Lessons

Lesson Info

Songtracking

Now that we've sort of talked about how the programs basics work, where you get the sound, how the drum kits function, the mixer let's talk about what's really important that's writing music, so we focused on the first two tabs will drum tab in the mixer tab. Now we're going to talk about the browser and the search functions, and both of these have unique sort of tool sets that help you as a songwriter to really get to the heart of what it is you're trying to do with the program. So let's start with the browser and the browser actually should look fairly familiar to anyone that had the original easy drummer, because what we've done is basically just bring that same browser functionality over easy drummer, too, now there's some new features, obviously we try and keep everything updated, but for the most part, one of the things that we talked about is a company that is a team very, very long into the process of releasing these drummer, too, is that we wanted our original easy drummer use...

rs to be able to open the program and start working with no learning curve, so we felt it was very, very important to bring this function over, so for the people in tony's drummer one, congratulations, here's your browser. Now, if you don't know what the browsers for what you're looking at here, let me kind of just give you a little bit of information that's going to help you through these next two functions easy drummer to song writing prowess really comes not just from the sound or the mixing capabilities, but from our many libraries, and middie is a hole topic of conversation we could discuss at length for days as well. We're not going to do that here, but just for clarity and so that everybody understands what these are is. If you look here, for instance, you see that we have some lists. Um column ubs so every single one of our expansion libraries that we sell comes with many performances, drum performances as well. So if we were to kind of scroll down here, this is the part where you can clearly see that I work for the company. As I have lots of stuff here on dh, you were to go to ease drummer too modern. Okay, this mini is included with easy drummer too. So when you buy the program or if we have the program, you have this many and this many these air drum performances, so just like this keyboard controller here is a middie controller that allows you to basically access sounds in the digital realm. What we do when we record a library is get a session drummer or a studio drummer to come in and play grooves with sounds we've recorded so that you can use those grooves in your song writing so for instance we're in the easy drummer to modern library and you see once you kind of open that folder by clicking on and are highlighting it you get a second column and in this column what you have are some different song structures so you have a ballot song structure ah halftime midtempo uptempo you've got some stuff that we call extras show for instance let's come back up to ballot what you see is a couple of different groove options so for instance the first folder is a swing three four which is the time signature and sort of the feel of the groove for the uninitiated so were to come to straight for four and we were to click on that you and then see that we've got ok we've got something that we call slow rock seventy five beats per minute so basically this is an entire set of grooves in a song structure given intro of a version of a pre chorus you have course bridge so all of these different structures correspondent of the groups that are in them so for instance, if you click on one of the intro groups something that would be useful for an intro now, once you cook on a folder, this final column here is the actual groove options, so there are two variations, right? Very epic, and then you've got to drop down menu here is, well, this is something we're going to get into in a minute. This is give you some options that are much more prevalent in the search function, but what you're basically doing is previewing these many groups. So for instance, if you were a guitar player and you wanted to just start playing, you could click on one of these grooves, pick up your instrument and just go really simple and that's the functionality that made easy drummer one so successful was the ability to have these performances and in a word about that, so there are a number of ways to basically go in with the middie instruments and program grooves. One of the most common ways is with a keyboard for each key correspond to something and you can layer the groovin program in any way linked to a two track chooses to use real life players at e kids actually really playing groups, and we have just found over the years that it's a really successful formula for us and our users. Because what you're getting is a real performance there is hates called magic but there is something magic about moving your limbs and flailing in the groove and and playing even on any kid in capturing space and time and that's really important it's also important to realize that throughout the course of its history to track has recorded over eighty five thousand individual many groups so are many libraries vast and expansive and there's eighty five thousand groups for you to pick from and that's just the starting point is we're going to show you here so one of the cool things too in the browser function you see we've got a button up here that's preview an original tempo down here in our song track because we have the program again we're not opening the door right now it's just open on our desktop so the tempo is set here in the actual