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I don't know if anyone else does this, but..

When I setup to record, I have the song, and the tempo, so the first thing I do is lay down a basic 4/4 pattern behind it for the duration of the song. It helps me keep tempo, and decide if I need to play it faster/slower to get the feel I'm looking for. It also makes it easy to cut/paste sections and shift stuff around, since 4/4 is 4/4, and measures are easy to spot and shuffle around.

That said, if youre 4/4 beat is a 110 tempo kick/snare/kick/snare with hats hits on every beat, it'll be very handy. For about an hour. Then you'll start hating it.

At the 3 hour point, as you sit tweaking riffs and tones, writing changes and bridges and shredly solos, the 4/4 will become embedded in your very soul. You'll walk in tempo. If your ass is itchy, you will scratch it in 4/4. Things in the room will start to stare at you.

At the 5 hour point, you will have slipped into an alternate reality known as I Hate My Own Fucking Song. You may have written the greatest set of melodies in the world, but you will be unable to disassociate those melodies from the ever present 4/4 kick/snare of holy-fuck-i-want-to-kill-myself doom.

Do yourself a favor. Stop somewhere after the 1 hour mark, and work on the drums for the sections you have done. Today, I did not, and I paid the price.

:lalala:

 

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Why not write everything out in guitar pro first then go to record?

:lol: Because I'm arranging the song dude. Have you ever actually recorded a track before? You don't just plop down and bang the whole thing out in one sitting. You have to write and arrange it first, and see what works and what doesn't.

Why the hell would I use guitar pro? :facepalm:

 

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When I'm writing, I do drums last. The guitar part is the most important (to me, since I'm a guitarist :lol and I'd rather write the drums around guitar playing than write guitar around drum programming, ya know?

Basically I just use a standard beat as a click, same as you do, but instead of beep-boop metronome, I have kick/snare.

 

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Yeah, sometimes I do too because I helps me 'groove' a little more. And I didn't mean to imply that I write drums first or anything. I'm definitely a guitar player first. I just mean that once I've written that awesome riff, I like to hear how badass it'll sound with some appropriate drums behind it. Then I move on to the next section of the song, so by the end of the song I only need to go back and tweak the drums, rather than having nothing but straight 4/4 kick-snare stuff that drives you insane.

Yup. Usually it doesn't bother me, because I write a lot of uptempo double-bass stuff, and I never get sick of the way that sounds. The song I'm working on now is at 105bpm though, and I threw a really simple 4/4 down under it. It's better than playing to a click (imo), but after several hours of it, the fucking beat is ingrained in my psyche right now. :lol:

 

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That's one thing I love about my 2nd instrument being drums, I can write scratch drums tracks like the following, and not get bored of hearing it. (I'm only about 1/3 the way through)

http://soundcloud.com/blankplank/rooted-drums

:agreed: Guitarists who are proficient drummers have it made when it comes to this shit. Drums take me FOR FUCKING EVER because not only am I not a drummer, but no matter how good I am with the software, I just think like a guitarist, so I write shitty drum lines.

 

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Well if you need dude, give me a PM, and I can track some basic, but 'non-boring' drums down for you for you to work with while recording if you wish

Thanks man. :wub: I get there eventually though, it just takes me a long time. I'll never get any better at it if I don't keep at it. :lol:

 

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Chris try putting an ad out on craigslist for a drummer, teach the drummer how to use gp6 to program drum parts (its easy enough for drummers to learn) and never worry about it again :lol:

I'm not looking for help dude, stop offering me stupid ass suggestions. :lol:

 

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:lol:

 

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Albacore, noob.

 

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There you go :fawk:

Are you planning on keeping up the 100:1 shit post to good post ratio you've had lately? :squint:

 

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That's all well and good if you can write drums. I definitely can not. :lol: I start with a pattern from DKFH/etc that's close to what I'm playing, play to that and the click, and then go back after and tailor the beat to my guitar track.

If I started out with just drums, it would suck a LOT. :lol:

 

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I rarely, move on to riff number 2 before riff number 1 has a drum beat, because as far as I'm concerned, the beat is a way more important factor in how a song flows than the riff. I mean, I think the riff itself it more interesting, but until I know the exact cadence of the part, I can't be sure what should come next.

Then again, by the time I work on arrangement, I usually have a pretty full grabbag of riffs written. I don't sit around to write songs - I noodle out riffs and record the ones that I like to a click track. When I don't have any inspiration, I'll go back to old riffs and work on drum beats for them. And then when it comes time to write songs for a Pharaoh album, I rifle through the riffpile and find the ones I like, marry them to others in the same key/tempo, and go from there. When I need to start filling in the holes in a song, I use the drums to guide me in the right direction, and at that juncture, sometimes a drum beat will precede its riff.

But yeah, your advice is good - don't create an unbreakable association between a bad beat and your riff, or you'll never be able to come up with a more appropriate beat!

That's exactly what I do, and how I feel about it. :yesway: