Drum Patterns - Do you use them or play every note?

Are you a drummer? If not, I don't see at at all like cheating but more like getting a drummer in and letting him develop the drum part.
 
I will tend to use a mixture of roll my own and midi loops. Tooktrack's superior drummer lets you isolate kit peices in a loop and drag them to a track(as does EZ player pro ) so you can just drag in some of the drums and overdub, say a new high hat pattern to add a bit of originality. Of course you can do this by editing old hi hat part out of the midi track too.
 
Another thing I will do do is steal the feel from a loop using groove quantatise to liven up one of my leaden patterns.
 
I suspect many people who write their own loops use step sequencer rather thay play every note.

I use BAIB or the MIDI patterns from EZD and Superior. 

the "cheating" debate has been brought up many times before.  My opinion is like Glyn's - are you "cheating" if you hire a session drummer?  or keyboardist, bassist, vocalist, backup singers? or anything?  if that's not cheating then neither is "hiring" a software one.

I use the MIDI loops, and edit them here and there. I can't imagine how much time it would take to make a swinging beat with ghost strokes and such small details in piano roll.

I used to make everything with a keyboard and piano roll, but even after hours of editing, they still were quite basic
and lacking the tiny tricks that make the drums sound real.

I have never used a midi loop. Most of my work is on my or my clients original compositions. I know how to play drums so I set up a drum folder and break every drum piece into separate tracks, Kick, Snare, Toms, Cymbals & Hats. I use Staff View but you can do the same in PRV. In Staff View I set X1 to display all the drum tracks and write my patterns. This way I am only dealing with the one track at a time for any edits. If there is a problem with one tom it is very quick to see what the problem is and go straight to it. Or if the snare is hitting a little too hard, I can go to just my snare track and adjust the velocity very quickly without getting bogged down in the Edit Filter. Works for me.

I try and use a real drummer when completing proper recordings. For demos I'll use patterns I lifted from my old Roland 505. I've had those since the first MIDI file came to town. Sometimes I just play to the hi hat if there's no pattern for the groove I want. In the end I play each drum part live and that means MIDI or real kit. Only my hairdresser can tell.

I record drum parts with sticks on my Roland SPD-20. 

I've never mastered foot-pedal/hand co-ordination, but I manage with the 8 pads by overdubbing. I have several custom programs on the SPD-20 mapping to Addictive Drums notes.

Snare and Tom fills... how did I ever manage without sticks.

bitflipper


No loops here, either. Neither MIDI nor audio. What's the fun of that?

My drum tracks are all hand-made, mostly in the PRV but sometimes played on a keyboard. The latter method often yields more natural-sounding parts, so I'll typically overlay hand percussion and fills live on top of a PRV-created MIDI track.

I agree, what's fun of that? Play it yourself or get a drummer. I used to call Buddy Rich
but he's busy most of the time ;)  I can use some patterns though for quick demos.
BTW, probably in some genres using patterns is acceptable what can you else play to
disco songs like boom, boom boom :)

Kev999


I never use loops.  I normally draw all of the notes onto the piano roll.  Then I edit and re-edit every note and add or subtracts notes until it achieves the right "feel".  I tweak velocities endlessly.  I use copy & paste a lot too.

I have done this, but I have also used loops, it depends on what the song is focusing on.

Dave King


I usually start out with a midi groove that is close to what I have in mind and then tweak it manually.  Then, I manually enter fills, etc.  The manual stuff is pretty much all done with a midi keyboard.  I have a hard time getting the feel "right" when just adding events in the piano roll view.

This is my method too, except I hand tweak in PRV with the pencil tool because I don't have a MIDI keyboard. I have on occasions completely hand drawn the MIDI groove because there wasn't anything close to what I wanted. Oh, and I use EZDrummer Pop & Rock or Nashville.

I like Tim's answer best!

hey Handsome is back. :)

bitflipper

Do whatever inspires you and gives you enjoyment and helps you to create music. Music is fun. Except jazz. That's just people playing random notes while trying to avoid an actual tune.

I was always advised that if you make a mistake during a live performance, to do it twice - then it's jazz.

That's an old joke, but funny!

In the old days with drum machines, I would program measure by measure and a rock song would end up being built with as many as 80-90 different patterns to try and imitate a human drummer with mild variations. I have recently started using BFD drums and have tons of MIDI clips. Strange enough it seems usually even with a library of 5,000+ groove clips, it is hard to find stuff that works for a certain song. So I either ..... 1) Use the basic midi clips and fills to structure the skeleton of the song and then use PRV to modify it as needed. 2) Or PRV everything just like the old days of programing drum machines Now, a new trick that was recently shown to me is using GUITAR PRO software. If you have a full song that is tabbed in this software and the drums are similar to what you need, you can solo the drums, Export the drum track as a MIDI file. Then you can Import that MIDI file into a SONAR project and begin PRV editing from there. By coincidence there is a slow Black Sabbath/ Heaven and Hell song called FOLLOW THE TEARS that is the same tempo and basic Verse/Chorus/Solo structure as a song I am working on. So I may try this approach for the first time. I will import the full drum song played by Vinnie Appice, then make changes to the fills, crashes and other minor changes to work for my song. The only reason I like the idea of using groove clips played by real drummers is it introduces a fresh and different approach than if I step program the drums myself. No matter how talented a person is, it is hard to be good at everything and too often songs that are 100% created by one person are often stagnant. That is why the best bands have always had individual players that were great at what they did.... For example, think Black Sabbath as an example .. Tony Iommi on guitars Burt Ward on Drums Geezer Butler on Bass Ronnie James Dio (after Ozzy) on vocals. It is hard for one home music hobbyist to be that good on all the different parts. I have found sometimes a new Groove Clip makes me re-arrange a song part different than I many have otherwise done it if I had done all the drums

I'm getting the impression that many (and maybe most) people program the drum patterns via the mouse instead of performing them on a MIDI keyboard or drum machine. 

Is that because programming is faster, easier, and potentially more nuanced then performing?

And I am curious: if you program drum parts, do you also program bass parts?  Piano?  Vocals?  What instruments do you tend to program instead of perform?

Tripecac

I'm getting the impression that many (and maybe most) people program the drum patterns via the mouse instead of performing them on a MIDI keyboard or drum machine. 

Is that because programming is faster, easier, and potentially more nuanced then performing?

And I am curious: if you program drum parts, do you also program bass parts?  Piano?  Vocals?  What instruments do you tend to program instead of perform?

I use a keyboard to try out ideas for phrases, but then enter the notes via PRV (or occasionally Staff View) rather than record them.  I tend to use the same method regardless of which instrument I am dealing with.  I sometimes record guitar or bass but I rarely record virtual instruments.

For me, it is because from Day 1 I got into the habit of doing it this way.