Drum solutions

[Hydroman52]

I don’t know about anybody else, but the monotonous tick-tick-tick of a metronome drives me crazy, bonkers, nuts, and insane. My timing is not very good, so it’s beneficial to have someone else (or someTHING else) that can keep a good, steady tempo. For the better part of a year, bassman Jerry and I have been exploring different options for adding drums to our songs. The solutions that we have found have given me some answers to my metronome madness problem.

Here are the solutions that we are currently using (in order of preference):

1. Real live furry drummer (Cost – Priceless)
2. Isolated drum track from karaoke music WEB site (Cost – About $3.00 (US) per song)
3. Create drum track from scratch using DrumSite software (Cost – About $55.00 - $100.00 (US) for software and a set or two of good sounding drum samples)

For those who are interested in reading more, here are some of my thoughts on the journey to this point (Hint: If you bore easily . . . . bail out here).

At first, I thought the only benefit I would get from exploring and creating drum tracks would be to supply something to fill a gap in our practice or performance. We did get that, but I also found a better understanding of the art of drumming and how the drummer adds dynamics to enhance the music as a whole.

First, the disclaimers. I’m not trying to sell any of this stuff, and I won’t put any WEB site links for it here on the Forum. There are too many for that and they are easy to find with a Google search, anyway. I don’t claim to be an expert on this stuff and don’t want to spend an excessive amount of time learning it (would rather spend time honing guitar and other skills).

Next, the qualifiers. Any software needed to be IBM compatible (I don’t have Apple hardware), reasonably easy to use, easy on the wallet, and produce a good sound without locking up my old computer too much. I set my budget at under $150.00 for a software package.

Some general thoughts. When I first started looking for a program to create drum tracks, I spent some time trying out free drum looping programs. But those only allowed me to create short tracks of only a few measures long and then loop them. That might be good for repetitive electro-dance, but not for the songs that I’m playing. Then I tried to use the drum features in Guitar Pro 6, but couldn’t get the hang of it. I didn’t care for most of the samples and couldn’t figure out how to add or substitute my own to get the sound quality that I wanted. Most other promising “programs” that I looked at were actually plug-ins for DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) programs. So, not only would I have to buy the plug-in (at $75 - $150), but I would also have to buy the DAW program (at $200 - $600+). If I already had a DAW, I would seriously look at ezDrummer as it is reasonably priced right now and looks fairly easy to use. It appears that you can use your own samples and the samples that come with the software. If you want to expand the drum kits with more of their samples, you can buy their expansion packages ($35.00 - $80.00 (US) each).

I did read about and view a couple of YouTube videos showing the Apple solution of Garageband which has the ability of creating a drum track. If I had Apple equipment, I would definitely explore this option as it appears to be bundled free with the computer (perhaps someone who is more familiar with it could comment?). I understand that ezDrummer will work in conjunction with Garageband, and that is probably the route I would gravitate toward if I were living in the Apple world.

In the past, I have created drum tracks from scratch using the free DrumBoxNG software. This is the drum creation software that I first started using. It’s free, very basic, and will get the job done, but it is weak on the editing features and is very limited on the sample selection. Output is only to MIDI file, so I always needed to convert it to .mp3 in order to get it to play back reliably. It has other idiosyncrasies that take a while to figure out. But it produced a useable product for me and was a good starting point to learn more about these types of programs. We have used drum tracks created with this program in some of the busking videos that I’ve posted here at TG.


Some more specific thoughts.

