I was a full wreck so I made a ton of garlic kale mashed potatoes (which counts as colcannon, hooahh) and worked on fixing up drum tracks. Artist life can be thrilling, indeed.

The previous day had me realising that I needed to do the bare minimum and focus on rest. No violin, no piano, no concert rehearsal. Just Ableton, and back to sleep. Sorry, habit streak.

I mention food first in this case, because you should edit on a full stomach. Editing takes time and patience, which is harder to maintain when your blood sugar gets low. Not so full that you’re too sleepy to notice errors, mind. Just not hangry and unnecessarily taking that out on the work or innocent bystanders.

This post was mainly about looking at editing pre-built drum racks, made of samples already in the program. I looked at some tutorials from ADSR Music Production Tutorials for this. I like to record my own sound samples, so I’ll be making a separate post on the fun ways you can build your own rack. It’s fun, and depending on what you use, surprisingly messy and organic. On to the program, though!

So you draw in a few notes on MIDI and on playback, realise that there are weird bits, but you’re not sure which ones they are? There’s a knack for that, where you can turn individual instruments on and off. Similarly, you can impact the settings for each individual drum in a kit. When you play a drum rack, for example, you have a series of kicks, toms, claps, and other sounds, depending on what kind of vibe or style you want. Record scratch? Cowbell? House music claps aren’t the same as Latin claps unless you’re specifically trying to bring that sound in.

It seems ridiculous because you’d think a clap is a single sound, right? Nope. Depending on hand shape, velocity, distance, etc. just putting your hands together can make something sound sunny, or groovy, or thin, or broad. Try clapping your hands together but first at an angle, then aligned, then with the fingertips, then rotate your palms and clap your fingertips to your wrists. Do they all sound the same?

This image search was a surprisingly difficult one to decide. So, so many gif results for “weird clapping”

(I need to move to a different sound discussion before word rep makes me want to scream.)

Each sound has their own specific  colour, and as a starting palette that’s important. However, the colours you choose can be made into something else with the correct effects. Transposing a sound can fit it to your work, so it’s always worth checking before you dismiss a particular kit or rack. You can see that one rack without one specific sound can transform a mood. Alternatively, too many crashes can be massively irritating. When I was working on drums for Summon I kept being too hefty with crashes and annoyed myself. If my sounds are annoying me, then that’s a REALLY bad sign.

A drum rack contains multiple individual instruments. Here’s how it looks when you draw in notes on midi in different instruments in a rack.

Note editor, the red squares mark where I have drawn in notes in Draw Mode. Can also be used with a MIDI keyboard, hence the black/white next to each instrument name.

In a created sample, you can mute the instrument for all chains in the session view and see how it sounds. This was invaluable because I was able to listen and see what should come out rather than turn them off at random and get confused. It highlights which ones play at that point in time. M or S means mute or solo.

Muted Clap Mate, with a visual representation of the Kick Punch drum sound wave – warp set to default at 2 beats, currently untransposed. 

Learning how to write is important, knowing how to self-edit will save you a lot of time. Especially time spent trying to describe your errors to somebody else, which is a game I’ve enjoyed as long as I can stand. There are enough other errors to catch during the review process.

PS. Anybody wants the colcannon recipe, let me know.