Superior Drummer 3 kindergarten

[b1j]

I’m ready to add drums and percussion to my little spare-bedroom recording hobby. As the de facto producer (unqualified), I can hear what I want vocals and acoustic and bass guitars to sound like, as well as keyboards and electric guitars, to some extent, and that’s what I aim to get into the master. Things are starting to jell after a few years at it, and I’ve reached the nascent stage of a never-ending pursuit, so it has everything a great hobby needs.

My next hurdle is to reach a base level of competence and confidence with percussion. That’s a whole new world. I bought Superior Drummer 3, which is kind of like a beginner guitarist buying a $15,000 guitar, I guess, but I figured the limitations will be mine, not the tool’s. Still, with it I’m a 600 HP motor on a ten-pound frame: high risk of injury.

I wish I could sit side by side with somehow who could guide me through the steps from beginning to end so I could pick up some muscle memory to get me started with simple rhythm tracks. At first I want to see if I can emulate simple drum parts in commercial songs I like. I’m self-taught with the interface and DAW, but percussion looms large with a steep startup curve.

I need a SD3 one-on-one tutor.

[jim1960]

So, a few things...

SD3 can be complicated and overwhelming. There are plenty of YouTube videos and watching those while stopping and following along can be the start of attaining some familiarity with the program. Getting comfortable and figuring out a workflow that words for you should be your first goal.

If you're not a drummer, you have to devote some time to really listening to songs with drums. That was a huge obstacle for me in the beginning. I'd make drum tracks but they sounded flat and never seemed to really add much to a song. Of course, the problem was that I wasn't a drummer and wasn't thinking like a drummer. So I started listening with a critical ear ..subtle pattern changes, effective use of fills, etc. That's when things started coming around for me.

SD3 comes with a lot of midi files with short patterns and Toontrack sells tons of midi files that are genre specific. Listen to the samples for ones that might fit well with what you're doing. When you're just starting, you probably don't want to get into overcomplicated tweaking so the closer the file comes to be useable from the start, the better off you'll be.

Lastly, give yourself time ...lots of time. SD3 isn't something you'll get comfortable with in a day or a week. It's going to take a lot of hours. It's a new instrument that you're learning for the first time. Don't get discouraged if it doesn't come easy right away. In time, it will.

[KevWind]

Originally Posted by b1j

I’m ready to add drums and percussion to my little spare-bedroom recording hobby. As the de facto producer (unqualified), I can hear what I want vocals and acoustic and bass guitars to sound like, as well as keyboards and electric guitars, to some extent, and that’s what I aim to get into the master. Things are starting to jell after a few years at it, and I’ve reached the nascent stage of a never-ending pursuit, so it has everything a great hobby needs.

My next hurdle is to reach a base level of competence and confidence with percussion. That’s a whole new world. I bought Superior Drummer 3, which is kind of like a beginner guitarist buying a $15,000 guitar, I guess, but I figured the limitations will be mine, not the tool’s. Still, with it I’m a 600 HP motor on a ten-pound frame: high risk of injury.

I wish I could sit side by side with somehow who could guide me through the steps from beginning to end so I could pick up some muscle memory to get me started with simple rhythm tracks. At first I want to see if I can emulate simple drum parts in commercial songs I like. I’m self-taught with the interface and DAW, but percussion looms large with a steep startup curve.

I need a SD3 one-on-one tutor.

Are you planning using a midi keyboard , use the GUI keyboard, or just program the notes ?

[jim1960]

Originally Posted by KevWind

Are you planning using a midi keyboard , use the GUI keyboard, or just program the notes ?

Complete drum tracks with SD3 can be done with a mouse in the midi edit window of a daw.

My typical SD3 workflow involves dragging the midi segments I want to test out onto a muted midi track (staying in grid mode speeds that up a lot). Then I put each in place in turn to audition them.

I use the same process for each segment of the song (intro, verse, pre-chorus, chorus, bridge, out-tro). Sometimes I'll use the front of one midi segment with the back of another. I'm not a good enough drummer to do a better job of creating segments than what SD3 delivers and they have a large enough library that there's no reason for drums to sound repetitive from one song to the next.

