Tagged As: Sonar Drums
Question:
I spent about 3 hrs last night trying to make drums tracks in the tools provided in Sonar - The Session Drummer, and the Drum Maps. I worked with both. It seemed like such a struggle I gave up and this morning started searching the Internet for drum machine software. I found several, includuing a thing called PC Drummer, but it didn't seem to have nearly the sounds that are really needed. But I tried. Here's my question - Am I on the right track (no pun intended) ? It would seem to me that using the tools provided in Sonar would be the obvious way to go here since it understands (supposedly) the timimg of the song etc. but doing these drums is turning into a painful experience. Am I missing something ?
Answer:
Unless you are writing a very specific arrangement, the rule with drum parts (as with so much in music) is KISS - Keep It Simple Stupid :-) 1 & 3 on bass drum, 4s on ride cymbal (or a simple swing pattern). Maybe 2 & 4 on a light snare sound, maybe not (in light swing styles). The aim is to create a pattern that will keep you in time, but that won't interfere with anything in the rest of the music. A useful trick in the style you're using is to write a 3-bar phrase and repeat it many times. This breaks the boring inevitability of a repeated pattern. All you need to change is the ride cymbal rhythm. Bar 1 ting ting-a ting ting-a, bar 2 ting-a ting ting ting-a then ... well, you work something out :-) You might enjoy Band In A Box. Do you know this program? It's much more than the toy it might appear to be. Jazz players HATE how easy it is to synthesise a pretty good swing-style backing :-) Rock styles are actually harder to fake. Because there's less freedom, the parts need to be more specific. http://www.band-in-a-box.com/
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