Free Tempo Recording

[sdbrit68]

The EZ drummer version stays at a constant tempo, but (to my ear) the loop doesn't fit the melody. It sounds as though the loop syncs, but the the drums are about an 8th note late. Listen to your first track where I assume you manually placed the kick drum relative to the piano track and then listen to the EZ drummer. The first recording flows smoothly with the kick lining up perfectly on beat one of the piano pattern. The EZ drummer track sounds as though the drums are noticeably behind the first beat of the piano pattern.

Are these both MIDI tracks or is the piano an audio track? If the piano is an audio track you should be able to view it in the track lane and open the MIDI editor for the drums in the lower portion of the screen. You can link the playhead cursor to synchronize the cursor between the two windows. With that opened, it should be pretty obvious to you to see the transient for the piano key and then see the MIDI kick note on the piano roll. If your playhead is on the beginning of the piano transient, the MIDI note will appear (to the right) of the cursor. If you put the playhead cursor on the beginning of the MIDI kick note, the piano transient will be ahead of the cursor (to the left). If the piano audio is one contiguous event, you should be able to turn off Snap to Grid and click and drag the audio to the right until the piano transient starts at the same time as the kick drum note.

You can do the same thing by highlighting all notes in the MIDI editor and aligning them with the audio. However, there is a larger chance for error doing it this way. If you miss a few MIDI notes when you highlight, you'll have to chase them down. A single audio event is much easier to move.

On mine, the drums were recorded first from the E drum, I use Ugritone drum software in the DAW and USB out which records it to MIDI, so when I make a mistake, and I do, I can easily fix it, but, I still get to claim I played it, just not well.
I then of course use the pre-count and a click track in Studio one to record anything else, I find the drums many times distract me on the count, but having the click and precount helps me stay fairly well in line. Just like with bass, since I dont know how to play it, I record small sections then create a loop, so technically I played it

The piano I looked up on googe how to play an A chord, an E Chord, then D chord, then practiced them a few times.....then played it, counted to 4, played the next one. After that I went back, since I knew where the notes were, I copied how I would play a guitar arpegio, so, realistically, the piano chords are one audio track, the runs are another (I cheated).................this process, I rarely have to adjust much timing, but it also is time consuming to do it slow like this. But, since I am not very tech savvy, it is easier for me to get it pretty correct at recording than to sue the tools to fix it later

The EZ drummer, I just took the piano track (Mixed down to a WAV), since it started right away on beat 1, and placed it in (It sounded crappy in their software too), I still had Studio one open and the youtube video said I could simply drag into into a DAW which I did.

I think for me, there are a few issues........

1) I want whats in my head, not what a computer or somethng tells me, even when I work with a real drummer, I can say, this is what I am hearing, then they do their drummer thing and give me the basic, then add their own vision to make it better, but the core is still there.
2) I also dont like other than an instrument working otuside the DAW very much
3) Maybe if you really wanted you could play a rhythm, then import the EZ drummer drum track, then do your recording and get better results or inspiration.

I mean, you could simply just do a MIDI drum yourself in EZ drummer, but, if I am going to do that, I can use the MIDI tools in a DAW and spend a ton less on Ugritone as a virtual instrument. and do the same thing in my software (Originally I bought Ugritone because on a test it sounded good playing my E drms live).......................maybe someone more techy will get better results

 

[sdbrit68]

@BraylonJennings
To my ear, that drum tracks fit well with your recording

@sdbrit68
First, the little bit of piano you;ve got there sounds good to me.
I think you've got the bones of a good song going there

That EZdrummer track stinks

I envey all you guys that can play drums
I don't een try to kid myself, I know I'm a crappy drummer so, I need all the help I can get.

I caant play them either ......................I really do it this way.

1) Play the rhythm on guitar adjusting a metronome until I figure out the BP I want
2) Put the BPM into studio one.
3) Ugirtine goes on the insturment track, then I play a little and decide which sound I want (It emulates everything from the sex pistols, to Ringo, to 80's..........they have a bunch of cute names for the sound they are ttying to get.)
4) Then I simply put on the headphone, let the precount come in with the click and play say 12 bars
5) go back in and clean up anything timing wise, if the chorus or outro has a different timing or beat, I then record those

So I never play straight through, and compared to an acoustic, an E drum is so much more forgiving of mistakes and much easier to play. So its not like I really am a drummer (or bass, or piano, or vocals), although I do like the consistency on counting with it,