[b1j]

Originally Posted by jim1960

So, a few things...

SD3 can be complicated and overwhelming. There are plenty of YouTube videos and watching those while stopping and following along can be the start of attaining some familiarity with the program. Getting comfortable and figuring out a workflow that words for you should be your first goal.

If you're not a drummer, you have to devote some time to really listening to songs with drums. That was a huge obstacle for me in the beginning. I'd make drum tracks but they sounded flat and never seemed to really add much to a song. Of course, the problem was that I wasn't a drummer and wasn't thinking like a drummer. So I started listening with a critical ear ..subtle pattern changes, effective use of fills, etc. That's when things started coming around for me.

SD3 comes with a lot of midi files with short patterns and Toontrack sells tons of midi files that are genre specific. Listen to the samples for ones that might fit well with what you're doing. When you're just starting, you probably don't want to get into overcomplicated tweaking so the closer the file comes to be useable from the start, the better off you'll be.

Lastly, give yourself time ...lots of time. SD3 isn't something you'll get comfortable with in a day or a week. It's going to take a lot of hours. It's a new instrument that you're learning for the first time. Don't get discouraged if it doesn't come easy right away. In time, it will.

Jim, those are true words. Thank you for taking the time to express them. I think I have expected the road to look like you describe. It will have tons of baby steps and trial and error. I just imagine having someone who knows SD3 sit with me while I click through the grooves and adjust them into a song –– just to accelerate the learning curve by a few steps.

Anyway, thanks for the wisdom.

[b1j]

Originally Posted by KevWind

Are you planning using a midi keyboard , use the GUI keyboard, or just program the notes ?

I think it's going to start with either one of the grooves in the library or perhaps tapping in a beat using my MIDI keyboard. For fine-tuning I'll be tweaking the MIDI notes graphically.

[runamuck]

Originally Posted by b1j

I just imagine having someone who knows SD3 sit with me while I click through the grooves and adjust them into a song –– just to accelerate the learning curve by a few steps.

When you set the tempo in the project you want drums added to, any MIDI file in SD will adjust to that tempo.

[b1j]

I think this is just going to be learning through experience unless there is someone out there willing to walk me through it.

[jim1960]

Originally Posted by b1j

I think this is just going to be learning through experience unless there is someone out there willing to walk me through it.

Honestly, I don't think you'll need hand-holding. Just watch the videos and play with it. I promise you'll stumble onto some kind of method that works for you. Just keep your expectations reasonable. I don't claim any expertise with SD3. It takes me at least a couple of hours to produce the kind drum track I want for a song, but I get there in the end and I started with no more working knowledge of the program than you have now.

If the program window seems overwhelming (which is how I see it), try dragging the midi from the selection list right into your daw and doing your edits there. I prefer that because I'm more familiar with my daw than the SD3 window.

[jim1960]

I don't know if this is helpful or not but this is a visual of what I was describing earlier in the thread. With SD3, you can listen to the midi grooves in the program and when you hear one that you think you want to use, you can drag it right to the track or you can set up a second midi track where you can drag candidates for use and then audition them in the song individually by dragging them to the audible midi drum track.

I put a red box around the drum track. Each of those segments are midi grooves I dragged from SD3 into the session. Some are the whole groove, some are partials where I liked some part of the groove but placed something else over the part I didn't want to use. When I was creating this, there was a muted midi track just below the drum track that I used to hold grooves while I listened to them in context by dragging the in and out of the midi drum track.

That's my typical workflow in SD3. Others will do it differently but this is what works best for me so far.

[KevWind]

Originally Posted by jim1960

Complete drum tracks with SD3 can be done with a mouse in the midi edit window of a daw.

Ah yes I forgot about pre programed midi

Jim can you separate the midi from those pre programed complete drum tracks into the different actual drums (i.e midi for Kick, midi for Snare, etc. ) so you can put them on individual instrument tracks and EQ, Compress, and send to Reverb,,, the different drum parts all separately ?

