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Programming Drums: Custom Drum Kits

Let's, jump back in this is a huge segment for us because we're talking about something brand new new logic pro ten and it's you know, I've worked with some different drum programming aps before and done a lot of program, a lot of working with riel drummers, but I've never worked with something quite like this, which is going to be the drummer track so some back in always trying to review, making sure we're just getting more comfortable. The more we do stuff to create another new session, our new project for us here under file and new and there we created our blank session came up, we've been working with making new tracks and all of our new sessions we've done in class so far reviews the software is what's just came off of that explained external media's faras sending mini out tio some old outboard keyboards or drum machines will be on the audio guitar and bass later today, but we're going with this new one that we haven't seen in logic pro before on that is our drummer track, so let ...

me go ahead and create that one. I've got the open library, it's going toe, pop, open, less picks and stuff we're going to see a lot of action right here, just with my first click of create and what we're gonna notice happen is some changes on the screen here I opened that up close the library for just a second and we noticed that what is it made a track we're used to seeing those um but this one's a bit different it's filled already with some regions were going take a look that a second we have a new editor that showed up here and the good thing is it shows on the screen here that I'm hitting e which is our editor when we had the midi region it was popping open that built in piano roll or school score editor for us and same thing here now with a drummer track being selected we've got a brand new editor here for the drummer with some cool looking controls let me jump back I'm going to make yourself a couple screen set I'm going to get in the habit of doing so gonna lock this one down is my screen set one going to to let me get one when going and just take a look at our region that we have we're gonna need some views hear of that pop open our global tracks because we'll be using a global track here in the segment lock down screen set number two go ahead and do it three screen set number three what would be able to go in outer inspector and with on editor open and we'll fill that out as well be able to jump in and do some library work by popping the library open it's gonna lock it and finally we didn't take a look at how we're gonna mix some drums so I'm gonna go to screen set for bring up that mixer with command too pop that one over so we see but what is brought up with the default trump kit is just a single track here says so, cal it the bottom so let me lock that one down and get back to the beginning here with our full view so again what it did for us this was my favorite thing when I brought the new drummer track knows one or what could a drummer track b and I hit play drummer track displaying drums for me so let's, take a look at how this generated drums for us. What are we hearing? What do we have going? So we'll take a look at the editor on the region itself now want to jump in here, look at number two and let me command down hero got some stuff on the screen and we noticed that this is a different looking regional zoom in horizontally where it looks like a little bit of a combination it's not quite audio like we saw before you turn on a cycle here watches it goes over, we see that it's definitely hitting some events and going through but it's not many notes but it's not audio either it's not digital audio it's not those wave forms that we saw it's something totally different but it showed us there's some different drum hits that are happening so we have a little lane of the bomb there kick and our snare and some of the high hat and rhythmic stuff happening above it so cool brand new looking region here let's try to figure out exactly what he's doing for us take us back a step here what we're gonna do is take a look at what we have for options now said it brought up a default drummer and I see a couple of things happening so it's looked down in our editor here a little bit I'm even bring this up just a little bit higher and what we have is I'm going to go to the library a second but we see that it starts to be having some different genres here and within that we've got some pictures of some different people those air drummers go in different styles where you see different names for each of these drummers we go in here and kick it click on some of them so I'm into I'll goto alternative for now go somebody like aidan here it's going to tell me some different things about these people so restrained simple indie rock beats on a natural kit if I clicked back on and there I went to somebody like nikki, another drummer. We hear that nikki is a bouncy, rock infused dance beats on a hard hitting kit. So what? We're getting me with each of these tracks or if we pick a different drummer, is basically a different style, just a different take every musicians a little bit different and that's exactly what they have going with their different drummers. Now, this mars, I know that what's going on here is they've actually captured the performance of real drummers on dh here is sort of something telling us a little bit about their style and what they play, and just like different drummers, they've got their own instruments. So when I pick somebody here and I go to the bottom, where it tells me at a, uh, a name of a drum kit, I can click on it actually see there's, that drum kit that this drummers playing I can interact with it, click and see others your kick drum is there snare drum, tom's symbols, ride cymbal I had so a lot of different sounds there for it, but that's for this drummer, I