• SONAR
  • Drum Loops or Drum Programs? (p.4)
2016/09/27 19:57:41
Anderton
JustGotPaid
HaHa! Thanks Anderton! This is too good to be true!
 
I looked up Discreet Drums and see that one of my old Memphis friends, Greg Morrow, who is now a drummer in Nashville, did some of the Discreet Drums. Greg did a session for me in Nashville a while back and is the same ole Greg. I think he was voted Nashville Drummer of the Year last year.



Greg is terrific and talented. I used some of the Greg Morrow library, but mostly Chris McHugh for my neo- album. All the songs on my YouTube channel with acoustic drums use Discrete Drums.
 
But I also have a Greg Morrow story you'll enjoy. I took several multi-tracked loops from his first library and remixed/processed the living daylights out of them to create a collection of super-rude, nasty, industrial loops (they're all over my songs On Mars and Little Pieces). They were eventually released as the Turbulent Filth Monsters sample library (FWIW Depeche Mode are fans of it).
 
So I was at Summer NAMM and there was Greg Morrow with the guys from Discrete Drums. He's a big dude, as you know, and I was introduced as "Here's the guy who did Turbulent Filth Monsters." I fully expected him to say "So YOU'RE the A**HOLE who made my drums sound like ABSOLUTE GARBAGE!!!," and attempt to break my legs. Instead, he told me he thought the loops were really, really cool. In fact he was flattered. I became an even bigger Greg Morrow fan after that . Especially because he didn't break my legs.
2016/09/27 23:25:22
JustGotPaid
Thanks Chuck and I'm sorry we had some disturbance. I've been off and on here since I got interested in DAWs and SONAR in 2007 or 08 and have never had rude, argumentative replies until today. I've also never blocked anyone, until today. Hopefully, things will get back to normal and be smooth again.
 
Am still enjoying your YouTube tutorials. You obviously have a good handle on all this, and more than just drums. I'll see if I can make a short MP3 of some drums and a bass track as a reference point for the basic sound we are getting with loops to this point. I've learned that a little EQ and the right reverb can make a world of difference.
 
Thanks again.
DS
 
 
2016/09/28 05:01:50
Soundwise
Loops are like molecules, whereas one-shot samples are more like sub-atomic particles. Sometimes we need just wood or iron (wood&wire ) to build useful things and goods, and at other times we need to create/synthesize a new material, like Kevlar, nylon and whatnot to make other goods.
I've plenty of audio loops and sometimes use them to demo guitar gear, but have a hard time trying to find a set of loops that will help accomplish my musical ideas. So i prefer being an "alchemist" and create my own substances rather than being a "blacksmith" or a "carpenter".
2016/09/28 13:22:43
JustGotPaid
Anderton, I went through my box of loops and found Rock and Slow Rock (I think those are the name.) vol 43 and 44, I think it is. I guess those are some Greg is on. I need to go back and read everything on the back cover.
 
Yes, Greg is a big ole fellow! I hadn't seen him in years until he was scheduled to do a session at Larry Beaird's in Berryhill by Nashville. It's over there by Blackbird. When I saw that Greg was book I reserved a slot for one song, but I went early and stayed late and we had a lot of good visiting time. I think we were both surprised to see how much we've both "grown" over the past 20 years. As luck would have it, Dan Dugmore was there too, and he's done a lot of steel for ZZ, which seems strange, but I think it was the Mescalaro album that most of it was on. When Greg and Dan got started we had a real ZZ fest.
 
Did you see Hardy when he was in Nashville engineering some of these? I'll see if I can post a pic of Joe and me many, many years ago at Ardent in Memphis. You will be surprised how different he looked back then. I'll leave it as my avatar until you say you have seen it, then I'll change back.
 
Great story! This is like dealing with home folks now!
DS
 
<Edit> Oh, I forgot this. When we were leaving I invited Greg to meet me for supper the next night. He said he couldn't because he was flying out to Los Angeles. I asked why and he just held up his drum stick case and said someone was flying him out there to play drums on some record I guess. I thought that was pretty cool to that see my ole Memphis buddy had made it in Nashville, and people were now flying him around the country to play on records. I have a few more good Greg stories I think you'd enjoy. If you prefer the privacy of email we can do that. If that suits better, pm me and I'll send you my email address.
 
2016/09/28 16:06:43
Zargg
Hi.
I am a little late to the party (as usual). I started making my own programmed drums because at the time when I started there were not many choices when it came to the music I made / make. The options are far better today than they were "back then".
But old habits die hard
All the best.
2016/09/28 20:15:18
dwardzala
Anderton
JustGotPaid
HaHa! Thanks Anderton! This is too good to be true!
 
