Play Your Next Song Live
If you are on my email list, you may have noticed me mentioning there was a new Bass Kleph track coming out soon! :) The song is called Damn Fucking Right and I’m excited to say that it will be released October 14th on Hysteria Records! Home of the Bingo Players. Not only that, but I designed the entire song from the ground up to be playable on Maschine with pad drumming. So, like my other Maschine Kits on my site, there will soon be a new one, along with an instructional video, and a sample pack.
How did I design my song to be playable on Maschine? The secret is to start with a pattern. This pattern has no sound initially. It’s just something that is easy and fun to play on the pads. e.g. My right hand could be playing the drums like usual in my songs, and my left hand could be playing a few stabs etc Once I have decided on my imaginary pattern, I record it into the sequencer (there are still no sounds assigned at this point), and afterward I start assigning sounds. The challenge is to never change the pattern, and instead, find sounds that will work with the pattern as is. You may already know that the drums will be kicks, claps, hats etc, but the left-hand parts you will have to experiment more with. This may seem a little limited if you did this all in one Group (kit of 16 pads), but here is another secret. Once you have found some ok sounds for your pattern, I want you to duplicate the MIDI to another Group. Not the sounds, just the MIDI notes of the pattern. Now, on this duplicate version, you can start loading other sounds and use them as layers. So you can thicken up your stabs, bass hits etc. Do you get where this is going? You are essentially sound designing 16 custom stabs/hits for your kit.
Once you are happy with your pattern, go through and bounce out each sound, along with it’s associated layer (e.g.. Group 1, Pad1, Group2 Pad 1, Group 3 pad 1). Bounce it so all the layers are summed into one audio file. Now, start building a new fresh kit with these custom stabs/hits you have made. You will then be able to play that original, simple, comfortable pattern you invented at the start, but now with the perfect custom sounds, that you also created! :)
Why make it a simple comfortable pattern? Well, I recommend this as I believe you should have a comfortable base pattern that you can then improvise with later. The main groove will be easy to play for you so you can comfortably rock out at the show, then you can decide how technical you want to get with your ad-libs, solos, and improvisations. All up to you.
Happy Pad Drumming!
Stu
