Lessons

Lesson Info

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 ones over about this if ah if you want a really detailed detailed look on how to use the drummer I mean the plug in there are plenty of tutorials out there which will take you for every 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 but basically right here is where you would save your presets now it was important because there's so ma...

ny different drums here like just from looking at this one two three four five six seven eight nine ten different toms it was like ten different snares I mean you're going to end of 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 I'm the jazz get you go 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 to aah illustrate how important this is, I'm going to save it again as this is important, so do it is 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 process on the drum set, so this is important. So do this pre scent 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 change drum sets and you didn't say that it's gone, so this pre set menu save it as don't forget to save this too, 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 realized that so let's get into part writing may start by playing you guys a song that ah that I wouldn't really call it a song but it's a song because it's got three different parts has got something that you could call a verse there vocalist was on it the 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 an 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 to have 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 now 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 how is that possible? Well that's the high 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 contract go too so that's certainly possible now if I had be that I'm gonna 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 you would need a hand play that way have 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 like 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 all at the same time it doesn't work so but you know I can understand why you would want the pulse going of the hat throughout the tom part keeps it together drummer place tighter whatever plenty of reasons so high hat foot that's that and let you hear it again let's go to the right and also I think it bears noting that if the part is a realistic part it probably will groove better um there's something about writing realistic parts with that are arranged for a real drum set 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 I had to be going to be playing it with his left foot clicking it while doing the times so I figured that it was worth expounding on that for a moment so we're going to do the thirty minute song now and uh I can 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 you can see what we're going to be talking about we're gonna we're gonna basically start from the beginning get the plug it in stan she hated that question uh real quick well you're loading that up. I think we have a couple of shout outs and people in the chat rooms who are also watching we have a shout out to michael montoya from goliath and keith marrow we are in the chat rooms talking to people and people are reuniting like, oh, hey, man haven't seen you a while, so I'm michael and keith trying to get devin townsend come down from vancouver, but he said it was too early so so jeff, when you say two were not on rock n roll time right now this is so not rock n 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 man yeah, so devin maybe next time you know, but I hope you're watching yeah, jeff to you know, maybe next time we'll do it at two in the afternoon, which is ten in the morning and see this is loaded up yet get in there. Okay, so to start by ah listening to the music now when I write riffs I try to not right 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 content 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 with a saxophone or played by the band it was intended to be played by doesn't matter you can change the instruments and still be music so that's why I typically try to just write parts to a click 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, uh, one 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 rifts are little stuck together and that 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 week on that, so here it is with no drums, and I believe you will be able to hear click and actually I will create the click real fast for you to hear. Sorry if this click track isn't knowing jack could probably a lot mormon annoying if this was the nineties or the early two thousand's I agree wholeheartedly eyes has gotta pull in one setting real quick guys well, 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 looking me listening to it for a long time because I literally right to a click 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 trick themselves into thinking that they're better than they are you strip all that stuff away nothing but crap like you're saying minimizing earlier yeah it's it's a good thing to minimise restoring one source exactly uh 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 drum 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 and no shot was shot out time a meal worse slur is in the chat show okay anybody for anybody who doesn't know a mobile played guitar in a couple of projects with ellen is well known as literally the best guitarist in metal yeah, I would say so wow pretty much yeah yeah her again I'm somewhat I haven't found someone who disagrees with that statement yet so I'm going tio in stan she ain't easy jar so stereo instrument track and here it is and named it easy drama I see multi channel plug in I'm going through this because I remember that some people I know had trouble finding where it was so is he going to say I'm in multi channel instrument easy drop did you talk about why you're using multi channel in pro tools yeah rather than just one channel uh I don't know if there's another option like so in in some dpw'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 plug in 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 I think the other option is just model okay? Gotcha yeah, yeah I don't know how it's worded in ah other dawes I remember and logic it was they haven't hysteria or in multi channel they didn't come in the same one like it does on 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 would 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 groups 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 groups were recorded certain tempus of 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 won't work real quick so I just get a good live happening okay so I went to gru's and ah 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 it was not so bad now one thing you should know is that right here you see has a one half and one times in two times as the speed of the groove so if I put on two times it's playing at double time or halftime okay that's important to do ahead of time before you select your groove because the middie 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? I'm in half time which I don't want tio 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 with snare is on the down beats I don't want something that's overly halftime on just a cool rock back beat two and forest 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 so that might be a little bit too busy on the kicks but we can check it out anyways so it's not terrible it was 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 doesn't seem quite so cluttering still not straight enough for me though I'm going to look at some other ones I was here that works pretty close now my new these aren't meant to work exactly right out the box I mean if they do that's just lucky you one 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 novel right here the run out zero now so negative on twenty seven or keep going higher and higher this um 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 the song of a different group I would have to make sure that this velocity was 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, but I'm going to jack the velocities on this and then re read drag it you know, I don't think it sounds nearly as good because the symbols are overwhelming in the kick disappeared because the symbols are overwhelming and let's give you guys an example real quick of ah another extreme, which is the velocity all the way down all that nod obviously that's not going to work either no obviously now only 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 yes could hear that those examples sound radically different is trying to get that to zero out so command on an apple command click and it'll zero out so you command click zero um so I was using variation five at whatever the losses they give 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 for the same group I mean you could it fits in time but in real life if this was a real song this first rift would go way more it will go for way longer at least three more times every vocals over it there would be all kinds of stuff happening maybe lead elements so by the time we got to the second rift 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's not too different so I'm going to look for a ride be like maybe keep the same type of feel but switch over the rise so let's see what I can come up quickly come ride since that's the first ride but I found I just see if it works I 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 see by jacking of velocity all the ghosts 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 that's better and a side note really quick for those of you in pro tools land um if you're wondering how the hell I would remember what beats I use out of these grooves that's a good question and maybe cam you can explain you use a bolton uh I'm going to explain for pro tools with maybe you can explain for able to users have anybody else in here was a chime in on how it would work in 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 it's 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 and variation too I realize that um 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 to ceo took the name ofthe I like to keep the names on so I know what I'm working with so cam, is there a version of that enable tone that people should know about that you know of I've actually never notice it okay cool learn something every day it's helpful is very helpful in people I want to throw that I guess internet audience if somebody knows how to do this in your own dog, you want tio share with us put it into the chat room and I will share it with the studio audience because, uh, knowing what group you're working with is pretty important, I think especially if you have projects that you know, span over a long period of time and need to go back and change something or you really like to sound you got on something, but you just don't know what grooves they were that's his logic and I think you just go into if you highlight the instrument that you're in or the groove failure and you would just double click on like the easy tremor ah 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 ok, so in logic it kind of spells it out for you somewhat like if I double clicked on the e z drummer tab, it would just pop up like thiss like the screen that we have right now so the chat rooms air telling us ah j forty four says logic will label it the same way for you within the midi region on and apparently q base 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 whoever 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, magically the power of tune track that was, gf, said the same thing I've never had to disable or enable so well, right here in pro tools, you definitely do need tio select name or not, because name or not. So all right, cool.