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What method do you guys use and how do you keep your work flowing when it comes to drum programming (im on logic but any tips in general are appreciated) Do you use your own preset kit or make one up every time you start up a project? I have made a few kits but they are never worth loading up again, i spend ages on it then load them up again the next day and listen to the samples i chose and just think what a load of shit

At the moment my technique goes like: load up blank instance of a multi output EXS 24, drag and drop samples into it, spend ages routing the samples to different outputs so they can be mixed differently, write drums in MIDI, then give up on the project, save the EXS instrument file and the corresponding samples in some random folder on an external drive, forget about it, then if i ever manage to find it and load it up again, bang head against wall and cry at what a waste of time it was and how shit the samples were and how useless it all is. surely there is an easier way than this? is ultrabeat any good? at the moment it looks more complicated than it is worth to me.

edit: why do none of the synths in logic have init patches???? you have to spend more time reseting the synth than you end up spending actually programming it

Drum rack in Ableton. Every drum gets it's own effects chain, usually a few subtle effects. Then the entire rack is sent a reverb send channel, 2 compression sends (Parallel compression )

I make a beat that I like with the fruity stock drums, change out the samples, EQ and all that, and change the beat a little and I'm set

I prefer having my drums ready to go so I don't burn out looking for the perfect kick, snare, etc...

I've wasted hours doing that

sometimes I'll change the sounds as the tune evolves, but it's best to have something ready to go right off the bat

I hope that helps

Drum rack + four dif. samples of each drum hit in my song. Start the basic dubstep kick on 1 snare on 3 pattern and then tweak away until the 2 bar loop makes me wanna get up and just skank around my studio (usually its due to to much time spent in the studio makin me act goofy.. but sometimes i do get a funky/gangster/fresh drum loop going). Layer your hits! Use solid samples from the get go!

I've made 3 or 4 different kits inside the EXS24. One kit which has 12-15 of my favourite kicks, one that has 12-15 of my favourite snares/claps/rimshots, one that has my favourite hi-hats, and one that has a selection of rides and other cymbals. When i start a new project i pretty much know to open up one of each of these, and them i'm good to start programming.

I prefer to use regular samples with everything on its own audio track. I don't really like using midi for drums.

drag audio onto the arrange and boom! you have a sick track.

I just give each percussion element its own track and drag and drop the audio files
and if i want to use effects on them or whatever i just drag anything i want onto that channel
and if i want to effect more than one channel then i just group them together

I dont like using midi or drum rack for my drum programming

PERCEPT wrote:I've made 3 or 4 different kits inside the EXS24. One kit which has 12-15 of my favourite kicks, one that has 12-15 of my favourite snares/claps/rimshots, one that has my favourite hi-hats, and one that has a selection of rides and other cymbals. When i start a new project i pretty much know to open up one of each of these, and them i'm good to start programming.

this is fucking brilliant, i can't believe i didn't think of this before. this will save me a lot of time spent going through kits and samples each time i start a project.

yeh man thats the kinda shit i was looking for, something simple that makes things a lot easier. might give it a try now. another thing that pisses me off is my samples are on an external hard drive, and whenever i try to save the project and samples and shit if im using EXS, it always manages to lose at least some of the samples. i swear half my problems are from opening up a project or drum kit and it being fucked up with all the file links broken and shit, so im stuck with a bunch of midi linked to a sampler playing a decent drum track but i have no idea what samples were what so there is no hope of getting it back or transferring it to a working drum kit.

shit i swear this hot weather just makes me angry.