program right now we're one hundred twenty beats per minute we can adjust that with the slider we could make it one sixty five we could make it sixty six let's make it one o nine because that's just an odd number that nobody likes so it's one hundred nine beats per minute and as you change the tempo your groups will play back at the tempo you set what's interesting, though, is that we have a function called preview original tempo because clearly that tempo wasn't recorded one hundred nine beats per minute so as you're playing the group you khun preview it in its original tempo which is even slower and maybe that will be inspiring for and then go back so you have some options on ge we have this this area over here we have a drop down menu where you can add a fold or to your user library so let's let's go back for just a second so we know when we started out here's all our libraries everyone's with me I see a lot of nods, internet nods and I'm getting those okay, so this is where all of your tune track many libraries live all the libraries that you buy individually or the ones that come with your expansion packs they're all here they're all going to live here and then obviously as you get into your folders you see what's in them. But now you have the option over here to add your own mini. So for instance, if you had drum grooves that two attracted and record from another program or you download them off the internet, you could simply create a folder you could come here at a folder in the library and you could do that it's going toe add great awesome and you add a folder and you've got your user many at a folder there as well so you can drag your own mini and if you want to keep it organized or maybe you've got grooves that you use on a regular basis for a lot of your songs maybe you're someone that's working in post production or doing jingles and you've got go to grooves and you don't want to have to scroll through your list every time to find him you can create a folder and user midi and you could just store all your grooves in there and become a nice so again all the functions we're going to show you obviously are designed around and work with tune track many flawlessly but they also most of these functions of not all of them work with what we call third party many or many that we didn't record sound good enough so the browser page again really more of a throwback to the original easy drama program and it's there for consistency through the programs now is what we get in some really cool song writing stuff so take a deep breath and by let's I mean me and my deep breath I mean adjust awkwardly in my chair okay, so now we're on the search page and the search pages a brand new function and he's a drummer too and the idea is really simple as I just told you a minute ago there's eighty five thousand many groups that we've recorded flying the right groove shouldn't be kind of hit or miss you shouldn't have to search there should be a way for you to get straight to the groove you want to work with straight from the beginning and that's where the search page comes in so the first thing you're going to notice on the search pages we look at it again let's go from left to right is we have some columns and we have some more columns and a lot of text which isn't always necessarily easy to kind of interpret so let me kind of walk you through it the first thing we have is the tap to find function and as you can see the two is frenetic so it's tapped to find which is in the easy drum remains so clearly this does exactly what you think it does and we're going to talk about it in depth in a minute but what you see here are some sort of filter columns and these filter columns basically at the top we'll tell you what they're filtering out or how they're filtering allow youto look for grooves in any number of ways so all the way over here you have this visible filter calm and visible results calm so the filters occupied this top space here and the results occupy the bottom space simple enough so far you follow me it's a lot of words I know it could be a little confusing so for instance all of the filter options we have set up could be selected or de selected at any time, so let's say that I was getting ready to work on a song, and I knew that the group I'm looking for is in the basic rock medi pack, so I could I could choose that as a filter and it's going to filter out anything that's not in the basic rock so that's my first filter and clearly, if it's basic rock, obviously the genre is more like going to pop rock, and I could look for different types of many girls like I look for beats you look for fills, you could just have nothing but phil's it delivered was a fill in the playing style standard double kicks shuffle, right, power hand what we're talking about a minute and then time signature and you can go in and actually select what's visible in these results. So for instance, if I didn't want to worry about the power hand and let's, say I didn't care about the type, I could just narrow it down to whatever sort of search I really wanted. I don't care about the genre. I just want I knew what library was in and I know a place thousand that's really all I wanted and then you can always reset your filters there so I'll go back to everything simple enough of really, really cool way to start to look for yourself what's really cool too is you cannot search my instrument by the way for looking for stuff with the lead kicks near so on so forth we have an anti tagging system. If you right click something you can exclude it from your search so if you know that under no way, shape or form do you want to sound like fleet