Lessons

Lesson Info

Demo: Building a Basic Groove with Guitar Part 2

We were talking about just kind of what we're doing with our track and I think it's really interesting because again when I look at how far along we already are and this really simple basically structure demo process to as far along as you may have been able to take this with this technology or two years ago it's amazing how quickly we inefficiently we can work with great sound and like we talked about in the first session great sound is inspiring so let's again we'll take it back what's a snore song we're out with our basic rules your basic verse course kind of thing it's your listening face now something interesting happened and I know if you caught it the way the groove was structured and design that actual course group we have there are some embellishments that the drummer plays in the groove that and again I don't like to use this word a lot but that magically seemed the lineup and accentuate what's happening in the last couple of measures of the course of just listen again to how...

it sounds like they were recorded to get like it was done purposely but it's clearly just the mindset of a really great drummer playing and knowing that is going to going to study oh those were the moments where you think yourself this is really really cool so what you have is some inspiration now the next step for me would be to go in and sort of changed the drum sounds, which I want to do right now because I'm not really inspired by the the actual kit were using. And I believe I just have this stock hit that we're using at the moment. Yeah, so I want to actually go in and use the vintage kit that comes with the drummer, too, and I want to use let's. See, there was the tape drive. Presence is easy, mixed two percent. Maybe part of it is mixed. Eso we've got this present, and I kind of like the way this one sounds let's. See if it complements the track at all. Here. More garage. A little more low five. But it's not cool enough because the drums to me or a little biting simple enough let's. Go in and find some dirty dirty rock. You already know it's gonna work, folks it's called dirty rock. So this is it. Here we go. I don't think so. Not working great. And that's. Amazing prospect. I mean, to be able to go in and have these different tones and textures and instantly tell this isn't gonna work. This is gonna work that process alone off trying out a different drum sound in the studio is impossible. You record the drums as they are, and then you would be doing all of this to affect them after I mean, in real time, you're auditioning sort of this mindset that you want to be in for this group and we've again, we've based a lot of we I'm based a lot of my decision making process on the original guitar tone are selected, so the idea is he recorded really direct and I'm just I have a guitar tone in place once I changed that guitar tone, the drum sound may totally need to change or want to change, and I'm not limited it's up, okay, I'm here, I'm still in the program, I could change things that can add things it's a beautiful time to be a musician and a songwriter in this day and age in again, I'm hoping that as we do this it's really capturing just kind of how organic the processes this is literally something that if you have easy drummer, too, and your dog choice as soon as you're done watching this broadcast, you should try this. You should grab a guitar and play the first thing that comes to mind, grab and set some sounds and just start writing, and this is that. That organic songwriter flow we keep talking about where we feel that even though we're in a dog and we're kind of in the minds of like we've got to get results, it still doesn't seem like there's a lot of pressure it seems like a very natural flowing thing let me just I want oh, really kind of get up a good kind of trashy drums that sound here what's up. I like that kind of like that a lot of ways that for now kind of nice to have a big round punch kick drum tam marine sounds brilliant if we go into the mixer weii can hear their something's going on we've got some reverb I'm actually gonna bring the compression back a little bit and bring the river about a little bit because that kind of that a little bit more roomy I'm gonna pull the indians back, bring the money kind of that echo from the reverb it's kinda nice it gives it a swing and it works nicely with the guitar like I think ok, so let's rewind listen, you know, it could be cool. So remember how I picked that really horrible high hat sound at the beginning that none of us liked and you guys like rick that's horrible, I remember that part, so let me go in these drummer too what if we started off just a little bit differently? So again, even though I was last in the mixer page, I can get back into my place style function. So what if, in these first two bars, the power hand is moved to the floor? Tom, what if we kind of ride the floor tom in? And then we go into this the high hat thing so I can do that in both of these let's see what we've got? Kind of cool, I can change the velocity way kind of comes in way need to crash their eye, I think now, a crashing and of course, I just cause the program because that's, what you should do when you want something in it, we put the crash in who I was too fast, too fast. Um, let's put the opening crashing, and now I think we've got something that's little more dynamic. I like it. So there's a couple things I want to change. First of all, let me change the loop point here, since we're only using thiss smaller fraction the person, of course, does anyone any questions? Concerns, comments? I know I'm kind of moving through some of this stuff in my own head, because it's awesome, so does anyone have anything they want to interject and so many sky the music is wondering how tio specifically map easy germ a choo teo there at least is control had to play in real time. That's not totally on on top of what we're doing here. So they releases kit that I think they're at least this control pad they said so I think they have some control pad unit. Okay, three lisa's drum map should be fairly well represented if you go follow me here, brother. Sister, I'm not sure which one you are searching just presume should. I was rude of me going this drop down menu actually on the drums page menu and then you go to a drum manufacturer blink alisa's click on alisa's. It should map to the least map and you should be good to go now. Most manufacturers use this have their map like and they're not very far off from what we would call general many. So whether it's an alisa's pad, controller, keyboard or actual kid, that is up to you. But the map should follow the same just from the manufactured, the general ten years too soon something and then you can tweak from there if you need help again finding specific sounds, you can always just