Here is an interesting way of doing drums in ableton

http://youtu.be/Ka39zTpPpFc
http://youtu.be/2PlXFVHlJaU

I just give everything its own track, and go with the flow. Also, I get rid of samples I never use so that I don't waste time looking through a bunch of samples, and I use no quantization, no grids.
Oh, and just use 808 or 909 samples if you keep running into the problem of shitty sounding samples, until you find the sample that you for sure want to use. I dunno, but shouldn't you be able to just swap the sample for another one? I don't use any kind of program or software for my drums, I just record, sometimes just copypasta in my DAW, then bounce the 1 measure loop after mixing it, and viola! a drum loop. Works for me at least.

in the past i've spent hours loading samples into ultrabeat but i have a few kits saved now and just open 1 of them and maybe add or change a couple, i've also been bouncing out the finished layered hits and reloading them back in to save on cpu.
and yeah i think ultrabeat is great it's really easy to use, it just looks a bit complicated at first

@percept- thats a good idea might have to do that myself when i can be bothered

i downloaded a blank patch for the es2 so i'm sure you can get em for other synths

a while back I started saving all my sounds from finished projects and organizing them into a folder.

now the majority of the time when I open up my DAW I don't have it in mind to create a beat, rather just to create some nice samples for use later. when it rarely happens and inspiration strikes, it is frustrating as hell to start trawling through gigs of samples.

now I have a folder full of drum sounds I've processed or just saved dry. some of the goldbaby 808 kicks (especially the ones in the mpc60 kit I think) are just perfect and I don't feel the need to alter them. so I have all my favourite drum sounds organized neatly and I can go to them whenever I start a beat.

for the actual programing aspect. I usually start off in renoise. everything is usually quantized 1/16th notes. I make a couple of loops. export them. chop them up in recycle (I don't go by transients, I just chop in 1/16ths or 1/8ths) and then I open up up the files in reason and fuck around with the rex files there. as I can open up the same drum sounds in reason that I just used in renoise I can add a clean kick or clap if I feel the need to.

use battery or racks to program a little loop using good samples, either pre-processed myself or from existing sample packs.

maybe work on a couple of variations on the straight pattern and then bounce to audio. I find having the dynamics and mix established on the drums at the beginning makes the song writing process a lot easier.

I used to spend ages re-tweaking my drums and not making music. I dont do that anymore. Once the beats are bounced to audio I add FX or glitches and then on to the rest of the song.

just arrange the audio hits in the arrange window, each on its own audio channel. Ive tried to use Battery but I hate it, Ive tried other samplers but it just seems like a complicated way to solve an easy problem.

I use mostly EXS and UB.

will try some of the other recommendations thanks!

therzbm wrote:yeh man thats the kinda shit i was looking for, something simple that makes things a lot easier. might give it a try now. another thing that pisses me off is my samples are on an external hard drive, and whenever i try to save the project and samples and shit if im using EXS, it always manages to lose at least some of the samples. i swear half my problems are from opening up a project or drum kit and it being fucked up with all the file links broken and shit, so im stuck with a bunch of midi linked to a sampler playing a decent drum track but i have no idea what samples were what so there is no hope of getting it back or transferring it to a working drum kit.

shit i swear this hot weather just makes me angry.

ever thought about having your hard drive as a backup?

sounds like your using it as a primary hard drive almost, wouldn't be supprised if you had you're O/S running off it

nah, put your samples in a neat folder upon your desktop MUSIC PRODUCTION>SAMPLES>DRUMS

this is brilliant:

PERCEPT wrote:I've made 3 or 4 different kits inside the EXS24. One kit which has 12-15 of my favourite kicks, one that has 12-15 of my favourite snares/claps/rimshots, one that has my favourite hi-hats, and one that has a selection of rides and other cymbals. When i start a new project i pretty much know to open up one of each of these, and them i'm good to start programming.

i use a similar technique, but i still haven't made a template file like quoted above. will do that soon though.

what i do now is adding some of my favorite kicks/snares/shakers/hats/etc to Poise and then toggling through them while working on the beat. nice thing about Poise is that you can add multiple samples to each pad and then switch between them on the go.

but yeah, i'll definitely make one template file with Poise connected to 16 outs (each pad on individual output) and add all my favorite samples to the pads. will save me lots of time and effort in my next projects. thanks for the advice PERCEPT!