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turntable drumming vs. programmed drums


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since i got me a keyboard for christmas i'm just playing around with programmed drums a lot. one can really program dope drum patterns and shakers quite easily and it's very simple to handle.

 

but on the other hand i'm still a huge fan of (good) skratched drums, as they have this certain choppy sound to them. also, the sound of flirped or transformed drums would be quite hard to imitate with midi production.

 

anyone got other opinions on this topic?

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Guest $mooth

I like it when both are combined eg. programmed kick & snare as the main layer, with some funky cutups for extra drum and percussion layers.

 

Its harder imo to make natural sounding drums by programming them. If you're good at drumming on the decks then you can get a natural-ish sound because humans aren't perfect- computers dont make the same slight errors which give sound character.

 

If you're good at both then you should be able to make some dope shit.

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I like it when both are combined eg. programmed kick & snare as the main layer, with some funky cutups for extra drum and percussion layers.

 

Its harder imo to make natural sounding drums by programming them.  If you're good at drumming on the decks then you can get a natural-ish sound because humans aren't perfect- computers dont make the same slight errors which give sound character.

 

If you're good at both then you should be able to make some dope shit.

 

i agree with smooth, both is best, both have different "feelings" to them, so to have a wider range oof drum sounds u have more varitey in ur track

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Yo ED that´s bullshit. If you can scratch your drums proper they will sound as precise as programmend. but with that certain swing..

 

example

 

all scratched, a lil sketch by ozmowski and me. do those drums sound skratched? well they are.

 

 

hmmmm....

 

if u look back at the original post.....

 

"anyone got other opinions on this topic?"

 

the operative word there is OPINION....

 

my opinion isnt "bullshit", just as yours isnt....dont be so simplistic....

 

i think, generally speaking, scratched drums sound poo....not bad....just a bit poo!

 

as for your file....yeah...cool enough man...its nice...but again, "not my cuppa"...

 

im not into 'scratch music' and never really have been...it doesnt invalidate my opinion, or make it 'bullshit'....its just personal dood....think about it!

 

pz

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"bullshit" related to the statement

 

scratched drums (generally) sound pretty poo....even if theyre tight...

 

sorry if my limited english didn´t offer me another term for it...anyway:

 

drums are the foundation of music, the heartbeat. If you put the label "scratch" on music i expect the foundation to fit to the label. I mean it´s ok to program hihats, baselines, melodies and so on.

 

But if you program the drums the heartbeat is done by a stupid machine. The whole flavour gets lost. Whether you add scratched tracks or not. Imagine "a time to feel" without scratched drums. Yes that´s just my opinion. I´m gonna use another term in future though.. people are so sensitive...

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Guest loop skywalker
i think scratched drums (generally) sound pretty poo....even if theyre tight...

 

i dont theres any real need to scratch drums.....bits of melodies or sounds fair enough....but drums....im just never ever sure about....

 

im afraid i agree with ed on this one...it just dont sound as a finished pro track....more like a practice session...i prefer nice sounding drums...which im afraid i havent heared any one come up with..its probably the fills and rolls and cymbal combos that make the beats which are normally a basic kick and snare from a scratch track that just cant be emulated.

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I like the way Asian Hawk drum scratches in the disablists routines. I prefer drum machine production myself, but each way has their own things which the will find hard to do, eg scratching on drums, fast drum hits etc

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i agree that skratched drums have a cetain feel to them, wich makes them very unique - just that typical "choppy" sound. but that is of course mostly appealing to poeple that like skratch music. so it's clear ed has another opinion and i totally respect that. it's just a slightly different feeling about music.

 

appart from this i think skratching and skratched drums are just a way to get a feeling for good sounding drums, and good sounding music in general (at least that how it was for me). other people just have other ways to find the certain "groove" in music... so not every produced drums will sound "stiff" automatically. gb for example got great feeling for percussion, drums and music as whole, and he only programs stuff.

 

i'm almost sure the drums from "a time to feel" are programmed too, because 90% of the fuga stuff is programmed. i also fucking love the time-to-feel drums, but ricci just managed to apply that skratch-kinda feeling of drums to programming.

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its probably the fills and rolls and cymbal combos that make the beats which are normally a basic kick and snare from a scratch track that just cant be emulated

I kinda agree with that. Sometimes when a track only needs simple drums, scratched drums are really effective, but there's other times when I think a track would have sounded better if the drums had been programmed. At the end of the day I don't think it matters that much how you do it as long as you achieve the desired results.

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i agree with ed too.

 

but generally speaking, if your listening to scratch music, u can expect to hear drums a little off beat or choppy. then again, it all comes down to skill. ricci rucker (as much as i hate to say the name) is probably one of the best drummers i know. his drumming is so accurate and complex.

 

 

u can forgive a skratch track for having off beat drums every now and again cuz after all its a SKRATCH TRACK!!!!

 

but u cant forgive a normal programmed track for having weak/off beat drums cuz its all programmed.

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I think the main reason that scratch drums have a different feel is that they are not perfectly consistant. Each drum will have a bit of pitch variation. They are also not quantized, and most of the time the hihats are a whole different layer if one was even laid down.

 

I like to hear programmed drums and I like scratched drums. Each has its own place in music. Some breakdowns are nice when laced with some scratch drums. At the same time, I have heard a song get ruined by scratch drumming.

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  • 3 weeks later...
I like it when both are combined eg. programmed kick & snare as the main layer, with some funky cutups for extra drum and percussion layers.

 

Its harder imo to make natural sounding drums by programming them.  If you're good at drumming on the decks then you can get a natural-ish sound because humans aren't perfect- computers dont make the same slight errors which give sound character.

 

If you're good at both then you should be able to make some dope shit.

 

yer, id agree with you there- thats how I make some my own stuff anyways.

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i made a little "keyboard-drumpractice track" last weekend, meaning i layed down two very basic samples, a bass and a basic hi hat, and looped all of these. than i put a kick, a snare and a snap on my keyboard and did some

freestyle drumming for about 2 minutes or so, constantly changing the patterns. i barely edited these (only made the velocities equal) and i have to say that some of the patterns came out quite nice, and they didn't sound stiff, linear or boring at all.

 

so one defenately can do "live - sounding" drums with a keyboard. i just "imagined" i'd be kinda drumming on the table with my fingers rather than programming patterns that were planned out before and edit them until they're so over-tight they sound stiff.

 

if anyone's interested i can post the file i recorded; i'd like to hear some opinions on that...

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