Lessons

Lesson Info

Bonus: EZDrummer - Part Writing Part 2

let me do a brief recap of where we're at. We went into rift to Riff one is on the hat Rift. Who's on the ride? Rift two is more of a pre chorus type situation. Onley reason that riff one went through the line of times it went through because we don't have vocalists and we're doing a drum class when reality would be way longer There will be other elements happening. So okay, so pretty much works. But that's a groove that I would go back and tweak later, but in the interest of moving forward, this 3rd 1 would beam or where the chorus would happen This So I wanted something completely different for that just to really set it apart cause the course is supposed to pop, right? So I was thinking something along the lines of Tom Be cool. Tom beat Uh huh. Queens of the Stone Age or something. Uh, which is a band that I dig so looking through here I do. I think they're sweet sweet writing. So I think your sweet I think you're all right. So you Teoh clean. Here I went Teoh heavy Tom's and let's ...

just check out what what kind of pizza guy? So I could take that and cut it up and make it into something, but want to keep checking things out? That's actually Phil. That's pretty cool. But since I'm not the type of person who likes to just take the first thing that comes my way, I am going to check some other ones. So Variation one is a little bit lower. It kind of sounds like variation to focuses on some higher Tom's being that the riff is a little bit higher in nature. I'm going to just go on a whim and take the lower drum. One Teoh, Give it a little more separation. So let's just see. Maybe it'll work. As you can see, it kind of works, and it kind of doesn't. But that's where I would mess with the groove. The basic element of it that done lunch is pretty cool, though that right there that might be what I used on my original version of this song. Uh, we meet this delay because it's just going on forever. CIA. Um, so this group is something I would cut up, so let's see. Okay, so basically, I was gonna delete that. Don't even need it. You're right. That's a different one. That's this one there. Two tracks at lease. All right, so this right here is the basis for what I'm looking to do. I am going to just, ah, grab it, too. Here in the loop it Then we're gonna go back and tweak it a little further. So let's see what we got so far. That might be an odd amount of space. Yeah, it is. That's why I get some of the crashes in there. Well, you're poking around here. Wanted to have a couple more shadows, Mr Ryan. Night from Black Dahlia. Murder. Ryan, tell ale I said hi. My feet from the Netherlands is cutting in and out a bit. Need to go warm up before the show. Great job ale. Love you, Ryan. Okay, so we put we put the Tom beat on what would be the chorus and, uh, gonna grab the first the first beat. Copy it onto where the verse riff comes back, and, uh voila. We basically without refining it yet which we're going to follow. We basically have the makings of the makings of a song. The makings of the makings of a song. Okay, so now I've got that. And Ah, in my opinion, before you start adding fills and messing with everything should ask yourself, does that get the point across? Like do you guys think it gets the point across? You can say no. Do I need to change in these? Besides tweaking? Like, are these beads close enough to where I can move forward and tweak them what they was? Were you thinking? Yeah. I think all the grooves definitely matched the structuring of the makings of the making of song. Makings of the makings of That's where we're at right now. Yeah. So from this point, I would agree that it's good to move forward and start tweeting individual little things. What were you saying? Were you about to say something? Yeah. I just had a question about more of the program. Showed it by default, going into just the same kit, even though you're choosing separate grooves. Well, the kit that I have selected is not Papa Rocket. So you can choose from multiple grooves. Yes, like checklists. Full throw it out just for the sake of being funny. Because I don't think that this kid's gonna sound bit for this sound music. I am going to load metal machine. Okay, give it a second load. The Midi is still gonna play through sounds doesn't sound bad, but it's different. So, yeah, the MIDI packs The grooves are not proprietary to the kits, Which is part of what's so cool about this. When you get it. Library of grooves. It'll work for any one of these kits that you get. Um, so, you know, put it on rock easy acts. That's more the kit that I was using. My original example. Uh, give you something that totally won't work real quick. Just you can hear the difference. The jazz kit. Watch it work. Just because I said because I said it won't work. This'll be the one. Yeah. One more question from thes chat rooms, which is from to shutter, not pronounce it. Yeah. Uh, where do you find the key maps? I e which many note on the piano roll correlates to Which kind of hit on the drum kit. You see this little question mark right here When you hit this question mark, you get this menu. So we are in jazz. You see his has description