Lessons
Introduction
17:37 2Intro to EZDrummer
14:46 3EZDrummer Foundations
29:29 4How a Drummer Plays
19:50 5Part Writing Part 1
32:53 6Part Writing Part 2
29:34 7Part Writing Q&A
10:20 8Intro to Grooves
13:47Lesson Info
Intro to Grooves
I think we should probably talk about the grooves just a little bit more because they are hugely important here, and we've got a song still loading in pro tools, so we'll just talk about them for a second stuff that I don't think we totally touched on, but I want to dispel a myth about the grooves men you were talking earlier, uh, used some program that supplies some loops and stuff and that's been a common thing with virtual drums for a long time just to have the pre supplied groups hang on one second guys just want to turn something off. Yeah, this song, this song has a delay on it that kind of yeah. So anyways, talking about dispelling the myth about grooves, being cheating or cutting corners somehow they're not the reason that people feel like they are is because historically, the loops that would come with virtual drums were just really bad, so if you use that, then you pretty much just sucked, and everybody knew that because they're worse than what you could do on your own. Howev...
er, in the case of the grooves that come with easy drummer superior drummer, they probably will be better than what most people can come up with on their own, and so that kind of flips the script, you had to be a super good programmer teo come up with something that's going to be better than what you're going to get in the groove packs and ah, something that you guys should know is that every single one of these drum sets that they have all of these they're all recorded in different rooms different room there's, different producers everything about them is completely different it's not just like what some companies do where they have a drum kit in the closet and they released their sample set and some loops and then three months later they'll record the same drum so at the same session drummer and just e q things differently and call it the country kit and then a few months later they'll do it again and then he cues stuff to be kind of cliquey and call it the medal a kid that's not what this is at all they they tuned track go too some top top places and I know how much time they put into these grooves and sample sets because they came to audio hammer um the process is extensive and the stuff is legit, so when it comes to the grooves basically your you've got a session drummer at your disposal like I don't know how many of you guys are familiar with what it costs to have a session drummer but to go through all these different styles rock, metal, jazz, you know, lounge music there's more there's like latin percussion there's elektronik there's a bunch of them that I don't really apply to what I do so I don't have them loaded in but there's so much many information you can get from there that basically I would say something like ninety and ninety five percent of your needs would be ah fulfilled from just using those on tweaking them some so it's a real corker just wanted tio share a couple details on some of these groups like so for example the library the extreme mini pack which can I think you use this one pretty often don't you um yeah I mean this is dirk from soil work and aborted whatever else he's been and who is an amazing drama yeah so this is these are his actual performances this isn't in the style of or, you know, we sampled his drums and then programming it's literally him playing this yeah and again I'm going to show you guys how this just one I mean there's you know everyone is I have a list right here I'm sorry don't know by heart but like we're talking about harry stinson, chris wouldn't jean hoagland near z morgan argon I mean there's a serious drum cats like you could probably not pay these guys to show up and record this stuff for you and if you can that's that's awesome good job but ah most people can't but also like he was saying this isn't just midian the style of these air their actual performances um and like we touched on before the stuff's not gritted out it's not edited so I'm gonna try to find you guys just how off the grid some of this stuff is just so you can see let's just take a look it something let's see it or a moment I'm just going to get rid of this delay real quick there we go because it was going tio annoy everybody in the studio crowd including myself all right, let me find something busy here some busy phil and, uh something busy let's just take a look at it, okay? So you couldn't see that is not on the grid. I mean, you could quantifies it if you want to kwan ties it but they kept the original performance intact. And ah for those of you who may not know what the grid is, I'll take two seconds to explain that these lines right here this dark blue line and these great outlines are are where the beat lands like if the metrodome was going it would be right to that. So like we said earlier and no drummer is perfect there humans we're all humans this is how drummers actually play so these grooves air the actual performances for better or for worse and in my opinion for better so keep that in mind you can always add it them if you want but they are what they are all right, so little brief recap grab a groove, pull it into here decide if you like it added the crap out of it if you don't, um and play you a third track that I've been working on for this real quick um it's totally not meddle, but I figure we need a little bit of variety here. Uh there's that sound I hear a frog um and this is with the rock solid kit so let us thehe new l levy amphibian preset pack by that's right? I live in florida there's a lot of them out there. Wait. So that's going to be more just spacey and big rock sounds and now I will tell you the drums by themselves and then we're going to get into fills a cz well, as if we just needed to do this from scratch what the hell would we do by the way while you listen to this try toe. Imagine if five years ago somebody told you guys that these air fake drums whether or not you would even believe them, I realize not the most glamorous thing in the world to listen tio slow drums like that, but what I'm trying to illustrate here partially is the quality of the rooms that you get with these trump acts I mean that sounds like it was recorded in a giant enormous awesome drum room the huge bass drum like you can't you can't really pay for drum rooms like that anymore so anyways you pay attention to this beat real quick listen to what the hi hat is doing so this is the beginning of writing from scratch I want to analyze this really quick because ah beat like this um is a very, very simple standard beat however it's not I let me backtrack is deceptively complicated for our purposes I think that the first thing that someone would do if they wanted a program a beat like this would be to just lay down some hats you know one, two, three, four one, two, three, four right? I mean, that would be that would be the first thing to do but check out this high have pattern this is part of what makes it sound real and uh I was zero in on that so you can check that out as you can. Ah, here it's definitely not exactly what you would initially think it is. First of all, once again velocities are all over the place second of all rhythmically you have all these different little subdivisions happening like yeah, you do have your eighth notes right here then you have sixteenth those right there but the variation, the velocity, is so great with the sixteenth notes that you almost don't notice it. It's. Not like a machine gun, however. That's. Part of what makes it have that swaying sort of feel. So I'll play it non soloed.
Class Materials
bonus material with purchase
Ratings and Reviews
a Creativelive Student
This course literally changed the way I work with digital drums. Before this course I had a hard time programming drums in my DAW and now it's become totally natural. My workflow has been greatly improved and so has my work. If you are new to the game, this will give you a MAYOR head start. Thank you.
a Creativelive Student
I could tell as soon as I watched the promo that I seriously wanted to check this course out, and when I did I wasn't disappointed. Eyal's EZdrummer tutorial is totally worth the purchase price. He is extremely knowledgeable and informative. He explains things very well, and offers many means of contact (Twitter, Tumblr, etc) by which one could ask any follow-up questions they may have that weren't covered in the initial session. I couldn't view the original session since I was working my regular gig when it was happening live, so the anytime access has been quite useful - I've been checking it out all weekend. I've already learned more for this than I did many times more hours of watching random YouTube tutorials on the subject. I would and have recommended this course already!
Professor Pizza
Eyal's instruction opened up a new world for my songwriting. Can't recommend this enough for working musicians that prefer to capture their song ideas in a high-fidelity way.
Student Work
Related Classes
Recording Drums