Thank you! I'm an experienced singer and songwriter, but still a beginner when it comes to using a home studio. I had no clue about drums and beats, that's the part I really struggle with. Now I understand a lot more.
Yet another great tutorial, I for one would certainly be interested in additional video tutorials on this subject. The more the merrier. I am often disappointed with my fill patterns using the toms.
Loved this and would appreciate more as I'm hopeless with drum programming. Thank you. Maybe you could "stop" those open hi-hats by using a minimum velocity on the subsequent closed hi-hat (instead of deleting both).
I'm no musician - more of an enthusiast that likes to play around with this stuff. I've really been struggling to make drum parts that go with my guitar parts as I just don't have the knowledge or experience. For me this tutorial is huge! Thank you, Thank you, Thankyou! Mike you are awesome! You explain things in a way even a dumbass like me can understand.
This is a fascinating video Mike. I have struggled in the past to work out how to lay down drum sounds but you have given me some good examples. Yes, I would also appreciate a video on ‘fills and frills’ too. Thanks.
Very well pitched and paced tutorial. Thank you. Of course I’d love an additional, more advanced, ‘frills and fills’ tutorial in the future. My personal interest is drumming for surf instrumentals so I think the term ‘frills and fills’ as played by a real drummer fits well with an emphasis on natural sounding drumming. Obviously all your viewers would want something a bit different though! Great work! Thank you.
I’m glad you brought up consideration of the bass line at the 18:30 marker as that to me is far more crucial than what a rhythm guitar/piano part might be chucking. Thanks for the tutorial and keep up the good work.
Thanks Mike. Very helpful as always. Would definitely be keen to see your more advanced drum video! Out of necessity, I also use virtual bass guitars too. Would love to see a video on how to make them sound more realistic too if you’re keen!
Excellent video. Yes, please give us a more advanced video for drum patterns. Possibly taking an existing pattern and make it fit your song or other time signatures.
Thanks, Mike! Been playin' drums since '76, but this was still a pleasure to watch with all of the theory advice. "Back to the roots" so to say. 1 and then 2 and then...was interesting...In the states we were taught to count 1 trip-let 2 trip-let. Not sayin' its wrong...just interesting!
Thank you, Mike! This covers so much that I've been trying to learn. To 'fills and frills': yes, please! Would also love on overview of drum patterns for different types of music. Keep 'em coming!
Thank you! Very clear and direct, well-organized. I learned many things and can't wait to try them out! A more advanced tutorial will help once I master this one. I'm interested in drums for different genres, like slow blues, progressive, bluegrass.... I've always entered my drums in a repeating pattern with mouse clicks, now ready to try with the keyboard :)
This was on TV when I turned it on for my morning coffee so...some thoughts on kick. When I'm writing drums and have 2 kicks "close" together - I 'll make the first one (the bounce kick - my own term) the velocity less than the (plant kick) - this is usually more realistic sounding as this is usually the case with a real drummer.
Mike, this is another great video. Very clear and organized and it helps me a lot. If you were ever inclined to follow this up with a video on 'frills and fills' I think a lot of us would find it useful. I know I would. Thanks.
Love your very good videos. I came into digital recording from many years as an analog guy. I admit half the time recording time for me is still confusing. Thank you
Nice, I needed to see this. I’ve only recorded acoustic drums with audio tracks. I wanted to be able to record each voice on a different track, as that’s way easier for me, plus I should be able to get a real full final drum track, or something to add to my audio tracks.
I loved this video. Yes please, more advanced drum beat programming would be really appreciated, trills and frills, other beats and rhythms etc, anything like that would be useful.
Another great tutorial Mike! I've usually resorted to grabbing midi beats and fills which often, as you say, don't suit the vibe. When I've tried creating my own before, they're awful, and I reach for the super quantize button, and end up with something mechanical. I'll be trying to deploy some of these techniques in next project for sure. Would love to have a part 2 of this, exploring fills and frills.
Thanks Mike, this is just what I needed to start understanding the roles of each drum. More advanced tutorials would be a great help, especially in the context of various styles of music. Cheers!
Thanks Mike. Great vid as always. If I may, you seem to have forgotten to mention the #1 rule: drummers only have 4 limbs ! I've heard some tracks where you would need 3 drummers to reproduce in a live setting... Not that good IMHO. Keep up the good work, my friend and yes, some more tutorials on fills and frills or/and different time signature would be great !
As a drummer I always find it best for me to use my alesis edrum kit to trigger ezdrummer which gets the best result I can without the noise and associated difficulty with micing and recording an acoustic kit. I find that way easier than programming drums to get the groove that I want.
I do pretty much same the thing (except I’m a guitarist first, drummer second). Roland TD15 with Superior Drummer. Drum sounds need taming a little in a mix but SD3 is amazing.
I also record using an alesis kit, I'd like to figure out how to record into stems like how creative sauce does it so I can send them out to be mixed. Any ideas how?
As a very staunch supporter of the Cakewalk Step Sequencer, I use that to create my drum patterns. I will even drop drum patterns into the step sequencer to edit them in order to fit my songs. I find the piano roll a bit fiddly.
Thank you so much for such a nice video. This was a discovery for me. Would you please do a tutorial on how to program latin Cha Cha, Rumba, Bolero rhythms with fills? Thanks so much.
