variation too I realized that there could be a little bit more detail added to this but this is this is what you got but at least at least you can kind of get if you're forgetting what you put in a song at least you can kind of approximate where it was and then find your groove like before I knew about this I'd write something go back to it a month later and then be like, oh no, where did I pull that from which one of these and yeah definitely like a like a oh no moment and the way that you do that in pro tools is in the view clip name see, I took the name off I like to keep the names on, so I know what I'm working with cam, is there a version of that enabled ethan that people should know about that you know of I've actually never notice that okay, cool learn something every day it's helpful is very helpful people I want to throw that I guess internet audience if somebody knows how to do this in your own dog and you want teo share with us put it into the chat room and I will share it with the studio audience because knowing what group you're working with is pretty important, I think especially if yu have projects that you know span over a long period of time and you go back and change something or you really like the sound you got on something, but you just don't know what grooves they were that was logic, and I think you just go into if you highlight the instrument that you're in or the groove that you're in, you would just double click on like the easy tremor little tab and I think it will just pop up in a like have all those highlighted but there's no, it doesn't like break down into code or at least I like cam I haven't noticed, okay, so in logic it kind of spells it out for you somewhat like if I double clicked on the easy drummer tab, it would just pop up like thiss like the screen that we have right now, so the chat rooms air telling us j t f forty four says logic will label it the same way for you within the midi region on and apparently cuba's does as well. So there we go so it's and is it within q base and logic? Is that an option that you can enable or disable like it is for me? I I do not know that party. So have you ever answered that? Maybe try to answer this. Let us know if it's an option that you can enable or disable the reason I'm saying that because I didn't even know this option existed until maybe two months ago and it changed my life, mikey prs says it just does it automatically cool, wow, cereal, automatically. The power of tune track that was in cool, g f said the same thing. I've never had to disable our enable so well, right here in pro tools, you definitely do need thio select name or not, because name or not, so are we cool.