Drummer Blues

In 2010 I started seriously recording my own music.  I have Macbook Pro and it had GarageBand to do the recording.  I am a guitar player and I've played in bands years ago so I wanted to create band-like music for listening.  The hardest part to creating and producing music like this is the feel, the groove, or the rhythm of the song or piece.

And, if you aren't a drummer, it's hard not to just use a monotonous drum track through the whole thing.  I did that at first because it was easy and Garageband has a ton of drum loops that can be used for a foundational groove or beat.  The problem is that my instrumental music sounded like everything else out there.  The drums sound mechanized and with no fill it becomes boring quickly.  Also, it's very difficult to have something in mind for the groove of the song and then start hunting for matching drum loops.

This year I was determined that I would learn how to program drums using the computer.  My wife bought me Logic Pro 9 for my Macbook Pro and it's a professional version of the Digital Audio Workstation (DAW).  Logic comes with tools to program drums and also a special application called UltraBeat that has everything you need to produce great drum grooves. Now I just needed to learn how to use it.  And, also what to put in it.

Even if you don't play drums, you still need to think like a drummer.  One of my online friends told me to check out Tommy Igoe.  He's a very talented drummer and his "Essential Grooves" DVD is phenomenal!  The DVD contains drumming from various genres and if you can read music, you can understand the drum notation for each groove that comes on a nice poster with the DVD.  I also purchased the "Essential Grooves" notebook.  It's a spiral-bound practice book with the grooves and more textual education to complement the DVD.  I have to say, I learned more about drums watching the DVD than I ever did playing with my band.  I think if you pay close attention you'll begin to listen more for groove.  The DVD has examples of each groove, with and without other musicians.

In a follow post, I'll detail how I used the Tommy Igoe material to program the beat for one of my songs and also show how I simply cut the track and added a fill in another track.

Welcome to My New Music Blog

I thought I'd try a new blog using Blogger with Google.  I'm really excited about Google Chrome and also I started posting on Orkut for musical recording interest.  Anyhow, I just wanted to welcome you to my new blog.  I'll be sure to post interesting articles here about performing music and music recording.