foxes, you get rid of all that americana stuff for you just get it out. You don't want it in there if you know everything you want is blues right again you can go in and tag or anti tag it works both ways on lee to attract would give the option to hate your maybe before you even listen to it. So that's a really cool feature because again a cz anyone that works with our programs would tell you you very quickly become familiar with certain grooves in certain libraries and you want to make sure that you have access to him quickly so this is a kind of a great way to move around and the results are pretty awesome too and that's if you just want to search so that's really simple so what's great is let's go in and I'm going toe let's go down here let's say I'm going to go toe to vintage rock uh something sterile let's hear this scott's cool flames so you found something, right? So you used your filters you found a groove. You're looking for it's in the u s a one hundred twenty one b p m I don't know why that strikes me is funny but apparently this group is very yusa and the more I listen to what I really can't argue that so that's pretty awesome um you have the star function here so you could say that is a favorite so you could tag it so that it will come up again right? Simple enough but when you have that there's a couple things you could do so right now you have the group highlighted. Obviously you can play it here the groove that's fantastic. If this was the groove you wanted a hands down and you're ready to start working on something else you could simply take it you could drag it to your desktop now that groove lives on your desktop as well so you can import to a dog you could take it anywhere else that's one thing you could do but again we talked about this song track that's been kind of looming here at the bottom now would be a great time to start working with that so and actually right now I'm kind of I wanted driving dixie has got me a little intrigued very cool I'm gonna take that instead and I'm going to drag this here ok? So the first thing I want to do is I want to keep hearing that over and over because I want start to work with it it's in my song track and before we start playing the groove let me kind of walk you through just a couple of the features that you're going to find in the song track s o first and foremost obviously I think you've probably all figured out we have transport controls down here you've got the looping function and you could set the looping function anyway you want tio obviously I have nothing over there the loop so we can loop that there we have to stop on the play button we have the record button which would allow you to record straight into the song track we're going to talk about the minute we've got the time signature now the time signature will not manipulate the median real time I know that's what everybody's helping like if I have a four four groove and I select a different that's that's not how it works we're not there yet again it doesn't mean we won't be there, but right now, this is just an indicator of how you have your song set up. If you change this structure, it ultimately just affects the changes in the actual quantum ization ticking, which we're going to talk about in a minute. We've got the tempo, which we talked about, there's, a click track so you can hear how the drummers playing above behind, which is kind of nice, or if you're recording, clearly, you can use that, and then we have this ominous button called song creator, which we're also going to talk about a second we have the master volume, and then we have these controls that lets you see if easy drummer, too, is actually receiving meeting input, or if it's generating media output so that's a little more technical, we have a drop down menu for the song track, which is kind of cool as well. But before we do that, because you're working with sort of editing and customizing we've, we've put in some levels of undue. So for instance, if we make some changes to our many and we want to change what we just did, we could just like you were working in the doll you could hit on do, or even read you if you wanted to go for lord, if we wanted to take this groove this simple groove and cut it in half, we could select the scissor tool. We could cut it in half and make sure it if we didn't like that, we could just undo the whole thing. So people ask, how many levels of undue there, I believe it's at least one hundred. So I mean, you really can go back and sort of save yourself if you get a little too crazy. But right now we've got this groove looped and again, we have all the groove information right here. Simple enough now that's. Pretty awesome, but it's not a song. I mean, it's it's, not it's. A groove it's a starting point. So there's a number of things you can do. First of all, if we right, click on the groove, we could copy it. And then we could basically take the cursor and weaken paste it. We could, you know, do the whole thing. I just take this crew of pace it all the way I play to a loop it and again, the loop function allows that if you have a smaller group, you need his loop it just playing over, but it would be really kind of cool, I think. A lot of songwriters would agree when you were in this particular mindset, and you're working through structure sometimes it's great to have nothing but the groove, and you're working through your melodic structure with whatever you're doing that's that's what this functions created, but it would be great if you could find similar grooves or grooves that would complement this so that you could start putting the entire song together. So we're gonna go back up to tap to find, and I'm actually going to show you a rule of cool function of tap to find before we actually tapped to find anything and you could just take your groove, drag it to the many drop zone it's going toe analyze that groove and now it's going to find other groups that complement that group. So, uh, that's always what that's a great thing, that's because it cuts the time down. So the idea here is roy simple. You found something you like, you know, there's, probably more stuff like it in the library, but you don't know even what those options are now with the tap to find search function, you'll see that it's found some stuff that's one hundred percent matching, so if you play it great hats open, which is nice variation, so as you can see just using that simple tool has already whittled down your massive many library so that you can actually see what would work with us or what easy drummers analyzed to work with this now again, keep this in mind when we talk about easy drummer we had well over eighty thousand grooves as we went into easy drummer too recorded in midi format and we have and I say this every time because I think it's just important assigned one human being in our corporate office to go through in tag all those grooves so this search function will work now that man's name is martin kristofferson and he deserves a round of applause every time that that function should be used because quite honestly, without that tagging system it's just once and zero sum martin um but this helps you navigate through your stuff. This helps you get through the products you have and I'm going to show you another cool feature to it also helps you get through the products you don'thave so right now we've tapped to find and it's going to search what I have that's, what's, that's, what's key so what you're seeing here all these results literally live on my hard drive it smitty that I own or purchased or because I work for tune track I have it it's here so it can only search things that I have if you are curious about things you don't have, because not everybody has often track smitty, you can actually click this button. It won't work when I do it because I have everything but shop web shop midi will actually take you to our web shop and take the groove you're looking for and go through all the middie you don't have or don't own to see if it exists for you, then you'll actually be able to preview it, and if you should decide to buy it, I'll tell you what many packets from but it ultimately gives you options for not only all the products you already own, but it tells you if in our library, anything exists like you're looking for, which is pretty cool, so as a function just right off the bat as a songwriter, having all these different options and all these different variables is really cool. And this this program that the tap to find, we're going to remove these real quick works in just the way you would think it would to show if I click tap to find clearly, we have a group that's already in there, so you have this entire dialogue that comes up that you can manipulate, so the first thing I could do. Is I could still the tempo down in this particular window because after all it is tapped to find normally you'd be tapping and then here I could come on I could clear the high hat maybe I didn't like that high half pattern and maybe clear the click maybe all I liked was the snare and want to put my own kick pattern and I could come home on many controller and just be sloppy it's gonna want ties it in real time right and I could change the quantum ization here sixteen triplets did not work for that particular group I don't know anyone paying attention that's not a good sound there let's go to waste notes much better now here's something really cool way have this feature here because tap to find you can use your mouse to you don't have these in many control you just and it's gonna clean that up and if I wanted to add an open high at I could select open and just add the open high hat with my mouse so you don't have to buy many control to use this you could just tap it right in and then you can show the results interesting it's a unique groove so the first match we get there's nothing dead on seventy three percent so this group is saying this well ok it's got the surviving the essence of your groove but that's pretty a pretty unique group what's here it's got the same snare and we've got some filters to so what's clear the filters right so we go back in here and let's start all over again let's start with something simple right so cleans it up simple enough right? Show me some results and one hundred percent of course if we didn't have one hundred percent matches for that group there would be something vastly wrong nice now can we've got to sit at one o nine different vibes different fields and you could see that pattern has lots of hundred percent matches so we actually go in and let's let's take a look at the groove one more time I'm going to tap funds now we've got the temple really slow for are tapping purposes let's change the a snare simple enough right again very unique what we have seventy seven so you can see it's accurate it's looking at things that really matter it's not going to tell you have one hundred percent match for something as goofy as I just have because why would we ever record that grew for any there's no purposeful reason what's great though is if that's the groove you like maybe this is cool just take that groove and drag it to your track it quantifies before you had cleaned everything up now you have the actual groovy just tapped in but rick there's no high hat I know way didn't