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Back beat...the word is on the street

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  • 28-08-2013 10:06pm
    #1
    Lbeard
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 311 ✭✭


    I was playing a Kurzweill in whateverthatshopiscalledTheoneinthatfilm

    I was going through the drum kits. Playing simple patterns with my hand; kick, snare.

    The snare usually falls on the back beat (2) and is usually the snare. Depend on the drum kit, I played some patterns, switching the bass drum to the back beat, and a more snarish sound to the downbeats. But on some kicks I got some funky, Prince (when he was good) patterns.

    My home set up is not set up at the minute, so I can't experiment. And it's usually penciling things in, not playing rhythms in real time.

    My question is, putting a bass kick on the backbeat, instead of the downbeat - does it go horribly wrong when you add music on top. Does the first beat have to be a bassy kick?.......

    Using the rhythms I was playing with, if they are to work in a composition do I have to do something complicated - like the backbeat is the downbeat, etc.


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    #2
    DamagedTrax
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,277 ✭✭✭DamagedTrax


    it doesnt always work and using the kick sparingly is the answer but when its right, its really right.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRwR7avc5Oc


    (or half the motown back catalogue!!)


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    #3
    Lbeard
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 311 ✭✭Lbeard


    DamagedTrax wrote: »
    it doesnt always work and using the kick sparingly is the answer but when its right, its really right.


    I know it doesn't work if just I pencil it in. But I think that could be a tricky relationship between the tone of the snare and kick. I was spinning through lots of kits (I don't own a 3 grand Kurzweill), they had it hooked up to a Roland synth amp that was at my feet - which gave a decent whuumpf. It was more musical. One thing that drives me up the wall about the DAW, is you have to work at making the pattern sound musical - with the Kurzweil, today, the tweaking in the beats was more me just slowing a little or speeding up, until the kick and snare played into each other.....finding where it sounded more musical - that wouldn't have worked had they been different samples in patterns just sped up and slowed down. .......So, it was a more musicality thing - can't play the drums but you know how a good drummer makes all the drums sound like they're talking together - it's not just hits happening somewhere in time.


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    #4
    DamagedTrax
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,277 ✭✭✭DamagedTrax


    there are a lot of ways to get a programmed drum track sounding somewhat real. groove quantising, recording overdubs of yourself playing the kit (ie 1 pass with kick and snare, then toms, then cymbals etc).

    nothing will get close to a real drummer though so sometimes it may be best to go the opposite way with programmed drums, ie make them sound obviously fake.


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    #5
    Lbeard
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 311 ✭✭Lbeard


    DamagedTrax wrote: »
    there are a lot of ways to get a programmed drum track sounding somewhat real. groove quantising, recording overdubs of yourself playing the kit (ie 1 pass with kick and snare, then toms, then cymbals etc).

    The computer can't really sense what is groovy and what is not. On the Kurweill one of the kits I was playing with, the kick had a weird decay - it would decay and then towards the end jump in volume and then go out. Finding the right tempo with my hand, that weird decay played a groove with the snare. Doing something like that on a DAW is much too tricky. You'd have to individually edit all the delays of all the drum hits to find it - and most of what you would hear would be awful.
    nothing will get close to a real drummer though so sometimes it may be best to go the opposite way with programmed drums, ie make them sound obviously fake.

    But sometimes it's the other way around. And it's a real drummer faking a machine. The drum intro on Nine Inch Nails Closer is a sample from a Iggy Pop record. It's so simple but it has a groovy feeling to it.


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