When it comes to sequencing and laying down drum samples, producers and beat makers have a few different options. Sampling is still quite big, with a lot of amateur and established music producers still employing pre-sampled loops and making their own to fit a beat or concept. The main two methods, however, are drawing in samples and tapping them out.
Drawing in drum samples into a piano roll editor is very easy on the eyes and the muscles as well. No physical input or effort is required, and you can even do it while slouching in your chair! It’s also very fast to put out, because one can simply click and draw. Getting sounds from your head to the screen and out of the speakers has never really been easier than this, and that’s why it’s so popular!
Tapping out drum samples using MIDI hardware is the other popular option, but it’s very hard for some newcomers to really get the rhythm down and keeping with the tempo. This can be really hard! The tip offered by a lot of pros is to take it slow and start with slow tempos first. You can even use your computer keyboard and assign letters to different notes on the piano editor on the screen, so you can trigger, for example, a kick drum by pressing the K letter on the PC keyboard. Cool, huh?
If you’re set on getting dedicated hardware units like the MPK series, you’re in for a few advantages over other producers that rely purely on software or mapping their keyboards to drum samples key set. The main advantage is being able to stay away from the screen for prolonged periods! A lot of the MIDI controllers even have stop, start and pause messages (called CC messages) that allow you to control a lot of the main functions of your sampler and control everything from another location a few meters away, for instance.
Each has their disadvantages as well. With tapping in drum samples, you need to be careful and pay attention to the velocity. Unless you want a very stale drum track, you should vary the velocity of the different drum samples and also the panning sometimes as well. It’s sometimes very hard to create a natural-sounding pattern by simply clicking in. One major drawback is that clicking can sometimes result in auto-quantization, where all the notes ’snap’ to a grid structure, which sounds even more robotic.
If you’re playing on pads, then you won’t be able to compose very intricate patterns unless you’re lightning fast with your fingers, even if you’re only recording one part at a time. This is a minor drawback, however, as most people realize that the fine-tuning can be performed on the screen later. To many people, using a physical input is great for setting the structure of the drum loop. Building on it using the editor is one way to apply the right rhythm and then assign a universal rhythm setting, or ’swing.’ Doing so will ensure that there is a constant binding factor in the mix, and this is very important if you’re going to mix electronic drum samples with live, recorded drum samples and need everything to sound and feel coherent.
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