[linux-audio-user] Drumming [was: metronome-free MIDI recording]

[Brett W. McCoy]

Mark Knecht wrote:

>> Trying to emulate someone like Bruford with a drum machine is going to 
>> be next to impossible.  Hell, trying to emulate his style with a human 
>> is next to impossible!
> 
> That's why you and I love him, right? ;-)
> 
> As I said, I was just studying his technique. He's amazing.

Yeah... it's funny, I'm not a kit drummer at all (I have some training 
in Middle Eastern percussion only), being primarily a guitarist, but I 
am finding myself more and more listening to the drums in music to 
better my own electronic drum programming.

For bands like Yes, King Crimson & Rush, the drum parts are very 
composed and do more than 'just keep the beat'.  Bruford and Peart are 
all over the place... to emulate that kind of playing with a drum 
machine or software, you damn near have to have a different drum pattern 
for every measure!

Suprisingly, for Mike Portnoy of Dream Theater, his individual beats 
aren't very complex, its just that the tempo and key signature change a 
lot that make seem it complex.

> As for the humanizing issue, if you are going to use that then you'd 
> better record the drum audio early as it won't humanize the same way 
> twice and then things get very dodgy. That said I hear good things about 
> Hydrogen, but I got started with Reaktor's drum machines too early to 
> want to give up on them now.

I've not tried Reaktor.  I've just started playing with Hydrogen, and am 
very impressed with it -- before I was either using a hardware drum 
machine or using MIDI (via Finale, Cakewalk, Rosegarden, etc).  I've 
written several tracks now using Hydrogen.  There are some things it 
*doesn't* do yet that I need, so I will either wait until Comix 
implements it, or just bite the bullet and hack the code to make it do 
what I want and see if Comix will take my patches :-)

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