go into the sound libraries category and pull up whichever one of the sound libraries you're trying to find the sounds for, and it will give you the keyboard layout. So you know exactly where everything's at awesome network. Any other anything over one's got a cracked the regularly scheduled program. Ok, so one of the things that I really kind of was digging was the vibe it's kind of dirty and it's grungy, but I'm missing a phil, so let me just kind of blow this up here. You guys are going to be so sick of hearing this track by the time we're doing that's? Actually, one of my favorite parts of this is how aggravated with a song can I make them let's get our marine with out of that? We've got this right. There is a drummer, I would do a bill, I would think of something other than that children's there so we can come in and we've got some other films we've got long fills in short films and remember, we felt in our search in this instance, four feels because the last thing we added was a film and it's still in play, so let's see this field here? They really wanted you to know that there were symbols happening in that field that's a that's, a good fill, so that's way farther away from our matches so let's, come back up here. That's kind of cool. Yes, yes, here's the thing with easy drummer too. As a drummer, you can live out every nihilistic drum fantasy you've ever had that you wanted to execute with a band like in real life as a drummer, if you play that fill in any time in the band, you'd be out, you feel like you're sitting this one out, but now that you're in control is the drummer, you could just put that phil on wherever you want, tio so that's a long phil, though, so I'm going to drag it over here and I'm going to grab the corner and when a short man, what you can do when you have longer sessions or longer sections of a song and then I'm going to bring it back to where I want it so that it makes more sense so let's see the beginning of it if I drive the other way, so if I was going to drag this over here and drag this so wherever you see that corner raise there, you can drag out. But what if I was to bring this way? Just get kind of the end of the film, which is kind of cool too, so we come back now you'll notice the tan marine is missing which were kind of tampering player miss the phil section so quite frankly we just come in to copy and then we come over here we would need to go in at a place style I jump to going then I close the program I do that often you'll notice we come here just to make sure it's highlight and we could just paced the tamary pet now the tambourines actually going to play all through the field because that's generally what happened if you had a percussion player so now let's listen to what I think it's good and then from here I want to make some production decisions as a group and then move on to some other cool things that were going to do is everybody with me yeah we're good okay so again remember this is drew's hit single so we can't let him down on this one simple enough yeah what everybody agreed so let's let's just do one more thing here let's take the phil filter off and let's see if we can come through here and what so endings be nice says we're just doing this sort of thing but let's see what kind of endings we have now at the moment again the number one filter that we have is the original beat that we put in so what I'd like to do is take the beat that we're working with now going to make this little it's smaller and let's drag this up so that now that we're looking for endings based on that to see what would fit, does that make sense as everyone followed me there because that's kind of a crucial I don't take checks and balances, but as you're writing a groove as you refine it, certainly you can take what you've refined back into the search function so that you're always looking for things that are similar are relative, and it makes the process a lot less diluted. It seems much more organic to look for an ending to a groove that's really there, as opposed to the one we started with. So it was seventy five percent match in this any longer. I don't know what you had me at what just happened that was an eight bar ending I would have known that had I looked over here, I didn't, though, so let's hey, look at this one bar and this over in and out, so somewhere in between that is what we want to look at. I like that, and it seems to give some finality there, so let's drag that there is an ending and I'm actually see I kind of like it the way it is, so let me copy this. Let me pays my table because we know how I feel about the tampering bad let's see how it plays out right now let's just see if in the big scheme of things we have a good ending the germans like I'm done I'm sick of this track already so what we can do is we can kind of drag this out for what we can we can not move it all the way but let me go into my kwan ties to what seven one two sixteenth no it's actually let's see, I haven't even left can we go? For now? We know thirty second notes which is always nice drag this out and see where we're at so there's some interesting things that we can do it again we have options that you didn't have before a songwriter so I kind of felt like this didn't go long enough so we drag this out you put this here let's come backto pro tools how it feels about what we're doing so that crash again we're just too soon that phil's not working for us it's interesting because again it's trial and error you get to the point where you don't know what you want or how you want to do it so I'm totally already just angry at this hole this ending I don't like it anymore, I'm done with you ending so if we come back all right you know now that I hear it end like that it just kind of resolves and that's the lazy man's way of saying I don't want to look for another ending and that happens but what's cool about this entire process is again I feel really selling about the rhythm track I think there's enough variance there's enough kind of difference there's some changes I'm going to add two things here at the beginning I'm going to go into my at a place style on the first group and I'm going to add a shaker um and I'm gonna do that again here and at a shaker and by varying the velocities just song writing tip I mean what happens when a normal human being plays a shaker in front of a microphone by changing the velocities subtly you do kind of capitalize on that human effect when everything is ridiculously rigid no matter how well it's sampled and how great it sounds you do kind of fall into that audio fatigue so by making small adjustments in the way you present your rhythm track could make a huge difference in the way the song is perceived so I'm going to also turn it on here and I'm going to kind of back off just a little and then there's one last group here with this back that off a lot because