drums & software
September 6, 2008
Drum machines like the roland tr-808 and 909 have certainly made their mark in modern music of many styles. Loved, hated and feared they were and still are classic beat machine for electronic music. today with so much sample driven sounds they seems refreshing and honest, for machines.
As I am a drummer it has been a strange adventure writing music with the software drum machine/samplers of today. Native instruments Battery has been my soft drum kit of choice. laying down rhythm tracks that appear on the cd “living at a higher frequency” I would create an array of unusual computer based rhythms and sounds within Logic and as the song progressed I would at various stages drum along on my roland v-drum kit. this mostly served to check the groove of the song, how my part flowed with the music and almost disappeared or not. quiet often I would end up recording my drum part and incorporating it into the work in progress. Laying down the main groove with actual drumming and then hitting that groove with computer generated percussion proved to be a successful partnership and much of the cd demonstrates this.