clicked back on the drummer here and look at a different drummer I might notice a different appearance, different sound, different stuff, plus some options to change the kit that they came with so already I was really impressed but I'm gonna take it back a step here and work the way that I've started to get a little bit used to working with so I'm gonna get why whisk oh raid into the library now when you download you're gonna get a couple of drummers in a couple of drum kits when you initially start, but what I want to work with here is something called the producer kits and the producer kits they're going to be available to you once you've gone in like we talked about yesterday and downloaded the initial theoden inal content and you're going to see a bunch of different kinds of drum kits and from the library from our patches here, I think I'm going to go for and I'm going to recommend here is producer kits this some people you know have heard some people say and I've read some stuff about how you might want to start with one of these other ones these other kids who we have here they've just a stereo mics down version and that's what we saw with the default where when I went over to something like the mixer we saw the one fader that was controlling all the drum sounds for the stereo drum kit, but what we're going to get into here is a list of producer kits and something that I found is that a lot of same thing so I see bluebird bluebird brooklyn brooklyn so from the normal patch normal names of the patches for the stereo kits we have these things called the producer kits when I go down to the producer kits here and I'll just pick that first one that came up actually I found another one down here that I like quite a bit neo soul is what I was working with yesterday and what we're going to find here is something totally different now I'm I'm going to start trying to show you guys a little bit of what was going on with the ipad way have a couple things here I'm trying to control some stuff and logic so being able to also share the screen is something that I was having a problem with so I want to sure you guys is setting up a camera here that with each track that I have and some different controls dependent what kind of track that's a software instrument it's an audio track that's the mixer I have open or this drum track the ipad remote app that we have is going to change some stuff and I love it with the drummer here that I'm starting to see a drum kit it's interactive so I could sit here instead of being at the keyboard start working on my sounds and even perform from here that's so cool let's, look at my little drum kit on the ipad and plant, so, uh, back here again on my screen, I've picked a new drum kit, someone to close out with why looks going to get us back to our first screen set here and now I've got at the bottom, it says neo soul so even though logan had his own drum kit before, I now have this new drum kit in here, which has its own kick tom's and snare, and now I'm going to talk a little bit about this drum kit editor here because, uh, there's just some different stuff with the producer kits that we didn't have access to before I'm going through this, I said, we have a real drunk, it really drum sounds, but they've made it so that we can change all kinds of stuff about it. So I'm on the kick drum here. I could start swapping out stuff if it's not working pick a different kick drum to go with this kitten. You hear those different sounds? What the producer kits we could do the same thing with everything's changing that tom's from a different kit. I got some great names that help us sort of understand what they are modern invented stuff, berge kids. Snare drums, which could mean everything with your song having the right snare that goes with it but even with changing those things symbols from modern toe, old vintage sounding symbols more wash to him but with all them besides just being able to change them we can control things about it's what the kick could change the tuning to better fit what's going on with the song contaminants to give it the sound of having some kind of like a muffled system in it or a bunch of duct tape ifyou're drummer like drummers I play with getting a bunch of dampening in there and plus in volume and stuff like that but this changes for each of the drums that were going through and including when you get to things like tom's being able to change him stuff about all of them or just talk about the low tom the mid tom the hi tom and all those different controls that we have that those as well so customizing the drum kits another thing I could spend days on just going through playing with you the different sounds and showing you some of the collections that I made. So what the bottom of the drum kit we have some other things about mapping it and the game for some of the instruments that we can have a cz well, so lots of stuff to play around with in there one thing I want to talk about in here getting wish you could talk about everything, but with the controls with the producer kits, we get some action control, so you'll see cem things in here that, you know, some people have had a little bit of a hard time with the concept of this one's like leak and the overheads in the room. So if you haven't done a lot with multitrack recording with drums, some stuff we should know about that naturally happen that people don't always get right when we're using like synthetic drums or samples of drums and trying to program them together is that sometimes it sounds like, yes, great recordings of a kick drum or snare drum or symbols or something like that, but they don't sound like they're in the same kit are part of a real drum kit that somebody was playing in a real room and that's where these options are going to help us get home that more realistic sound with the drums. So when we hear things like leak, what it's talking about