Q; about putting drum tracks together!

Burtog · January 26, 2011, 12:56:36 AM

BR800

Just got my recorder and I am getting into it now but my question is if you want to make a drum track which starts mid-way through a song what is the best way of putting a beat down down to follow before the track starts?

Would I put a beat in for the full length of the song and then edit out with the the rhythm editor later??

Any advise would be great!!

Burtog

Gritter · January 26, 2011, 01:01:26 AM

yes, I would put the beat in all the way through and then take the beat out up to the measure you want it to start at.

*I have a Micro BR but should be somewhat similar for your BR800.

AndyR · January 26, 2011, 01:46:24 AM

Yep, that's roughly what I would do too.

In fact, I've just been doing something similar on my BR1600 over the last few days. At least that's how it started. I have a song where drums are silent until a couple of minutes in, and then silent again in places.

What I found though, because I arranged the drums halfway through the whole process, sometimes I need the timing guide in the gaps, and the final drum part as well.

This is roughly what I've done so far:

1) Set up a basic pattern to repeat as a click track while laying down initial parts (I wasn't expecting to use drums or electric guitars at all originally on this song).
2) Put a guide acoustic and vocal down.
3) Started experimenting with a bass part.
4) Replaced the acoustic with a better one and then added a guide bass.
5) Recorded some electric guitars for a laugh - and liked it... this kind of commited me to drums.
6) Drums needed to be sorted before any other instrument arrangements could be finished. So I created a drum arrangement from patterns. I actually had to create all the patterns from scratch - I couldn't find presets to do what I wanted. Took me days but I've learnt a lot and could do it faster next time.
7) Recorded the final lead vocal - had HUGE problems keeping time in the gaps between chords, verses, etc!!

So what I did was set up a one bar pattern I called "Silence" and another called "Click". Finally one called "Gap". I put "Gap" in the song arrangement everywhere where there were no actual drum patterns needed. All I have to do is copy the "Click" pattern over the "Gap" pattern whenever I need timing on the silent sections. Then I copy "Silence" back over "Gap" when I've finished. As the song arrangement is using the pattern number for "Gap", it always plays whatever pattern I save there - either silence or the click.

A simpler solution is to get my BR1600 to play the Song Arrangement (with silences) or a repeating Pattern (the click) instead, depending on what I need to do at the time. But sometimes I need both the click to bridge a gap and the frantic drummer to get my phrasing right(!) - hence the more complicated solution.

I'll need to use both a lot over the coming couple of weeks while I replace the acoustic and electrics that helped cause all the confusion in the first place.

I'm not sure what the BR800 allows in terms of patterns and arrangements, but I'm guessing it's very similar to the BR1600.

Ferryman_1957 · January 26, 2011, 02:24:22 AM

Yes, the BR800 is similar. I always use the metronome preset pattern to provide a click track where I want no drums. Just have the metronome going for how ever many bars that you want no drums. Build up all the other tracks you want as Andy describes and then when you come to do your final mix, edit the drum arrangement and replace the metronome with a pattern that is empty. I use the "Break" preset - this has no drums in it. Then do your final mix that includes the drums and voila, no drums for the first part of the song.

If you want an example, this song was recorded on the BR800 in exactly that way.

https://songcrafters.org/community/index.php?topic=9731.0

The drums are custom patterns I programmed, also with drum sounds that I uploaded. The intro section was recorded with a metronome pattern playing underneath it but I dropped that for the final mix. I also created a 1-2-3-4 count in pattern to show me when the noisy section started, because I built up the intro section fairly randomly.

Cheers,

Nigel

Kevin Mammoth · January 26, 2011, 04:48:06 AM

for what it's worth - on my BR1600 I often use the drum track and metronome track at the same time, to deal with the "keeping time during the gaps" issue - ie set up the drum loop track, and use the drums but also have the metronome going continuously when recording - so when you get to a gap and the drums stop, you still have the metronome going to keep time with. It can be especially handy when tempo changes occur during gaps.

64Guitars · January 26, 2011, 07:29:20 AM

As an example, if you wanted the first 24 measures of your song to be drumless, then start playing pattern P002:ROCK1-V1 for the rest of the song (say, 80 measures), you might create the following drum arrangement:

Step	Starting Measure	Pattern
1	1	P314:Metro (4/4)
2	27	P002:ROCK1-V1
3	107	P327:BREAK

I started the drums at measure 27 because I like to allow a 2-measure count-in before I start playing (at measure 3). So, this arrangement will have 26 measures of the metronome before the drums start at measure 27. After 80 measures of drums, I set the pattern to BREAK so that the drums will stop.

Before mastering, you would simply edit your arrangement and change the pattern of step 1 from P314:Metro (4/4) to P327:BREAK so that there is no sound from the drum machine for the first 26 measures.