1. Real live furry drummer. This is by far the best way to go, but it’s tough finding a good one around my area. Of course, a real live furry drummer should probably have some talent, a set of drums of some kind, and be able to keep tempo. We had a drummer that Jerry knew (and now I know him) sit in on a practice session a couple of weeks ago. He was traveling light and only brought his conga/bongo drums. He has played professionally, and it was quite a treat to be able to start playing a song and have him fall in and pick it up right away. This is the most fun!
2. Isolated drum track from karaoke music WEB site. I stumbled onto this while checking out a tip that Daryl gave on the Forum here at TG for backing tracks (thanks Daryl). This is by far the easiest method for producing a drum track for playback. For a small fee, you can have lifetime access to mix and download music tracks for a song. They refer to it as a “Custom Accompaniment Track”. I just isolate the drum track and download it as an .mp3 file. The only thing that I usually have to do is add a one measure “count-in” to the beginning using Audacity (free program). Then we play the track on the computer while recording into a Digitech JamMan, and we are ready to go. The only problem is that they don’t have a lot of the songs we want to play. The quality is usually fairly good, and you can play a short sample of the song before shelling out any money. They allow you to use their tracks for public performance, but, if you want to use it on a recording, you should have written permission. One more benefit is that we can isolate other tracks (bass, guitar, vocals/harmonies, etc.) and study their interpretation of the song more closely. You can also just remove the guitar parts and use it as a complete backing track.
3. Create drum track from scratch using DrumSite software. If we can’t find an option 1 or 2 for a song, then I move on to option 3 and make my own track with this software. They have a free trial version that allows you to do most everything except save files and a couple of other things that I can’t remember. With the full licensed version, the only export format is .wav, and, when the sample rate is set for good quality output, the files are quite large. If I need something of a reasonable size and quality to email to bassman Jerry for comment, I need to convert to an .mp3 file first (using a conversion program that I already have). I can create/add any drum hit sample that I want, so I guess I could record the dog barking and have that as a drum hit, too (I might try this out sometime). I have downloaded some drum samples from a sample sharing WEB site and used them in a drum track, so I know this feature does work. I am very pleased with the capabilities and output of this program and will be using it for my drum tracks for quite a while. I think it took an hour or two to get the basics down and a few more hours to get the hang of it. In that time, I created and tweaked a decent drum track for Jack Johnson’s song “Flake”. It will probably take quite a bit less time to create and tweak the next song I decide to tackle. Actually, the most time is consumed trying to figure out what needs to be done to tweak things than actually doing the tweaks (hours of planning/minutes of work). I think that I paid about $80.00 - $90.00 (US) for the package that I got and might have been just as well off with the basic $50.00 - $60.00 (US) version, but it's too early to say that is the case. This is a stand-alone package and does NOT require a separate DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) program in order to run.

Hope this helps someone,

Hydroman52

[daryl]

An interesting read there Rick. Drum tracks really help fill out a song (along with bass and lead guitars). Maybe you (and others) could build a repository of drum tracks somewhere here at TG?

[willem]

you sow!!! we reap!!!!... I wish I could make time for making them....

Willem the reaper..

[AndyT]

I use Acoustica Beatcraft. $39.95 and very easy to use. You can add drum kits as you like and the sounds are pretty good.
The interface is simple to use, and it makes some nice tracks. Now I just need to spend some time really learning how to write for drums.
Creating the tracks is easy. Making them sound right is not.

If we could get a bunch of us creating tracks for the songs we play, that would be awesome!

[sws626]

Hi Rick,
Great topic. Glad you raised this. I've played around with several free, inexpensive and relatively straightforward options of the sort you describe and a couple of more expensive programs (which happen to be built into or available as add ons to my DAW software). The former I've never found particularly satisfying. The latter produce great resutls, but require a lot of work to put together and learn the tools. I agree that the effort is probably worthwhile in terms of gaining a better understanding of what percussion contributes to a mix. But I'm often just interested in getting a good backing track with which to practice a specific song. So usually don't invest the effort that would be required to make something I'd want to record against.

A repository of member-generated drum (and bass) tracks would be a great resource and one I'd be prepared to contribute to.

-Stuart

[sws626]

A furry drummer????! :dry: :laugh:

[willem]

nesh16041972 wrote:

A furry drummer????! :dry: :laugh:

:laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

I don't hear that drummer...well soft... :laugh: B)

[wrench]

Keyboards, software, effects pedals, loop machines, etc., all muddy the clarity on where I want to go with music. While I admit these extra features do round out the sound, it can get real complicated real fast if you are just a simple soul. That said, you wouldn't know if these things are right for you if you don't look at them. In that vein, I extend thanks to Hydroman52 for taking the time to collect and present a pretty good primer on drum tracks.

While I haven't tried out many drum packages, I can't imagine any drum software better (or cheaper) than Hydrogen. Honestly, I stopped looking at drum software after I found this. http://www.hydrogen-music.org/hcms/

[AndyT]

Ness,
The joke is that most drummers are knuckle draggers, hence, hairy or furry.

Dan,
Ok then! LOL Hydrogen is amazing. And it links to Audacity. All this fab open source stuff out there. We can put together a package that rivals the pros with this stuff.

[Hydroman52]

daryl wrote:

An interesting read there Rick. Drum tracks really help fill out a song (along with bass and lead guitars). Maybe you (and others) could build a repository of drum tracks somewhere here at TG?

Hey Daryl,

Not sure how to put something like that together . . . . . but, to get things started, I'll try to attach an .mp3 file and the original MIDI file of the drum track that Jerry and I used for the Wild Horses video we posted here:

Busking Rolling Stones - Wild Horses

Hopefully, the .mp3 file should be attached somewhere here.



The drum track is really quite awful and unrealistic quality when played isolated, but it got us by and allowed us to stay synchronized. Now that I have better software and higher quality samples, I plan to do a remix of the drums for this song.

Hydroman52

EDIT: Well, it looks like I don't know how to attach a file to a message and have failed miserably. If someone knows how to do this, let me know, and I'll give it another try.