First off, yes, please make a video of more advanced techniques and how you humanize drum tracks. Very nice video and well planned. You explain ideas well. Counting the beat works; say the beat out loud enough times and you can feel it in your mind and body without hearing it. A video on counting and alternate times would be extremely informative. The explanation of divide by 2 versus divide by three made a lot of sense with your demonstration. How does that theory work with the terms straight time versus swing time? Nice Distrokid jacket!
Hi Jim, yes you are correct. With experience you can just feel it. I tried to avoid the word 'swing', as it can also apply to a looseness in the timing.... more of a feel thing. I needed that jacket... still chilly here!
Mike Thank you. You knocked it out of the park as usual. I do have a question when is the best place to include a hihat pedal sound. I've asked my drummer friends and always get. You just feel it. Not really helpful. Looking for on the one or as a pickup on and of 4 etc. Would like to see one on programming hard Rock drums.
Nice one Mike! Perhaps you could include a link for your Cakewalk drum set up video that you start using at the Hi Hat index - at the 10:28 Hi Hat section. I'm thinking I'll have to try arranging a drum track with your approach/method, but your "set up" seems to be an essential step. Thanks for another gem!
It's great! Very detailed and useful for songwriters and composers... Thanks Mike for your video... All the best, Momo Is it possible to setup velocity independently at different levels in the programme (ex. hi hat 100, snare 90, kick 70), not only manualy...
Great info! If I may bring to your attention though, there is something 'overlooked / missing' in your beginner's tutorials (for noobs to Cakewalk / DAWs in general, such as myself,) that probably seem so second nature to yourself and others to not bear mentioning, but they very much do need mentioned. I'm talking about the basic on-screen keyboard/touchpad/mouse commands that makes stuff happen. For example, near the end of this vid you made drumbeats disappear. How did you do it? Was it right click > enter? Was it double click on that piece of info and it was an automatic delete? Was it a keyboard command? What?? Same thing with a track. I got rid of all the info in a guitar track but have no idea how to 'eliminate' that track. Is there a trash can it can be dragged to or is it as simple as right click > delete? I don't know, and I can't seem to find answers in documentation. How did you / does one mark beginning and end to a section so it can be copied-and-pasted? And is there more than one way to do it? It's little things like these that seem to get glossed over in the tutorials. And that makes me feel like I should somehow already know this stuff. But I don't know it, which in turn translates to frustration and loads of wasted time, which makes me want to bag this whole thing and keep recording on tape / in analog. What I'm asking is for basic commands help from the get-go. The Cakewalk documentation "might" be ok, but since they've stopped showing the icons and in-documentation examples (the boxes are still there but show no information within) it's all pretty useless for us Average Joes / Josies. Would appreciate your consideration in future tutorials, thanks. BandLab's lack of examples in Cakewalk documentation is making learning the DAW wayyy harder than necessary. It reminds me of an indicator of what a lot of companies do when a big change is a-comin' -- such as downsizing, the closing of a division, being bought out or going under for examples. To me it doesn't make sense to continue releasing updates yet not updating the examples portion of documentation. Feels like keeping old users happy while discouraging new users.
Awsome tutorial. A bit beside the topic but how would you go about creating double kick which is common in metal music when most virtual drum kits only have one kick?
I'm complete newbie to this. So, how to I get a drum plug in? How do I get that into Cakewalk and then open open it? How do I get the individual drum sounds to add to a track without having to press a key on the keyboard etc? In other words how do I start to get me to the start of this video. Cheers, appreciated
I am basically drum inept. I can play very very very basic drum beats on a kit but I want to add drums to my songs. I can hear what I want in my head but I can't seem to get it to my fingers. I do have a Midi Controller so make things easier, I hope. Another thing is how do you calculate beats per minutes? Do you have to go by the beats per minutes that is shown in Cakewalk or can you just ignore it?
I saw a video from you, Mike, where you split a SI Drums into Addictive drums 2 Multi-track individualized (isolated) tracks for control and EFX. I can't seem to find that. Could you point me to this? Also could you point me to your patreon site.
When you do the Sound on Sound Method the way you do how can you copy and paste all of the layers at once? Or is there a way to do it where all of the layers are on the same grid? It seems when I try and move stuff around I am missing things. Kick here, Snare there, hardware elsewhere and so on.
I love your videos, but I am so new to all this I struggle to find the same information, grids etc on screen and when you press a button and something happens, it rarely happens on my set up. Also once I have finished quantisizing (using the white lines) I can't get rid of them. I know it's stupid but it drives me crazy. Have you made any videos or can recommend any to show how to make things happen? My projects also mutate and I can't find the plugins or something else happens. It's really frustrating, or the timing slows and I can't speed all the tracks. Maybe an index of videos would help. Thanks and Happy New Year. Dave
The issue that I'm having is when I try to record some drum samples manually, nothing shows up in the track lane? However, I can drag and drop a drum sample and that will work. I can also record using an audio track lane. No matter what I try I am unable to get any of the virtual instruments to record in the track lane. I have gone into edit and then preferences and am using "asioforall" as the input for cakewalk. I have since switched back to "WASAPI shared" with the same result? Any tips or advice would be greatly appreciated, thanks!