him on the kick drum, saying, you know, if I have a microphone or two microphones inside a kick drum and I'm hitting the kick drum, you hear it, but also five a snare mike sitting right above that kick drum on top of the snare drum. That kick drum should naturally leak a little bit get a little bit of the sound not totally isolated and maybe you do want it isolated and find turn it off we turn it on, you're going to notice that the different mikes and the drum kit will pick stuff up same thing with overheads over the top you know that's mainly some people think of it to just capture symbols when we mic up a drum kit, but of course anything that's below those microphones is going to get into it so this while I'm on the kick would allow little bit that kick to go into the overheads on dh then also a room sound. How much is this getting out into those room likes you may have set up and so we can turn that on and you haven't a and a b options there two different sets of room mikes and I can hear the difference especially when I go to symbols I can hear that difference there's with the room thie room and then when you turn those overheads off, you don't get anything with those on so great deal same with cymbals crash left crash right we can change the ride individually the high hat so dig around with this that the drum kit designer this is the actual instruments that we have and it's a producer kit on the drum kit designer but let's get back to our drummer track and the editor all right so we have to pick my drum kit I've got logan as a drummer right now that's going to go through a picket now normally I said each of these drums what happens is if you click drummers rather if I click on here I get back to the list again and if I was to go through and pick maybe a different person like nicky here from the alternative set and I click on it what is gonna want to dio is bring up their drum kits we see my drum kits gone no don't do that so flawed actually well let me undo that I thought it would lie down so what we're gonna do is go back again into the library go back to my producer kits drum kits bottom producer and go back to my neo soul kit that were playing around with bring that back up. Now what I want to remind you guys is what I do then to have it not change each time and pick drummers once I get a drum kiddo that producer sent it normally want to keep them so they've made a cool little feature in here that if I want to change maybe from nikki back to a different one I'm just here with the different drummers are doing you hold down option hold on option now, when I changed, click just to get back to the list, and if I go to one of the other drummers here? No. So instead of bringing up his traditional drum kit that sticks with him normally it's going to keep with neo soul, so again option, click on it, go back to the list, maybe even go to a different genre and pick, uh, pick logan again here and he's still going to keep it the new so that way I love to do with this first because you'll hear the different drummers and hear their different styles, but you're not just hearing the change drum kit. Sometimes the adults on different kinds of a different drum kit, this is the way to get familiar. I think, in my opinion with the different drummers is that imagine that you've got a line of drummers, you're going to try out, you haven't come sit behind the same drum kit change, place similar things, but see what they're different style is so that's. One thing we're going to do here is hold on option when we click and go through the different drummers to make sure we keep that neo soul drum kit as we're going forward let's take a listen to it again, I could go back and change a new things any time because the drum sound and what it did here is faras bringing in these regions is uh this is sort of the default thing if you just have a new song is going to bring in a couple eight bar length regions on will see that they're cut up instead of being sixteen it stops and brings over another one only when we get to the end of one of them let me turn off the cycle let me get rid of my play by selection for now give us a little fill out those transitions transitions so they're they're being like a normal drummer you feel a change come and there we go till bring stuff over so we got a bit that's plain gonna lupus on those first eight bars we start getting to changing what they're actually playing here all right? So they actually go into what their point we're going to go into the editor at the bottom now with this editor what we see is first of all some presets so to the right of where we've selected a drummer we know his drum kit we have some presets for what would this drummer play? Okay, so we have his style s o that it's going to be him as the drummer but he's got a couple different things that he can play for us so we started this one called am gold as you click through, you'll see some different styles same tempo whatever our session tempo is just like the loose and everything it's going to follow along right away, so if I went a little bit faster, we should hear him speed up, so it is different preset sounds pretty drastic with the way that these things change, but as far as songwriters go, I talked to some people and they love it between just these selections that we have here in this list with the presets, they'd only get what they want, at least to start writing a song, and then they could go back later and find tune it a little bit. So I think great away just if you pick the right drummer, get the right presets well here that we can get something good going, let me go back to a different drummer just so we can check out how that idea of presets go so good alternative got nikki, I'm a big fan and nikki and I'll option click on nikki to keep our drum kit and it's telling me right now that I may have made some changes to some stuff, it can keep them or change