Programming drums with a guitar June 25, 2009
Well, i’m on holidays for almost two weeks now, and it took me a while before I got focused on that “Untimely tales” album recording. Actually I almost wasted the first week…
I began on choosing the right tempos for each song, then programmed a basic drum loop for each of them, taking care of the rythm of the songs themselves, ie the way I play them with my guitar… Considering I wanted some kind of hip hop rythm, I carefully selected kick, snare and hihat samples. I’m still satisfied with the kick and snare samples, but everything gone wrong because of two things : the hihat sound and the tempos of the songs…
Whereas most hiphop tracks use a low tempo, let’s say around 80-90bpm (well, considering the few hiphop records I own… the Wu-Tang first two records), most of my songs are into the 100-120bpm range… except three of them which are around 90… It was then too fast, so I made the hihats too slow, and it didn’t work at all… So I got rid of everything I did in order to find a new way to record loops, still with a hiphop style rythm in mind…
Then I chose a cymbal sample instead of the hihat one… I made a loop on one song, and it did fit perfectly, so I applied the idea for all the loops… And now it works… By now, I just finished all the basic loops, and programmed the structure of each songs inside my recording software (Logic Audio on a mac). Programming the structures is usefull in order to automate tempo variations later, it’s also a good way to catch visually the idea of each song.
Well, I don’t think I wasted my time actually, I just had to start the project, then to take some time in order to work on a solid basis… Well I think it’s done…
So what’s next ? I have now to craft those drums for each song, programming variations, breaks, and adjusting the tempo variations all along each song… Well, i’m quite confident with all of this…
Want to see a part of my home studio environment ? here is a picture, akai drum pads and an apple macbook computer :
What else ? well, first of all, in order to get a flavor, let’s say So many days will be twice as fast as the online version… then, I wrote 13 songs, but added a fourteenth one into the project… a cover… I already talked about it earlier when I considered to record an EP first… Only one friend of mine is aware of which song I chose… keep it secret, please…
Ever heard about the Pink Mountaintops ? I love that band…
