How Do YOU Record MIDI Drums?

[iamjosan]

I recently bought an AXIOM 25 MIDI controller and will be recording some drum sounds via Superior Drummer and Pro Tools. I am curious to know how you, personally, record drums using your midi controller?

Do you record each sound one by one(hi hat first, then snare, etc)? Do you program a certain beat?

How do YOU program drums?

 

[Fretless]

I write my drums out in maschine and export midi. I usually play the kick and snare together, followed by the cymbols, and then the toms. Or I just write em out in piano roll because I am too lazy to play sometimes. I use ableton for all my stuff, and it works rather well.

 

[Poltergeist]

I try to play all parts on my midi keyboard first ( works best for keeping the humanistic feel). If the drumming is too technical, I'll use the option in Pro Tools known as "midi merge" this allows to do multiple recording passes to the same midi track.. So start with what is keeping your timing.. usually hi-hat or cymbals, then do your bass and snare hits together . All in all I'd rather just lay my drum tracks down with an electronic drum set but that's not possible for everyone. But I'm looking into getting a one piece electronic drum kit, specifically the Yamaha DD-65 and use it to control superior drummer. Hoping that this will save a ton of time for programming drums. Because the first couple ways I suggested takes a lot of tedious time to get your drumming to sound authentic and in time, but the end result is solid, and you just have to worry bout the other instruments being in time with the drums... Hope that helps.

 

[Chi]

Pianoroll. Ololol.

 

[svenlk]

Pianoroll. Ololol.

this is deffinatly the way to go

 

[JEngelking]

Piano roll.

Or write them out in tuxguitar and import the MIDI info. But there's times when not everything lines up like it should (e.g. crash cymbal notes are being hit as splash cymbals by EZdrummer), so I tend to try and just write them in piano roll if possible.

 

[Randyrhoads123]

I write them out in the pianoroll in Reaper.

 

[Abaddon9112]

Piano roll though I'm looking for a new way to do it. I find piano roll time consuming.

 

[Chi]

I used to write them in Guitar Pro...Once you get the workflow going, pianoroll is the way to go.

 

[ScatteredDimension]

I used to write them in Guitar Pro...Once you get the workflow going, pianoroll is the way to go.

Same here Nothing beats the good old GP for songwriting!

 

[iamjosan]

I used to write out drum parts on Reason back when I didn't have a midi controller. That is too time consuming for me. That's why I bought the axiom25.

I'm hoping I could program beats to each pad individually, for example a fast thrash beat when I hit the pad and it just continues for every hit. Would save me a lot of time and I think it will sound more concise.

I just don't have the time anymore to be spending countless hours programming note per note playing around with these programs. I wish I could just play my music and have someone record it super profesh.

 

[Larcher]

tab everything in guitar pro and export to midi, then import midi once in the DAW. Setup some humanization and it's good to go

 

[ZachK]

As of right now I write them using a Rock Band Drum Kit as a midi controller and laying down the foundation for the beat. After that I'll build on it in Pianoroll.

 

[danielbonavita]

The drummer of my band writes like hell ONLY in pianoroll. He tried with pads and whatelse, but none went fine.

I do believe that real drummers (even with little MIDI skills) does it very well. Like a one-way guitar player, I can't even do some basic grooves. haha

 

[nutsock]

Guitar pro and pianoroll in reaper

 

[iamjosan]

Why do all of you guys use piano roll? Is it because of feasibility or because you don't have a midi controller?

 

[ducer]

I used to write drums in Guitar Pro first, then export it to Reaper. Right now I work exclusively with Reaper. Some of my friends took another route: they write drums in Fruity Loop Studio (its easy to control velocity levels, etc.) and then they export MIDI track into Cubase/Reaper.

 

[patata]

GP5.Saves times and I can hear the every instrument play at the same time.
Then to SD 2.0 with my Metal Machine expansion and I EQ/Compress after that.

 

[EcoliUVA]

As apparently everyone else, pianoroll.

As far as actually thinking up beats (if that's what you're after) I try something...and then my rhythm guitarist slaps his chest and legs and verbally doodley-doos and then changes everything and it's better.

So uh...yeah, get one of those.

 

[Poho]

Everything that we've done for Tactus so far, our drummer has recorded a performance on an e-kit, then we quantize the midi file and adjust velocities to our liking.