the drummer and I'm going to just change it change the settings is talking about the region there and things that happen like with the preset but store neo soul and here's her different presets wait, go you might notice that while I'm clicking these different ones, we're getting some things to change around here, so let's, go with the idea of what we want to do is sort of tell our drummer what we want them to play and that's what's going to get us down here into our editing area, so I'm going to slide this over a little bit, in fact, let me close my inspector for now, and we see the drum kit we see this little work area, we see this little glowing yellow thing found out they call that the puck, so here are going to move this puck around what we're going to see some different things happened with our drummer region up at the top, so I'm gonna change my focus to the top, move this down so we can see a little bit of that region little bit doubling. So what we have for the option here with moving our puck around is this a simple grid was going to say soft in the bottom, allowed at the top and notice whenever I change this and let go of the mouse it's gonna update our region let's, listen to what happens when I go down soft, go loud change in the intensity of what their plane for that part once you guys notice we're going to hear is turn this one all the way down but then I want to select this region over here you see it's totally different settings for each of them so this is going to be a region by region bit of setting that we can do as faras what they're going to be playing for us all right let's go back to this first one I mean, soft right now besides soft don't put us pretty much in the middle of louder. We also have options on here with making it simple for this region that we have selected are making it more complex so from piece to piece region to region we cannot change no okay, how much are they going to really be plain timeto lay back and let it be a little more focused on other musical things outing we want the drums to really sort of move us along with something more complex already we're seeing we could do some big changes what's going on, but another thing that we can do here is actually going and talk about the performance that they have which each of their individual drums so look att here and I get to pick things like the kick in the snare so down in the bottom I see a slider over here that says kick and snare and I've got some different controls with it facing the dis variations of what they're going to play so let's, listen this we have a little kick snare high hat pattern on one very simple great for writing too great for, you know, maybe just basic parts first part's things like that as I change it and go to two now a little bit more complex, just a different rhythm with it. Three go to that fourth one kicking this there they've got a lot of different patterns of the green of six different ones to go through here remember, each time I move each of these through five of them. Right now, I can individually change to make this part louder, softer symbol complex, and this is next year or two my favorite settings for the kick in the snare because they're ones that when you're working with a drummer, you'll ask him to do all the time when you're trying to change up your song and that is have their control of their kicking their stare go to from what they're playing, too, maybe a half time for a little breakdown may be a change from a faster part of a course or something, or doing a bridge and then to the really cool, double time punk rock land there, so again, all with the same drummer, the same complex to simple, soft, loud, we can change all kinds of different things about it. Again, each region we have, we're going to make it individual, so we want to do it just for a little bit we can change them at the same things that we had before with re sizing the apple loops we've got that tool right here we can resize them and change them, so if we want to do a certain part for just a little bit, we could do that was going and it's actually move this and so it's just the five bars and I'll move this next one over sorry, four bars long, so if I wanted to go from this one change to something else, we have the same idea would be able to go in an option drag so I can have two copies of that but let's make a little bit of a change, so from the first one into the second one here, I'm just going to change the kicks there patty so while everything else is the same, the only difference between the first one the second one little bit differently kicking the stair pattern again that's great where we could go from one that was a certain way to the exact same thing just changed it toe halftime it's going to make it a great way to really change the field and then go right back to where it was or with that double time still in time still in rhythm with everything else that's going on so we look a little bit about moving that stuff around change them we're only on the kick in the snare so far put my cycle back on down to here extend this first one actually fills in for me back with what we had to the original parts so we can re side so if eight bars isn't gonna work for you once you get it set, just go and make it longer if you want to to feel whatever part you're on your song but so here's a very simple kick snare but I'm going to go into the high hats the next one up there. Oh, so so what happened with that? We'll open close thing more complex will open closed there's another great time to remember okay, now I'm getting something set up the way I like it, but I could go at any time and just remember where I'm at but option click on that drummer get back and we'll see what somebody else would do with the same song with same parts now this time it's asking me do you want to change this important no it's saying hey, if you bring up this other drummer it's