and MIDI layout, so click on many layout. Let's see what happens. A. Pdf should pop up and there you go. This is what they give you for The options are different in Superior Drummer, A superior drummer. It's a whole other story and, ah, whole other course. But this is how you do it. An easy drummer. They give you this. Pdf for everyone of the drum sets. And there we are, printed out Question Mark, uh, many layup. Yes, the question mark is right there and top right of the plug in. And you know, it's It also gives you the description, which is kind of cool. If nerds out there want to know it's the description of exactly who recorded it. Um, you meaning the drummer, the producer, where it was done, like all that stuff. You know, I don't know if you want trivia. I don't really care about that kind of stuff, but anyway, back to this. Um, So we were on the original kit for some reason, but I might just go to Iraq because I know that that's what I like. All right. So started this 1st 1st beat, I feel like the hi hats are a little bit overbearing. So I'm gonna find the hats and I'm gonna bring down the velocities on them overall. Okay, that's exactly what I'm gonna do. You believe that Thistles them So question for you. Sure. Why are you bringing down the velocities rather than the level off the hi hats you know, in the mixer? Because I think that it's not. It's not a volume issue so much as it's how hard the drummer actually played the hat. The hat sounds different. If a guy's playing at medium intensity, the hat itself will sound different. Velocity corresponds to how hard something's being hit. And of course, if you're hitting harder, it gets louder. But the tone changes. So what I'd be doing if I turn down the volume right now, is that be taking this tone that I don't think fits and just turning it down? Whereas right now I'm gonna be changing the tone completely. Gotcha. So so you see, I selected it. The hats and I am bringing down the velocity is a little nothing major, what is overbearing And, uh, maybe a different hat will be a good idea here. Maybe not that one. So I decided to go with high and dry hats who and not so ringing and all over the place and taking everything over as kind of wanted, something that kind of just establishes that keep the pace like like the Shaker would in a pop song. Now check it out. The look at how varied these velocities are, it's not just that's not what's happening at all. Um, these velocities air all over the place on what you would think is just a very simple high hat pattern, with just keeping a pulse going. So on that note, we have, ah question from the chat room, which is Aaron from Florida. Why are the preset grooves not Kwan ties, to do strictly quantities the drums when you're when you're creating a song? So I know I know from talking to attract guys that they deliberately did not. Kwan ties the grooves. Do you want to talk about why they may have made that decision? Yes, they the grooves air, not quanta ized, because they're played by riel drummers, and they're supposed to feel like real drummers. It would almost invalidate the reason Teoh go through the trouble of getting these guys to play this stuff of your if they then quantifies the MIDI. The whole benefit of getting these expansion packs is that you have the feel, um, not, you know, not just the beat choice, but also the feel of all these great drummers on the field comes from variation in time so that you can always quantities them if you want. I mean, you could even take it to the level on diff. This is too advanced for some people, Let me know. But you could even go to the level of bussing these down to individual tracks and then using beat detective and edit them like you would a normal drum session in the studio with a real drummer. I mean, these are basically real drums just converted into MIDI. So yeah, they leave them as they were, played some. It's pretty cool. I think some of these drummers air so great that you really don't need to bother quanta izing anything. So back to this high hat, I'm gonna let you guys in a little secret. I never really used the mixer on this thing so we'll see. This does what I want. Dead. It did. Okay, so I want to point this out in a solo out. Easy Drummer Guys here. The amount of variation in that. All right, So one of the things I noticed about bad drum programming, uh, back in the day when I was programming beats And still to this day when I get stuff from people when there's, like, closed high hat, there's just, like closed high hat is quiet, has literally one or two samples, and it's just it just doesn't sound right. For some reason, I've never been able to figure it out. Why, until now? But, ah, that sounds legitimate to me. And again, check out our play it solo doubt and, ah, check out the city variation on that. Okay, so that high hat is highlighted. So notice it's going soft, loud, soft, loud, soft, loud, soft, loud, soft, loud, soft, loud. But even within that, there's variation is not just it goes down toe. One soft velocity and one loud velocity is changing. Every every one of them is different. Now, however, it looks like the loud ones are very close to each other. there's still a little