[jim1960]

Originally Posted by KevWind

Ah yes I forgot about pre programed midi

Jim can you separate the midi from those pre programed complete drum tracks into the different actual drums (i.e midi for Kick, midi for Snare, etc. ) so you can put them on individual instrument tracks and EQ, Compress, and send to Reverb,,, the different drum parts all separately ?

Within SD3 is a mixer that lets you do multi-outs to aux tracks you create in your daw. It's pretty easy to set up. This vid is an earlier version of SD but the process is essentially the same.

[KevWind]

Originally Posted by jim1960

Within SD3 is a mixer that lets you do multi-outs to aux tracks you create in your daw. It's pretty easy to set up. This vid is an earlier version of SD but the process is essentially the same.

OK so basically the same method as in Slate Drums, In Reason similar with some variation,,, both of which I use.. Although I have not used pre programed material ( which I may try next time) Given I am also not a drummer

BTW separate tracks is also doable in Pro tools Boom, but that has to set up differently

[b1j]

I have acquired a passing entry-level knowledge of some of the basics in SD3. It’s entirely possible that my hangup is that I lack the drummer’s instinct to create a pleasing contribution to the song. So, Jim, your advice about stepping back and listening (with fresh ears) to drum work I like is probably going to do more for me than anything else at this stage.

Happy creating, everyone.

[jim1960]

Originally Posted by b1j

I have acquired a passing entry-level knowledge of some of the basics in SD3. It’s entirely possible that my hangup is that I lack the drummer’s instinct to create a pleasing contribution to the song. So, Jim, your advice about stepping back and listening (with fresh ears) to drum work I like is probably going to do more for me than anything else at this stage.

The biggest deficit I had as a non-drummer was having a poor feel for where drum fills should come in. I could place the obvious ones but fills happen much more than had ever registered in my brain. It still doesn't come to me intuitively and when programming drums I'll usually compare what I'm doing to a few songs I like that are similar to help me realize where I'm coming up short.

Other things I learned by listening... drummers mix it up a lot more than I thought. Throughout a song, there are subtle changes in the drum patterns that keep things interesting. Also, drum energy is important. While the main job of drums is rhythmic, they can also move the energy of the song as it moves through its dynamic changes (quieter parts in louder parts and vice-versa).

Drumming is really a different mindset.

To give you a sense of what SD3 can do... I used it on this song which came about due to an unintentional collaboration. I was on the phone with a friend who also has a studio and he was telling me about his latest project. He was scoring a movie short and the writer/director had handed him some lyrics that day and she wanted him to create a country song from them. He was having trouble coming up with a melody so I volunteered to take a look. He sent the lyrics to me while we were on the phone and a melody jumped out almost immediately. I told him I had something but it wasn't country... I thought the song would be better with a bit of a Dire Straits kind of feel. Anyway, he liked what I came up with and asked me to work with him on it.

It took about three hours to program that drum track. As I was doing it, I was also laying in a scratch vocal which helped as placeholders of a sort. I thought the song needed a bridge and those wound up being the only lyrics I wrote for this. I don't remember exactly, but I think I probably was laying in block chords with a piano program as I worked on this. I do that fairly often and find it helps me, especially for songs where the arrangement is still mostly undiscovered and it's coming together as I go.

My buddy laid in most of the other instruments. I did the "oohs" and "aahs" using Spectrosonics Omnisphere. The last instrument recorded was the sax. The sax player ran though the song four or five times and I created a comp track from those takes. Lastly, I redid my vocals and my buddy mixed it. And just for poops and giggles (and because we were curious), we sent it off to Abbey Road and had it mastered by Geoff Pesche because he'd worked with Dire Straits in the past.

I don't know if hearing about the process is helpful to you or not but on the chance that it is, that was how this song came about.

The song was used during a stalking scene where the main character was in his car listening to the radio intent on stealing the eyeballs of a man he was following. It then was played again at the end while the credits were rolling. The short went on to win some awards at various movie festivals.