Drum Programming / grooves

[ross-alexander]

Does anyone have any resources or recommendation on this? I'm not happy with mine tbh, granted a lot of current techno a la liebing etc does not have particularly complex programming but I'm thinking more along the lines of classic regis and people like reeko, exium oscar mulero, where its more complex and rolling....really find it a struggle to get a nice rolling distorted rhythm section.....please help

[ste]

it's a combination of sound & rhythm... soundwise it often helps to glue the drum sounds together with saturation or compression. rythmwise it's important not to stick to the grid when you want it rolling/grooving... sounds so simple but it isnt

[Críoch]

I often have in my head when I start a track that I want loads of toms, chugging along.. Never sounds like I want.

However - I usually end up realising the next time I start a project, that when I use simple patterns & subsequently fill in the free spaces with the next elements.. that it does sound "rolling". Dont know if that helps ya Ross, but I regularly forget it myself man.

Play everything seperately & it sounds shit - but all together, sounds cool. Is that what you mean.

As for the distortion, i still struggle, but I'm getting closer using a bit of drive on the default saturator in ahleton. Not crazy, but it dirts it up enough to give me what I want. I do think that using bits of short loops gives the best rolling feel like those lads you mentioned. Any sort of rhythm loop seems to have the potential to be a jackin' monster in 5 seconds.. whereas it takes me X amount of time to program it & I cant get the same feel

[sam]

i've listened to a lot of reeko recently and his drum programming is top notch i must say. he seems to use pretty standard but very tightly programmed patterns. i think a lot of his style is using the right noises at the right levels with the right fx and all mixed very precisely. some of his non 4x4 rhythms seem to be almost breakbeats but programmed rather than sampled so the variations can be a lot more solid. there's not really a lot to them on the surface but i think subtitles with his kind of music go pretty deep.

there's a pretty good thread about distortion on here already ross and i'll dig up the link and add to this post. mattias gives some great tips and the sentiment is don't try and do it all at once, do it by degrees on the sounds themselves, groups, and send / return channels.

[dylab]

Euclidean rhythms
http://www.hisschemoller.com/2011/euclidean-rhythms/

and a live file with them all in midi
http://www.ageofthewheel.com/2011/03/eu ... n.html?m=1

[ross-alexander]

cheers, sure it will get there, haven't exactly come to it from nothing was more wondering if there were any standard resources about to dot the i's and cross the t's, its quite hard I find to make things gel

[Mslwte]

this is something that looked for a while back and couldnt really find much in the way of dance/techno but i did get these,

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Machine-Pattern ... 179&sr=8-2

the contents includes rock, reggae, pop, disco, jazz and funk. but some of the patterns you can actually cross over and make your own. it certainly can assit with ideas.

[Mslwte]

heres also this topic on grooves which my help..

http://www.subsekt.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=138

[helloitsmeagain]

to my mind the list for a good groove includes:

Swing, it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that.. swing. I never drop a beat without the grid switched off, aside from my kicks which are straight down the line.
Delay, aside from the kick, and more often than not the snare, everything i do has it.
Freq modulation. usually glued to 1 or 2 bars, just to give a surge.
Dissonance, for every pocket full of elements that are in the format of 4/4, throw in a few elements that aren't.

Lastly, I move quickly, trying out many variations in a short time. Too long focused on say, the laying out of a hi-hat, can do my head in... Any 2 bar loop sounds crap after 5 minutes of it and it alone. I do the variations, consider them done. Then move to the next element and repeat. Once i have a few variations in each instrument, bounce around, seeing what sticks between and then fiddle around a bit on individual stems.

Works for me.

[bram2000]

I've been lurking around here for a little while, but thought it time to say hello...

Hello! I really like this forum, it's exactly what I've been looking for, and seems to have a great community supporting it.


Now that's out of the way - this is an interesting thread. helloitsmeagain - what do you mean by freq modulation glued to 1 or 2 bars? Also, when you say dissonance, are you meaning some kind of "rhythmical dissonance", i.e. some elements using different time signatures/loop sizes?

Something that was originally posted by Voidloss (I think), is try to build a decent groove without the standard elements (i.e. 4/4 kick, offbeat hat) that stands up on it's own, then when you add the basic kick and hats back in, it should sound really great. I can't say I'm any good at implementing this yet, but I have had some success, and it does make a lot of sense. Sometimes when I try this it really clashes when I drop the kick back in, guess maybe it's just a matter of having the experience to know what is likely to sound good up front. This is used to good effect all over Techno, where the kick dropping in to a loop suddenly changes the entire feel (suddenly the downbeat changes).

[ross-alexander]

cheers guys for your thoughts some interesting stuff here for sure, food for thought

[gurr13r]

Now this is going to sound silly and very backward, some of the best grooves ive made have been from scrolling through a sample pack, dropping the hits I like into a drum rack and spontaneously rearrange them until I get something really cool sounding, panning them adjusting levels so they sound less cluttered, id also set up a send/return rack on the channel with various effects. delay, distortion, reverb etc... add a groove and hey presto!
I realise I dont have the correct lingo to describe what I do, it seems to work for me though, im probably very primative, but fuck it, I try

[helloitsmeagain]

yeah, i wasn't very clear. hate typing...

rhythmical dissonance. used sparingly on a few elements in your kit, so the groove doesn't fall apart. as long as the majority of elements follow the 4/4...

re: freq mod - basically modulate a filter (high pass is what i've used till now, but perhaps even try a low pass) so that it sweeps, ever so slightly across. repeating the sweep either every 1 or 2 bars.

[helloitsmeagain]

hmm, some other things i didn't mention...

vary velocity. i tend to even drop the velocity, ever so slightly on 1 of the kicks. i go all out on the hats though.

and then ghost notes. especially on my snares. shorter notes usually placed next to or a 16th away from the primary hit, with the velocity way down.

[Mslwte]

It's amazing how important levels and velocity play a part in the groove process. It isn't just a case of where you place sounds although v. Important of course

I hate to say it but it's all about practice, trial and error.

A great way of understanding how groove works is converting a tracks grove to midi so you can see where elements sit.

In my own experiments I've found that off setting kicks, moving them to the right each one slightly further away than the last works really well !

[Mslwte]

It's amazing how important levels and velocity play a part in the groove process. It isn't just a case of where you place sounds although v. Important of course

I hate to say it but it's all about practice, trial and error.

A great way of understanding how groove works is converting a tracks grove to midi so you can see where elements sit.

In my own experiments I've found that off setting kicks, moving them to the right each one slightly further away than the last works really well !

Looks like I've gone around in a big circle. I've been really struggling with a grove in a track I've been playing with the last few evenings. I just can't get it to flow. And then I found this topic on Google, and now I'm talking to myself haha. Does anyone know of any useful resources?

[Alume]

haha nice one man, I can only emagine the online path you've taken there,


If im out of ideas I slam a delay on there and find odd rytms with shifting the time bit by bit. Then I close my eyes and find the sweet spot.

Voila! Groove

(in an ideal situation)

[Mslwte]

I don't use delay that much at all. I should. I think it's because I have lots of elements in my tracks and there usually isn't enough space for delays. Ill give that ago Fo sho.

[Will Frances]

Try delaying your percussion or hats with a fairly short delay, side chain your delay to the same element your delaying so the delay ducks when the dry signal plays. Also try gating the your delay tail so it cuts short. Also try saturating/ distorting your delay.

[Alume]

Mean delay tips here, nice.