gonna bring in their field and their changes to stuff so what we did in the region with all of our controls in the editor it's going to change it to more of what they would kind of do? We don't want to do that. We'll see what this trouble would do plain that performance so I'm going to cancel it. We're gonna do is go to my presets here and say, you know what? Keep the settings when changing the drummers and I had the presets and little options here I'm going to keep settings when changing drummers and this time we're gonna hear what nicky had. We're gonna hear that same idea of the edited performance, but I'm going to be able to hold option, keep my drum kit and try somebody else. This is the take of this drummer what they would do with that same performance or try somebody else again and instantly changes over for me even if I'm going in here. This should be a drastic difference because army drummer but it's the same part, same song this is what they would play for it think that's great being able to go through and try out different drummers for your songs. Spencer, you got a question for me so luke can be customized like you could have a different drummer for each one? I'm no, no, no let me explain that what we can do is you, khun try out the different drummers for them, but it won't automatically change the drummer so I went over to this one right here. Well, see that nikki still on there? Okay it's away we have so many drummers in the way what time waiting we were finding out here today we've got a lot of drummers in house love you drivers uh uh so great question, but no as of now what we're gonna do is just pick the drummer that's right? But be able to change is still pretty cool without having to redo all these settings we had a complex, simple, loud quiet but yeah, great question I'm going to be able to tell you how you could do that there's definitely a way we're going to be able to get them but not in this automatic way have been able to go region by region by region but for sure they've given us options for a way that we can have recorded these different drummers into our song questions can you set that like if you just feel like I'm gonna get in trouble for saying it like it was pocket the drummer I can use preset it though like if you wanted each one to have the same like rotate between right so this region over here having it's buck setting and then this one right here, right? Yeah, absolutely that's the name of the game because on glad you asked because where the puck is here's bars loud, soft, simple, complex is really what's driving it's sort of the motivation for the drummers the way I like to think about it, right? All the other thing is going to tell him, restrict them or free them up to play a little bit more with them are a little bit of a different pattern, but the puck is definitely going to say this is you for this part, if I had to describe it, you know, with two words it's, loud and simple or, you know, quiet and complex, so you're right on you hear it that that's that's what the divided little regions is really driven about has been able to customize the puck setting and also the different pattern of the drum settings go back to that particular one, so it is like, so visual it's not like exactly right rated this one and you're like, yeah, I want teo, you want to make sure that if first of all two things and you brilliant question, if I wanted teo say, have this part play here, then go to something other sending, then have it go back to that one again, of course, when we're in the session or in the project, I can grab that one and move it with the option drag or copy paste on weed you okay? That's setting this setting and now that saying again so that's one way to do it but I think what you're asking probably is no like another song from now I want that's like that's my drummer's like go to be type thing and of course they've given us that option just like with almost everything else we've learned about right where we see the words presets or ever seen disclosure triangle we could go in your click on that and go down and we're going to save that as a preset you take credit for it, you give it your name and uh in a glass and now we've got a spot where we can always go back in there and get that for any of them. Yeah, great question you want to take a few from online? Is this a good place to take one from daniel amanda when I was just wondering it's like, are you able to build it up instead of just going from super quiet too drastic loud is their way to absolutely way have going on here, daniel is that I've got er this section and then that section so it showing us too right now right going to show us the way that we can automatically get some built in things, but when we talked about having no, let me get rid on bar for here and if we wanted to we could go in and like every four bars actually that would have put it in the a different spot right in the middle here I can go in and just click with this highlighted upper half now I've got a new one so we say this first one we start there this next one was get just a little bit louder and a little bit more complex so I see that you know this progression here too that progression to this one they can go all the way over there so it's a building as it goes and same thing we could say ok, maybe high hats will start simple in the first one this next one will go to a more complex to the last we're gonna be really complex that's what you're looking for right now you got nothing like they don't have to be four bars there could be two bars that could be anything that we really want to get in there and just have it built on yeah, I'm going to show you the easiest way that I've found to be able to jump to those do we hear that you want to hear the different student yeah let me turn off the cycle so we could just jump and you're here he gets to the end building progress with everything right