I looked up Discreet Drums and see that one of my old Memphis friends, Greg Morrow, who is now a drummer in Nashville, did some of the Discreet Drums. Greg did a session for me in Nashville a while back and is the same ole Greg. I think he was voted Nashville Drummer of the Year last year.



Greg is terrific and talented. I used some of the Greg Morrow library, but mostly Chris McHugh for my neo- album. All the songs on my YouTube channel with acoustic drums use Discrete Drums.
 
But I also have a Greg Morrow story you'll enjoy. I took several multi-tracked loops from his first library and remixed/processed the living daylights out of them to create a collection of super-rude, nasty, industrial loops (they're all over my songs On Mars and Little Pieces). They were eventually released as the Turbulent Filth Monsters sample library (FWIW Depeche Mode are fans of it).
 
So I was at Summer NAMM and there was Greg Morrow with the guys from Discrete Drums. He's a big dude, as you know, and I was introduced as "Here's the guy who did Turbulent Filth Monsters." I fully expected him to say "So YOU'RE the A**HOLE who made my drums sound like ABSOLUTE GARBAGE!!!," and attempt to break my legs. Instead, he told me he thought the loops were really, really cool. In fact he was flattered. I became an even bigger Greg Morrow fan after that . Especially because he didn't break my legs.


Craig, I think the link to your youtube channel is wrong.  It can be found here.
2016/09/29 00:30:19
Anderton
Thank you! I fixed it in my post.
 
BTW I have not forgotten your request for the "high level" parts from the "Making Your Recorded Vocals Sound at Least Twice as Good" using SONAR that I did at GearFest. However, I've expanded it and will be doing "version 2.0" at AES on Saturday. At that point I'll post a link to the PDF somewhere, or at least email it to you.
 
I really need to finish the craiganderton.com web site (coming soon...as in, before 2019 for sure ) to host these kinds of things. 
2016/09/29 01:37:04
Anderton
Soundwise
Loops are like molecules, whereas one-shot samples are more like sub-atomic particles. Sometimes we need just wood or iron (wood&wire ) to build useful things and goods, and at other times we need to create/synthesize a new material, like Kevlar, nylon and whatnot to make other goods.
I've plenty of audio loops and sometimes use them to demo guitar gear, but have a hard time trying to find a set of loops that will help accomplish my musical ideas. So i prefer being an "alchemist" and create my own substances rather than being a "blacksmith" or a "carpenter". 

 
Exactly. On the songs where I use loops, I can get away with it only because they fit without having to do much other than chop them into little bitty pieces and put them back together again. However there's also much fun to be had in taking sub-atomic particles and turning them into molecules 
 
I really like multi-tracked drum libraries because you can totally mess them up - I mean, get creative with them. I'm working on a loop library now and the files were given to me as multitracked drums. Multitracked stuff is too complex for some people to deal with, but mixed loops can be too simplistic, so I'm considering going for more of a "stems" approach. We'll see if that works or not.
2016/09/29 09:02:34
Glyn Barnes
Audio loops, particularly multi-track loops, will take up a awful lot of disk space compared to MIDI loops so building up a sizable library, they also appear to be more expensive.
 
The killer for me though is versatility, very often despite having a large library of MIDI I can’t always find exactly what I want so editing or creating the loop from scratch is an essential feature. I must admit I have never really persevered  slicing samples but it always seemed like a lot of effort and weird things seem to happen if there is a lot of ambiance baked into the loop. MIDI with Superior Drummer or BFD3 seems to work best for me.
 
I do like the groove finder and “hand” tool in EZ Drummer 2 however, great for finding similar grooves and creating variations. I hope to see this in Superior Drummer one day.
2016/09/29 09:31:00
dwardzala
Anderton
Thank you! I fixed it in my post.
 
BTW I have not forgotten your request for the "high level" parts from the "Making Your Recorded Vocals Sound at Least Twice as Good" using SONAR that I did at GearFest. However, I've expanded it and will be doing "version 2.0" at AES on Saturday. At that point I'll post a link to the PDF somewhere, or at least email it to you.
 
I really need to finish the craiganderton.com web site (coming soon...as in, before 2019 for sure ) to host these kinds of things. 


Thanks.  So v 2.0 will make vocals sound 8x better (because your original made my crappy vocals sound 4x better).  Looking forward to it.
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