record a high at and normally this is where I just throw my hands up in the air like stupid song writing program, and I flip the computer over no high hat and I walk out that's gonna happen today we're going to do that here's one of the really cool features about searching something so let's come down we've gotto theseventy seven percent match, but no high let's hear this? I don't hear any high hats I like ok that's a ride cymbal that's kind of cool. What if I want that ride symbol on this pattern? How do we do that? So you would normally go into the piano roll editor in your dog and you have to draw the notes in and do you do all those things? That would be a lot of work. Or I'm just saying or were an easy number two so let's right click on this groove that's copy it we just copied that groove right? Simple enough then let's come to our groove and let's right click and where it says paste let's not paste everything how about we just paced the ride cymbal mine was blown right now. It's really arbitrary in this goofy, not beatles groove that I have going on here, so let me remove this that's just completely and thoroughly going to tap if I never worked with this again so it's let's go to something just something really simple where I think the changes will probably be a lot less subtle best drummer in the world to show results that's pre simple grew we like that groove I think that's a fil though so we want has closed simple enough ok, so we've got a group now let's go through that process again we like the groove we like to feel but we want to change an element of the groove whatever that element is by finding a groove that has the element we're looking for let's it was tight clothes hats very you can hear how tight the high hats are let's copy that groove again, right click hit copy come down to the group that we have in our timeline and when we pace we're just going to pay the high hats simple enough, right that's one of those how moments is a writer where now you have a tool that allows you to get exactly what you're looking for from your head to the actual program and remember we haven't left easy drummer too were still sitting in front of our computer with our guitar whatever are melodic instrument is or nothing just producing thinking ok, I want really to sort of work with a specific sound if you can do this you can actually find the groove you're looking for with tap to find no so you have a question over there he's got no question come over here you're one of many firsts happening here so the tap to find their essentially you're able to create a groove within easy german yes that's amazing you like that I love that I like that you just pick them like up to tell me something was amazing yeah I just wanted to make sure that that's what I was in love with it gets better so do you prepare to beam or amazing so let's remove this what here let's not remove it let's say we dig it but it's not exactly finished we really want this group to be awkward for everybody so simple enough we play it as you actually are playing it if you record enable you can record right into the song track as well into this middie groove so wonderful right and as if that's not bad enough and you're like well you can't use it it's not horrible I will just quantifies it so I can sit like this and then come to my drop down menu where it just fantastic and quantifies the tracks not my thomas that's right you're welcome that's happened I know to a lot of people out there I promise break dancing at some point time in this whole thing just know that we're getting closer with every waking moment that group is not helping your anti breakdancing clause if you're out there hoping it doesn't happen, but going back to things that really matter what's really cool about that is then now you have that group that you just recorded into him. Quanta ized you can again keep going through this process, drag it back up to tap to find and it's going to find other matches, and you could combine these things to create everything that you're looking for. And again, that process of copying and pasting different components from a midi files is endless. If we were to come in and come down way like that groove, we copy it, we don't like our kick drum grooves, so we're just going to pace the kick drum and and you could do this for hours until you find the right process, okay, so it never stops, and the idea is really simple. The tools we feel anyway are very, very eloquent, it's not a complicated process, right clicking on, but again, so we're right clicking. We should probably go through and look at the rest of the right click menu, so let me kind of blow this up, so you've got your zoom functions over here in your timeline s so that you can kind of zoom in, zoom out. And in the right click menu, obviously, of copy paste you have removed and let me just address something that will come up later because it comes up frequently. There are key commands that people get really used to with whether it's pc or mac or their dogs that, you know, delete and all those things. And we get a lot of feedback from customers wishing that the key commands would work inside the dog. And the reality is, is that easy drummer, too, like all of our products, is first and foremost a plug in. So within that world, there are things you can and can't do, so to extrapolate. For instance, later, when I opened this program in pro tools, pro tools as the host has a number of key commands that are specific to it, and a lot of those key commands would overlap and easy drummer, too. So to do them, an easy drummer, too, would also to be to do that so you can't have both. So a lot of people