Are you using the Digitakt?
good challenge!
IĀ“ll try with the Octatrack.
Reckon itās all about using the right samples with good velocity variations. Specially with blast beats theyāre so frantic thereās is very little control over the sound except for the emphasis beat.
Anyone ever look at EZdrummer drummer from hell?
I downoaded it but IĀ“d like to get this on the machines.
Iād make a loop of it in OT, then add your one shot drums.
I broke 2 teeth on this one, I was 18.
I hope those 2 teeth werenĀ“t yours!
A loop with what concretely?
Sample a song in OT, isolate loops, use calculate tempo function, change tempo, play the loop, add drums accordingly to the song.
They were my teeth. My friend told me I projected my head on his elbow.
Good chance to practice counting and transcription. Hard to translate if one doesnāt grasp the original language. Not listened to the song in question, but knowing meshuggah, I would guess a good understanding of tuplets, composite meters and rhythmic illusions is a good starting point.
Also remember when listening that the odd meters and feels often occur in relation to the rest of the composition. If that makes any sense
Man that was one trippy video.
Another good example that almost sounds programmed:
As a (death)metalhead and bass player myself -bonus points if you now understand where my nickname is from!- I can tell you that while it is a really cool CHALLENGE, it is almost certainly not worth it (re:time vs results) trying to mimick ārealā deathmetal drums with a drum machine.
ItĀ“ll cost you years of your life just to program a convincing 4-bar-loop and then you still have to loop that for the rest of the song, while a real drummer would always sprinkle in a ton of fills every other bar = hell to program.
even with stuff like DrumkitFromHell/ezDrummer, it is a freaking nightmare to get all the velocities right - most people usually just go to the preset MIDI library and tweak from there.
BUT, if you really want to try, and you want to go for those styles mentioned (fucking love Black Dahlia Murder, by the way - awesome live band! Also check out Darkest Hour!), then you need to get used to switching between triplet rolls and 16th kicks.
Also, in some cases, you need to realize that some metal drummers like to switch (especially for blast beats) between having a kick on the āoneā/downbeat - and a snare (!) on the downbeat.
IĀ“d love to see what you guys come up with, but for me - itĀ“s just easier to buy a crate of beer and invite a drummer friend
Several years without listening to Darkest Hour, I liked them.
Thanks for your advice, anyway I donĀ“t want to program death metal, only to steal patterns, rythms and rythm changes to play with them in an electro/techno context.
For example, different kinds of blast beats can be used to trigger cymbals, toms, etc., or only for a fill.
yeah, fair enough!
if thatĀ“s your goal , you could just do what I described above - go through the MIDI presets of any ādrummerā plugin (ezDrummer, etc.) and pick out the basic patterns and dissect/understand them better.
certainly would be very useful to help understand how a ārealā drummer would accentuate/emphasize via velocity values.
From what I remember (been a while since I programmed that style of drums):
Drummers LOVE hitting that first Snare a tiny bit louder (and most of the times, a bit early/ahead of the beat), and most of the times youĀ“ll see double-bass kickdrum patterns start out a little more āenthusiasticā and then get a little quieter/less velocity and then āpick upā a bit again towards the end of the bar.
just think about the physical strength and energy it takes to blast-beat away for a few bars and youĀ“ll figure out where and why the velocity goes up and down usually.
IĀ“m far better fingerdrumming on the table than programming, thatĀ“s a thing IĀ“m still thinking, how to convert fingerdrumming to drums:
- Ableton: not very good in this.
- Vochlea Dubler: bought the super early bird but needed the money and cancelled it. Anyway it forced me to work too much with the computer.
- Contact microphone.
- Drum machine + mio4 + Boppad (AR? DT? I have none): for know the best option.
- Electronic drum kit: I had one and sold it, IĀ“m not a drummer
- Maybe thereĀ“s one I still donĀ“t know.
I definitely try this.
I donāt think itās (just) energy though, itās feel for the music. I doubt notating it to sheet music really explains very well how someone that is really good at playing this stuff is playing it.
I agree with the above comment that programming it is probably more effort than itās worth - you could probably spend the time more profitably trying to drum along with a drumpad - by the time you got good enough to do it youād be so good at finger drumming that including this sort of stuff in your music would be a breeze.
Have you ever researched Meshuggah and how the drummer programs his drums?
In this article he talks about how he does it.
https://drummagazine.com/tomas-haake-meshuggah-goes-it-alone/
So, as far as our songwriting goes, we usually program all drums and drum parts at first, and we use computers and recording software throughout the whole writing process, and only rarely do I feel the need to change a drum part or drumming style for a song. Itās usually a process of refining each song until weāre all satisfied with it ā and then I basically just emulate the playing and the way the drums are programmed onto the real drum set.ā