Drums: Audio or Midi? What do YOU do?

[freq juggler]

Hey all!

Before i'm of to work again..

I love playing my drums with the mpd and sometimes keyboard. Now i want to do stuff with my drums and breaks wich can only be done in audio.

But as soon as i export them to audio i lose the ability to play them thru midi. Along the track that's real helpfull for breaks...

What i do now is make a 16 bar midi drumloop in Cubase. Then convert the seperate or whole drumtrack to audio to do breaks with effects, stuttering and sometimes glitch.

The thing is when i start the final mix of the tune later i notice there's some difference between the breaks and normal drums since i have less control over mixing. Especially when i exported the whole drums to a single wave.

How do you guys do this? Do you guys do ALL of it in audio or midi? All in midi is definitly possible but some things you just can't do in midi.

Any insights, tips or advise?

Safe!

[hdfh]

used to use in midi long time ago...now audio all the way.

cant rly see the benefit of using midi with drums.

also i think i ve never seen a tutorial with a big producer who was using midi for drums.

[freq juggler]

used to use in midi long time ago...now audio all the way.

cant rly see the benefit of using midi with drums.

also i think i ve never seen a tutorial with a big producer who was using midi for drums.

No? then what's the use of a mpd or keyboard?
I come from hiphop and we always use midi to play it. Maybe it's different for electronic music though.

I defenitly see a big benefit using midi. Alot of times you just can';t find that perfect spot to place ghost hits. When playing midi you will find it a lot quicker. To my that's one of the biggest reasons.

I don't agree with you though. There are enough producers usinjg midi for drums. Why else do they use battery then??

[slothrop]

I use the Energy-XT drum editor thing:


It lacks some really basic features - no volume envelopes for the sounds, no midi outs, no MIDI out, weird setup where it's single out but you can use sends from the main mixer on the individual drum sounds - but I find the workflow so natural that I'm sticking with it.

I can't really stand working with drums in either audio or MIDI now. Certainly not in a piano roll editor.

[groucho_marxx]

Its pros and cons really.

What i like to do is make all my drums via midi with a multiple output capable drum machine like Battery 3 or Ultrabeat.

soo, all my kicks are in one channel, snares on the next, hats etc...
This allows the same amount of control as having each hit on their own audio track, but has the convenience of having the whole drum parts inside of one midi track. I find this visually easier to see what patterns ware and how i can change em. I find this very handy indeed.
If you don't want all the midi in one channel, you can duplicate the midi channel and have just hats on one midi channel, one for kicks and so on.

Once i have got all my bits and drums sorted, and im doing a final mixdown ready to export the track, i will bounce each drum element separately so that i can tinker and glitch the drums up a bit.

My main advantage of using midi is that you can alter more. For example, you can change the velocities at a click of a button, i can change the pitch and tune samples. and i find it really easy and streamlined way to work.

Hope this has helped.

this

[Rickmansworth]

one hits all the way... layer them on top of each other, resample, add effects, resample.

ableton drumrack ftw

[Sharmaji]

both.

gooves via midi.

bounce each lane.

layer w/ audio.

bounce.

fuck about.

bounce.

[hurlingdervish]

i use both.

ableton makes it easyyyy

leave any processing besides the snares and any true necessity for later when you route both the midi and audio through the same bus or simply "group" them in ableton

then you just drop out the midi track where you want the audio to take over. or sidechain it out of the way

[promo]

Bit of both. Altho I make my beats with samples more these days (drums hits & breaks). Same process as a drum editor and as hurlingdervish said Ableton makes it easy. That said I'd have to say Ableton's weak point is definitely making drums the midi way - I find it very slow and cumbersome.

[promo]

one hits all the way... layer them on top of each other, resample, add effects, resample.

ableton drumrack ftw

I'm only using Ableton 5 still but know 6 and upwards have drum rack. I need to get on it.

[fiziks]

Its pros and cons really.

What i like to do is make all my drums via midi with a multiple output capable drum machine like Battery 3 or Ultrabeat.

soo, all my kicks are in one channel, snares on the next, hats etc...
This allows the same amount of control as having each hit on their own audio track, but has the convenience of having the whole drum parts inside of one midi track. I find this visually easier to see what patterns ware and how i can change em. I find this very handy indeed.
If you don't want all the midi in one channel, you can duplicate the midi channel and have just hats on one midi channel, one for kicks and so on.

Once i have got all my bits and drums sorted, and im doing a final mixdown ready to export the track, i will bounce each drum element separately so that i can tinker and glitch the drums up a bit.

My main advantage of using midi is that you can alter more. For example, you can change the velocities at a click of a button, i can change the pitch and tune samples. and i find it really easy and streamlined way to work.

Hope this has helped.

Precisely! Couldn't have said it better myself.