there's a phil now let's see how it sounds it's a nice transition now again at any particular point time if one performance is more desirable and that's kind of another cool feature of easy drummer too is when you go into that ended play style mode and you change different settings to see which one works against a groove when you find the one that works you don't have to go back and re just all the settings again you could just come in and copy and paste what works best so that you are you literally just save yourself all that time energy and effort listen to it again now the shaker will be consistent all the way through flawless right? I mean and again when I say flawless obviously there's always work that can be done but we literally are just how long are we in here? I haven't even looked at like fifteen, twenty minutes and we've got our progression we're ready I mean we haven't had to really do a lot and we've actually I had more time to experiment with the sound and the performance options while we're working which is normally not something you get till afterwards you go to mix and it's like ok well let's try this let's try that so now that I'm hearing the drums against the track that's a cool cool sound but let me just keep coming back to glam delay I don't know why it's that glam delay so let's, hear how that sounds very presence is a very different sort of thie symbols are a little out, so I'm gonna go back to knock because I started to get used to that simple enough, so we've got our mixer pre set in place and now I want to solo the drums and just start to work with what we would do determine to be some pretty basic sound sources. Let's, go ahead here on dh we've got our bleed to pull all the bleed out of the kick so it's just a kick put some more in the booth compressor a little bit percussion I mean, I like that so it's pretty good, so I'm pretty happy with where we're at with easy drummer too, and one of the things that I think is really interesting is to kind of take these snapshots and say, ok, we've got a structure, we've got a drum sound we like now let's kind of go back and start to work with maybe some of these other tools because again there's some things that were introducing now over the next two segments that you may not be used to. So before I go any farther everybody out there in tv land anyone in the room are there any questions pending about easy drummer too or mini or groove creation or how these things should work before we move on a couple of other products that we haven't talked about, is there anything else anyone would like me to discuss or re touch upon, or if there is, speak now or forever hold your peace until it's time that a couple questions about piano roll their piano roll piano roll editor absolutely let's talk about it. Okay, conversation that was so the piano roll editor is really simple if I was to actually drag a mini groove over too and I haven't yet, and we will and commit my many group to a pro tools track, you would click on the track and it would open up the pro tools midi editor and the middie editor in a dog digital audio workstation generally called a piano roll, because as you can see here on the screen, you see kind of the the hitting of the keys. So what ultimately happens in the piano role is what you have is a map of the piano looks just like this. So what you're seeing in this picture is like, you know, the bottom half of these keys here and a cz we talked about earlier there's, a middie note that corresponds to every key and sample gets dropped so it's mapped out in the piano roll editor, so it becomes a little bit more mathematical and a little bit mohr sort of excel spreadsheet ish sort of work with your many in that format, and that has been the standard for a long time. So as far as the drum stuff goes, when you work with the place style feature you completely throwing alleviate the need, I have to work with any of that stuff, which is kind of nice, so in a few minutes I'm going to actually drag our groove to the the timeline and commit to it, and then what we'll do is we can kind of show the difference between a piano roll editor, but again, one of the reasons I haven't taking the groove over just yet is because once you take the groove out of easy drummer, too, into pro tools, which is what you're doing, you've essentially committed to that many track as far as any anything, you can do an easy drummer, too. So, for instance, right now, as the program stands, if I dragged the mini to pro tools from his drummer, too, I can't take it back out of pro tools into easy drummer, too. There'll be another step so I could take it from pro tools to my desktop and then back in these drummer too, but because of the way that the dog and plug in relationship works right now, you can't drag it back in for more editing. So I want to try and get all the editing of my groove done before I kind of commit to it. I see a microphone uh, you can't take the track that you've taken over into pro tunes, you can't save a version of it in the in the easy german you could you could create a project? Sure. So, for instance, right now I've got this groove up and I could save this entire thing as easy drummer to project, and what it will do is we'll save the groove, the mixer settings the kid, everything else and that's really simple. You could come in and you go to project and then load projects save project, so you just save your project and then ultimately to as a byproduct of pro tools. When you save this session, all the information will also save in the the plug in in the pro chul session, so you don't have to save it is an easy drummer to project, but you can just if you want to be safe, a lot of guys do like double saving, but when you open and close, your approach will session, it will reopen with all the same mini and settings, everything else in place, so you can go back and edit it if you say there's a project, yes, ok, yes so instead of editing it in pro tools, you, why can't you just edit that copy? Drummond is dragging, you can't what that that's what we're doing? Yeah, okay, so right now what we're doing is we're utilizing the song track and easy drummer too, because we it's following the host it's all locked up. I mean, again, you could see it starts when the track starts so that we have access to all those features and then one more done we could drag it to that if we don't, you have to. I always do because quite honestly and I have no other good reason. I just like to see it in the pro tools session it's a weird psychological hang up that I have. I've been in therapy for it for some time now, but ultimately that's just how this day is going to end midian the pro tools grid, you're going to have to cope, but while you're in easy drummers, too easy tremors too easy drummer, too, you have complete control, like I said, as like we weren't stand alone mode earlier.