like, oh, I hate that you can't just delete the midi files. We do too, but we love the fact that we can multi channel on pro tools and have great sounding record, so we'll trade off right? So just know that if you need to get rid of something you can remove it, find again, you can search with tags, research with tap to find sort of driving it you can use the the men you could set the loop area, you can use this in the song creator, which we're going to talk about a minute or added play style, which we're really going to talk about a minute, but song part is cool. I wanted to show you guys this it's a really simple kind of formatting, but its color coded. So for instance, this is the color coding system we have for the components of a song, so if we wanted this to be an intro, it great, and then that way when we're looking at it and you'll see why this is kind of comes in handy in a few minutes. It's kind of nice as a visual reference from a creator, stan, but like where am I in my own song is I'm playing along on dh again, you can change your master tempo and all these other components anytime you want to now, do you have any questions, by the way, about this complicated when you do you create a custom group? Can you save it? And where does it go? Well, no. Now we're going to be able to say that because we own everything. We're tyrants. Of course. Yes. You could say there's a couple ways you could drag you to stop, and then you could add it like we did earlier. Warning the browser to your user, maybe file your own customers of isil. Yeah. You can save anything you need to whenever you need. Tio spirit. Not without paying some some fees. Yeah, see me after class. So we have kind of this cool structure on. I say, cool, very loosely, because let's, assume the group again. Right? So, but ultimately that's where we want to be let's. Let's. Hypothetically, this is where we want to be. Is a songwriter right now, this is their groove. We want now, there's a number of different ways. We can approach this. I just showed you how you can drag it back to tap to find and it confined. Ah, host of other groups that are similar and that's. One way to do it. And you could start to piece these things together. Or or you can click this button here, that's, a song creator and what happens when you click, the song creator button is you get this dialogue, get another maybe drop zones. In case you have notice, we like maybe drop zones. We take our file, we're gonna drag you to the many drop zone and look what's gonna happen. It's gonna load some results. Now what we've done is ultimately find different components of what we think your song will sound like. This particular program has just analyzed eighty five thousand midi files that live on my desktop and said that these will work for you a source files court, the source file. You can always play it there too. So let's that they'd say this would be a good pre course, it would work and you could start to drag and make your song anyway. You want tio now you notice the color coding comes into play. So what we have here is we started creating a song and as you see, these colors are coded, obviously to the types of song structure that are available. So now we know we see grace, so maybe we don't like that intro. Maybe we want to put an intro in the middle of seoul. Maybe we like that that's how we roll now controls in the middle, nothing at the beginning, just space. We'll tell you what it is when we get in the middle. But you can do this and you could start to work with your own formats of structures or even better. Let's, get rid of all this let's. Remove it here in this column the song creator column right here, song structures we have basic templates already set up for very common and very, very successful song structure. So a b a short simply load structure onto the track. There you have an entire song structure based around your groove already ready to go I like it when we get wiles you can see to you khun go so we have an ending here we have some verses we have a chorus and you khun who doesn't love that groove? It's the most of a truce of thing you'll be homing in all day. You're welcome like a dude hit his head on the table. You have the mike. You have a question? I had a question, but you answered all of them is used to speaking. I'm excited about the merge, but in the end finishing the song and we're just getting started. Yeah, this is wonderful. So now we've basically going from you know, you have a bunch of middie to now you can search the middie kind of the for lack of a better from the old school way. If you want to just find the groove, drag it down, or you can let the machine really sort of capitalized on this algorithm. So again, we're talking about something that scans your many library so it's, consistently updating and consistently fresh every time you're adding, many were going to go back to that function I told you about earlier that rebuild databases where kind of brings all your many databases up to date so they could be scanned and tagged. And now the tagging this is something that's important. I just told you that martin, our friend, tagged all these many files, and as a result they work in this capacity the way they do if you were to drag in a midi files that wasn't tuned track generated it's not going to find itself in any of these search functions, because it's not going to have our tagging system so that's something to keep in mind is that a said that's, a deal breaker, the collective and just went, oh, I knew it was too good really seriously are eighty five thousand group is played by really drummers are enough, we'll find a way, trust me