variation there. So even on these simple, you would think all you had to do his program in a quiet high hat and that will take care of it. Even on these simple beats, the dynamic velocity variation is key to making a sound real. Here is unsold. Sounds like a drama. Played it because and mind you, that's already that's already messed with me. That's not the original groove anymore. Okay, so sorry with the second beat Theo. A lot of things that don't really work well with the riff kick pattern is a little too busy in the wrong parts as a little too not busy in other parts. So let's examine that, as was the ride. Bell isn't hit hard enough says you can see right here you've got a lot of kicks going on. Start by removing the ones that are under the snare cause lots of drummers don't ever even do that. At this point, when we're talking about something like kicks, it's important to really think to yourself like Listen your head. What kind of beat do you want this to be? Where do you want the kicks to happen? that right there seems like too much to me. I think this guy right there were out to fix the Phil. Obviously, the Phils. Jack Eso. Now I think that that's made a monumental improvement to the field of that with the riff riff is kind of busy so that kicks don't need to be as busy contrary to what all you metal people think the kicks do not need to match the riff. Um, you don't need to match every single note. Actually, you might get more mileage out of your beats if ah, you add a little bit more space. There's a lot of power in the space. I just noticed that guy. See you later. It was nice knowing you, you're dead. So I think the rift has a lot more space now, Uh, it doesn't get in the way of the moving of the guitar movement, whereas before the kick pattern was so cluttered that it was just getting in the way. So that's a quick improvement that I made to that, uh, let me examine the ride really quick. That feels a little dinky and it is a little dinky. I feel like we need a little more ride bell in there. So I see here. So just gonna take these as a tester, the upbeat and shift them to the bell. I believe this is the bell is, but there's played lightly, so I'm gonna raise the velocities a little bit on them. Might be a little too much s Oh, I see that there scrag Laura's faras velocity goes to bring that one down a little. Okay, so that's kind of what I was going for with the rides. I'm gonna basically, uh, repeat that idea for the rest of the thing. And mind you, I'm not copy pasting what I just did. I'm taking this performance, and I'm applying the same concept to it. Um, have taken these upbeat these rise on the up eats and putting them on the bell. I did not take this and just copy paste it over to here like a lot of you would be inclined to do. Or I would have been inclined to do what's upon a time since this is an actual performance. Uh, just transferred into midi. Why mess with that on? It looks like the drummer even made a little mistake there and played a double hit on the ride. So they leave in the little the little law inconsistencies or variations or in this case, sounds a little mistake. It's gone. And again, I'm gonna apply the same concept this to this third time. So this Phil right here is almost there. In my opinion, the only thing missing is one Tom hit at the end because, uh, the it has to bridge over. It has to basically connect us to the chorus. And right now, it's so I'm just gonna find a Tom that's lower than the that one. And then just do that guy There you go through a crash on the one of the chorus. There she goes. Only one thing is bugging me still right here that I'm gonna fix is that this ride pattern just kind of stopped. I should continue on the bell. However, these velocities are a little much now, one thing when it goes to this Tom part, it's kind of like the flow stops a little bit and that's not supposed to happen. So I'm gonna go to high hat on the foot and just add at a pulse so that sounds like that. That would be it. So I was gonna make sure that it's that I'm just gonna grab a midi note and put it there and then add a pulse. And on this I am copy pasting. But that's not where it ends. I'm going to then randomize it. Yes, it does. Yeah. Thats would be where we consult the question. Which note is it? Just checking. There's closed edge and close battles won't see. They have different, uh, different versions of it, cause sometimes they do, because I have, like, closed tip. No. Alright, closed pedal. There you go. It's that one. I think the velocity is just too high. Dude, I think that's what it is. And also, it's the same velocity every time right now, so, yeah, exactly. Fake as hell. So All right, so the reason I'm doing this is because this was not a performance. This I am augmenting a performance, so there's no, uh there's no feel that I would messing up. I'm going to be creating feel on this. Okay, so that went to the end. Okay, So, first of all, over all these air too loud. Second of all, they're all the same velocity. And I think it should go loud, soft, loud, soft, loud, soft, loud, soft. So let's just check these out. The glamorous world of drums. See there that sounds a lot more like the deal.