tips...015.
A REAL RECORDING SESSION WITH POWERTRACKS.(cont.).
you find no matter what u do ,
the drum track isnt happening.
let me give u some background.
(as i said i dont claim to be an ace record producer...
just from my experience.)
ive recorded everything from opera singers to rok bands to awhile back
a fun time recording a little hip hop group.
and out of everything ive recorded, drums have given me the greatest grief.
and the same goes for lots of my friends.
the drum sound suks or the drummer is poor or the recording
space is poor , and many reasons.
no matter what you do, when the CEFE rhythm track plays
back after a couple of test tries its realised that the drums are a big problem.
so what do you do ??

luckily in ptw there are lots of little helpers to help you create a drum track.
lets look at a few. there are various deep features in ptw.
and also triks that some folks might not be aware of.
lets start off simple.
for creating simple drum tracks for the rhythm guitarist and
bass player to play along to ,
EDIT>>>fill track with drum pattern.
clik on a blank track in ptw and perform the above selection.
youll notice various styles.
now i'll cover some triks.
because i know what your going to say.
you play it back and you go...heck that sounds "cheesy".
why does it sound "cheesy"..???
well the answer is cos your useing the cheesy MS synth built into your pc.
if you want to hear a nice drum sound send the midi out of the pc
to a great sounding external synth or midi module with wonderfull drum sounds in it.
or to a sampler youve loaded great drum samples into.
it must be clearly understood. midi is just computer data.
to get great sounds out of midi tracks you must use great sounding equipment that
takes in the midi data and converts it to sound.
like an external synth or sampler or mebe some plug in running on the pc.
(as an aside some people are also now useing drum plug ins like jamstix, addictive drums and
many other products with built in sample libraries that can sound great.
but lets keep things simple right now so i can explain some ptw features.)
if u loaded up the standard rok style it might sound ok.
but did u know u can change it to other drum midi instruments ??
i draw your attention to..
EDIT>>>pitch transpose midi.
this particular feature has lots of uses.
for lots of different midi tracks.
after filling a track with drum pattern, bring up the pitch transpose dialog and start
entering /experimenting with different values.
then after each value change..hit PLAY.
notice what happens ??
YES...the drum track changed didnt it ??
if u experiment a lot with the value field enough ive found some interesting
different sounding drum tracks can be realised even if all u have is the cheesy MS synth.
notice how the drum instruments change ??
now go into classics view and hold your mouse over the KEY heading.
wow .whats that ?? , yes its the same idea.
if you change that key value in the classics view the drum track will change.
heres a trik to experiment with.
fill two tracks with different drum patterns...then on each
track start changeing the key value in clasics view or
use pitch transpose. if youve stuck with it and experiment ,
with it youll notice a drum track can be changed.
once by experimenting in this manner i came up with a drum track that gave me in return
a brand new song idea.
now ..if u notice theres another interesting feature in ptw.
ACTION>>>drum grid editor.
the drum grid editor lets u build your own custom drum patterns if u wish.
hmmm..lets think now...what if we created a custom pattern in the drum grid editor then filled
a track with it ?? while at the same time haveing it play back with ptw's standard
fill track feature ??
go ahead.experiment n try it !!.
this idea in the past has given me new song ideas.
now..hmm..what if after this we then went back and tried pitch transposing our
midi drum track created by useing the drum grid editor.
just try it n experiment. cos theres some neat stuff u can accomplish.
some people spend money to buy libraries of midi drum patterns.
but , if your willing to put in the time you could build your own midi
library of as many drum patterns as your heart desires.
(by the way your library of drum patterns you create can also be used as patterns for
lots of other midi instrumentation. not necessarily just drums.
a trik i'll cover later on.)

i talked earlier about the band CEFE's problem with a bad drum sound.
if u had have been forward looking when u reviwed thewir cassette demo
before they came in for the session, u could have called up
a midi drum track from your library created in ptw just in case
the session went bad due to poor acoustic drums.
and impressed them possibly.
for example the hip hop group i recorded awhile back had no drummer.
so i created a midi drum track for them.

in fact the sky is the limit.
between ptws various facilities u could create an unlimited number of drum patterns and fills.
for example for fills, u could hook up an external midi keyboard and create lots of fills,
and store them for usein various ptw song projects.
another option would be to rent a midi drum machine with lots of patterns in and record those
into ptw on midi tracks for saveing in your midi drum tracks library.
another option if u have biab, is you could use its intelligence to build midi
drum tracks in various styles. and use them in ptw.
in summary lots and lots of options.

now allow me to mention one of my favorite windows that some folks new to ptw might not be aware of.
it has a ton of power and i laud the ptw devs for creating this window.
think of it as a ARRANGER.
it can be used for lots of different things.
in the case of drums..lets say you have created different drum patterns on different midi
tracks. but you want to try different arrangements of the drum patterns.
this is where the BARS WINDOW is YOUR FRIEND.
notice when u filled track with drum pattern ??
something has happened in the bars window ??
notice how bars have been filled in ??
also notice anything u do in a bar in a midi track the bar is filled in ??
now lets say we have different patterns on different midi tracks
in ptw but we want to change the arrangement of the drum patterns.
mebe try a fill in a different place or do things like change a pattern at a specific bar.
or say you like the drum patterns at bar 22 but you would like the same pattern at bar 52.
no problem. the bars window will let u achieve this and accomplish a brand new drum track arrangemt useing
ptw's common editing commands like copy n paste etc.
to get used to the bar windows power ...run tests copying midi
bars from a track to another track.
basically just drag over the block or blocks your interested in,
(even across tracks..) and copy n paste where u want.
NOTE..in paste youll see paste and 1 track paste.
the latter is used for pasteing to one track.
eg....copy bar 44 of track one and paste to bar 67 of track one.
whereas paste can be used where for example...
copy bars 33 to 37 on tracks 4, 5 and 6 to say
bars 66 to 70 on tracks 4,5, and 6.
OR you could decide to copy to brand new tracks.
for example copy bars 33 to 37 on tracks 4, 5 and 6 to say
bars 84 to 88 on tracks 12, 13, and 14.
do u see the power of this ??
ie..the ability to try many different midi arrangements.
in summary the bars window is very userfull for trying
various drum track arrangements.
for example..lets say the midi drums you like in the first
chorus but u dont like the pattern in the third chorus,
so u would like to use the midi pattern from the first chorus in
the third chorus.
the bars window will let you do this.
(more to come.)