I create my own drum parts from scratch in PRV, mainly using NI Battery 3.  I normally start with a Battery kit (plus drum map) that I have used before and modify it to suit.

I never use pre-existing drum patterns, grooves or loops.  I don't understand how it would ever be possible to find the right pattern from the billions of possibilities anyway.

Sure!  If you go to the Cakewalk SONGS Forum, you can hear 2 of my pieces ("Chameleon's Reflection", and "Bridge of Sighs Remix".)  Chameleon's Reflection uses mostly EZ Drummer beats along with a few loops and possibly a few drum sounds from my Motif layered in.  Bridge of Sighs Remix uses mostly loops with some Battery 3 that I beat in on top.
 
Enjoy, and let me know what ya think!

My reply was to congalocke....

I use 2 methods:
1) If I have a proper drummer who can lay down a good track, I use Roland V Pro electronic drums and record the MIDI information.  Which I can then edit, etc and eventually run through BFD2 for great audio samples, which I wind up recording.
2) If I don't have access to a proper drummer, rather than me laying down some simple beat (that's all I can do on drums myself), I use one of hte 5,000 patterns included in BFD2 and edit it if needed & still use BFD2 for the audio samples to record.

Hope this helps.
Russ

congalocke


Anybody willing to post examples of some of their best work using their methods?

all of the music on my website/link to MY MUSIC on sound click.....is either Jamstix.... mostly the older stuff or Band in a Box drums ...similar to JS in that the program creates the tracks....BB is used on most of my more current tunes. 

Kev999


I create my own drum parts from scratch in PRV, mainly using NI Battery 3.  I normally start with a Battery kit (plus drum map) that I have used before and modify it to suit.

I never use pre-existing drum patterns, grooves or loops.  I don't understand how it would ever be possible to find the right pattern from the billions of possibilities anyway.

You can actually do a lot to customize patterns and loops. It doesn't always sound good, but you can get some interesting beats by chopping up a drum loop into 4 or 8, and rearranging the parts to taste. Works better with electronic genres like drum & bass tbh. But I also experiment with taking MIDI patterns from something like NI's Drummer series, and editing and splicing them together to make new patterns. 

Someone had asked about tunes with drumming examples above.

Here is a link to a still RAW version of a cover I recorded.  The tune is a progressive rock tune from back in the 70's, UK - In the Dead of Night.

I have just the midi tracks down - no mixing whatsoever, and still need to add guitar and vocals.  But it DOES have sequenced drums, with the exception of about 6 measures the ENTIRE piece has different drumming in each and every measure.

It will give you somewhat of an idea of what you can do with sequenced drums.  I use Native Instrument's Battery 3 for this.  I set up a separate output for each drum/cymbal.  Battery 3 has 32 outputs, setup in 16 sets of stereo outs.  In sonar, I created a drum map for my custom kit, and set it up to have a separate track for each set of outputs, so every drum and cymbal has its own audio track in Sonar.  This will allow complete control when I get ready to mix.

Anyways, here is a quick and dirty YouTube movie with some random photos thrown in:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AP2PIiSDsUw

Bob Bone

I use different tools depending on what kind of feel and sound I'm after. One thing I do know is I'm not a good drummer.

For electronic music, generally it's a Machinedrum or MFB503 (a very cheap synth but has great analogue kick, toms and snare). Maybe backed up by an old 80s analogue drum synth or a Korg Wavedrum.

Other times I use Session Drummer for a more "natural" feel, or Alesis SR-16 samples sequenced in Sonar (good for a vintage rock kind of sound).

Other times I get my partner to plug in her electronic kit and record that, usually as MIDI rather than audio for ease of editing or changing samples.

I never use third party loops simply because (1) they're never quite what I'm looking for and (2) I find it much quicker to tap a pattern into a sequencer than trawl through hundreds of MIDI/audio loops in the hope of finding the right one.

I suck at programing so I play them live using a Yamaha electric kit and record only the MIDI data.  I use that to drive Steven Slate 4 samples.  This gives me the option to quantize, edit, move, delete, etc. any notes needed.

Kev999


I create my own drum parts from scratch in PRV, mainly using NI Battery 3.  I normally start with a Battery kit (plus drum map) that I have used before and modify it to suit.

I never use pre-existing drum patterns, grooves or loops.  I don't understand how it would ever be possible to find the right pattern from the billions of possibilities anyway.

I am almost identical to Kev here and I hold the same opinions regarding pre-existing loops, MIDI clips etc, but I don't bother with drum maps any more.


I'll start of with basic grooves first and then I'll start to flesh out the whole song and painstakingly go over virtually every note in PRV in an effort to make them sound "almost" real. To be honest, I create electronic music and so the expectations are slightly different compared to a conventional rock song for instance.


One thing I have started to do is use the Step Sequencer with Battery and I'll develop a groove that way. When I've got a basic rhythm I'll bounce to clip and add grace notes and all the other edits in PRV.