Hi. I'd like some advice relating to producing realistic drum tracks. I'm a guitarist and I like to use LMMS to produce backing tracks to play along to. Here's what you need to know:
I'm running LMMS 1.3 on Windows 10. I've used LMMS for quite some time and I'm very comfortable with it.
I understand how the Beat/Bassline Editor works.
I have an Akai MPD218 MIDI pad controller which works fine with LMMS.
I find the Black Pearl drumkit downloaded from the Hydrogen website really works for me.
I use, understand and like Poise drum sampler by One Small Clue.
My genres include rock/blues/pop/jazz/folk - but not EDM (no offence - just not my thing).
I understand about introducing "humanisation" into a drum part by sequencing drum hits slightly off the beat and varying the velocity.
I'm a guitarist, not a drummer!
So, the basic question is, given all the above, what is the best approach to producing drum parts using LMMS?
Using BBE is great but in order to replicate the many, many variations a human drummer would use (including occasional ghost notes, fills, voice leading, passing notes, drum rolls etc), I would need a great many BBE tracks. That sounds really complicated - and I'd have to come up with some kind of foolproof naming convention to remember what all the tracks are for. However, BBE gives me the ability to use multi-sampled components (e.g. Kick Medium, Kick Harder, Kick Hardest, Snare Soft, Snare Softest, Snare Medium) to provide greater realism - a hard snare beat (with all its aggression and power) doesn't turn into a soft beat (with all its subtlety, finesse and nuance) just because you decrease the velocity!
Maybe I should just connect my MIDI pad controller and record the drum part "live" into Song Editor. This would be fine apart from:
Remember I said I'm not a drummer, so recording a "live" performance would be a mess. Even more so because I have a tremor in my hands. I can tidy things up afterwards though in LMMS so that's okay.
I could add hi-hats and other components in afterwards so that's good too.
If I want a separate track for each component (for mixing/applying effects etc) I'd have to clone the track I've recorded to split out each item of the drumset.
Even though I can use Poise which supports multiple outputs, LMMS doesn't so that's a drawback.
Also, having drum tracks in the Song Editor, without the ability to group them just makes the Song Editor more cluttered. To be fair, so does writing them in BBE and then having lots of BBE tracks in the Song Editor so maybe that's a moot point.
So, how do you all do it? What's the most efficient way?
Thanks for your help and advice
Modelman5
I'm running LMMS 1.3 on Windows 10. I've used LMMS for quite some time and I'm very comfortable with it.
I understand how the Beat/Bassline Editor works.
I have an Akai MPD218 MIDI pad controller which works fine with LMMS.
I find the Black Pearl drumkit downloaded from the Hydrogen website really works for me.
I use, understand and like Poise drum sampler by One Small Clue.
My genres include rock/blues/pop/jazz/folk - but not EDM (no offence - just not my thing).
I understand about introducing "humanisation" into a drum part by sequencing drum hits slightly off the beat and varying the velocity.
I'm a guitarist, not a drummer!
So, the basic question is, given all the above, what is the best approach to producing drum parts using LMMS?
Using BBE is great but in order to replicate the many, many variations a human drummer would use (including occasional ghost notes, fills, voice leading, passing notes, drum rolls etc), I would need a great many BBE tracks. That sounds really complicated - and I'd have to come up with some kind of foolproof naming convention to remember what all the tracks are for. However, BBE gives me the ability to use multi-sampled components (e.g. Kick Medium, Kick Harder, Kick Hardest, Snare Soft, Snare Softest, Snare Medium) to provide greater realism - a hard snare beat (with all its aggression and power) doesn't turn into a soft beat (with all its subtlety, finesse and nuance) just because you decrease the velocity!
Maybe I should just connect my MIDI pad controller and record the drum part "live" into Song Editor. This would be fine apart from:
Remember I said I'm not a drummer, so recording a "live" performance would be a mess. Even more so because I have a tremor in my hands. I can tidy things up afterwards though in LMMS so that's okay.
I could add hi-hats and other components in afterwards so that's good too.
If I want a separate track for each component (for mixing/applying effects etc) I'd have to clone the track I've recorded to split out each item of the drumset.
Even though I can use Poise which supports multiple outputs, LMMS doesn't so that's a drawback.
Also, having drum tracks in the Song Editor, without the ability to group them just makes the Song Editor more cluttered. To be fair, so does writing them in BBE and then having lots of BBE tracks in the Song Editor so maybe that's a moot point.
So, how do you all do it? What's the most efficient way?
Thanks for your help and advice
Modelman5