D  R  U  M     T  R  A  X 
First (and maybe last) Edition
June 9, 1995


Tracking the Coolest Drum Trax
  --by Spyder
------------------------------
INTRO
You might think that drumset parts are the easiest part of a tune to track, but
if you want to really make your song exceptional you have to take special time
to make the drums perfect.  In this primer I'll go over some different approaches
to writing drumset tracks as well a few rhythmic tricks for beginners.

Let me first start by introducing myself since I'm pretty new to the scene.  My
name is Kevin Dostalek and I go to the Indiana University School of Music.  I'm
actually a music education major (call me Mr. Band Director), but my main
instrument is percussion.  I've only been tracking for about 3 months now, although
I've been composing music for 4 years.  I haven't released any songs yet, but my
first will appear in MC3, and hopefully many more will follow.

Now on to the good stuff...

THE APPROACH
The first thing you should do is get rid of all your drum loops.  These are too
inflexible, often sound lame, and are boring (after about the 4 time through).
Next you want to get some good drumkit sounds.  I recomend the Korg T4 collection
put together by SOUNDWAVE (get at ftp.cdrom.com/pub/demos/music/samples).  Now you
are ready to start.

If you are used to puting all your drum parts on one track, then forget about that.
That was well and good in the days of 4-channel mods, but will s3m's and xm's, you
should have no problem devoting 4 tracks to your drumset.  Also keep it as consis-
tent as possible so you can keep track of where things are.  My normal setups are
1:BD 2:snare 3:toms+crsh sym 4:ride/hh.  Sometimes its helpful to put the hh and
snare tracks together (see ghosting below).

Now where to start.  Decide what kind of style you want first.  Whatever you pick
it should have at least one instrument that keeps solid time, but this will change
from style to style.  For example, techno would be BD, jazz would be hh, funk would
be hh or ride, tango would be snare, etc...  Lay this track down first.  Next
pick another instrument to compliment the first pattern.  This will usually be
ride/hh if the first instrument was BD, and vice versa; leave the snare out of this
for now.

Ok now the hard part.  Decide where you want the accents in the measure.  For most
music this will be just 2 and 4, but be aware that there are many possiblities
(listen to some Dave Weckl).  Put the snare in on these beats.  Now time to add
ghost notes.  Take the second pattern you used above and fill in the spaces in that
pattern in the snare drum track.  Make the volume on these notes considerably less
(I usually use 40 for the accents, 30 for fills, and 10 for ghost notes; in hex).
Lastly add some other interesting parts.  These include toms and cymbals.  Some-
times a good trick is to take some of the snare ghost notes and put them on toms.
Open and close highhats work good, but try to make your part realistic.  If you
put so much in that it wouldn't be playable by a good drummer, then some of the
realism is lost.  Use cym crashes sparingly and don't use the same pitch level
twice in a row.

Now that you have the basic beat (one or two measures) you can add all the filly
stuff that makes the track interesting.  This is really determined by the song
you have, so its best to just lay the drum beat down first, then do the song, and
then you can go back and put in the extras.

RHYTHMIC TECHNIQUES
Hoket.  This is a word that goes way back to renaissance music, but is very
applicable to music of today.  Basically it means that many instruments play a
single melodic line by trading off notes back and forth.  When applied to drumming
this is usually created by using accents (volume changes) between the parts so that
at any give timea different instrument has prominance.  This is very similar to the
technique we used earlier by using the snare drum to fill in ghost notes.  Don't
overuse this because it gets tiring for the listener, but often small solos can
make great use of this when combined with hemiola (3 on 4, 4 on 3, etc...).

Turning the beat around.  Another good technique if used sparingly.  For instance
if your main drumbeat is in 4/4 with accented backbeats on 2 and 4, then for a
bar or two you can move the pattern over so that the "backbeats" are on 1 and 3.
This can also be used as a transition from one section to a faster section.

SUBDIVISIONS
The sign of a good tracker is the ability to put the "inner" notes in between rows
into their drum tracks.  To accomplish this you should make yourself aware of the
effect commands for note delay and note retrigger (EDx and E9x in fast tracker 2).
With these two commands you can do a lot to spiff up you drumset parts.

First lets start with the most basic effect, the roll.  Lets assume that out tune
is moving along at speed 6.  To get a roll out of the snare all you have to do
is E93 it (for a 32nd note open roll) or E91 it (for a closed buzz roll, of course
the openess of this will depend on your tempo setting as well).

Next there is the flam.  For a single isolated flam just put a note before the
flammed note and delay it the desired time.  For me, at tempo 120 and speed 6, a
delay of 5 (ED5), works well.  Also be sure to cut the volume in half of the flam.
For a flam within a series of notes, you guessed it, just use the retriger effect.
ie. with the same parameters as above, take the note before the flammed note and
E95 it. Note: sometimes it may be necessary to use the Rxx effect for this to work
because you want both of the regular notes to sound loud, but the flam soft. Check
out how I did it in example mod (R57).

Triplets in duple meter.  These are pretty easy too if you are getting the hang of
the delay/retrig effects.  Now lets assume that each row in our patter is moving
along at sixteenth notes.  To make a 32nd note triplet, all you do is E92 a note.
To make a 16th note triplet (which takes up an eighth note of time) take two notes,
E94 the first one and ED2 the second, creating a perfectly even triplet.  For
eighth note triplets take a four note cell (quarter note).  Put a normal note in
the first cell, a ED2 note in the second cell, and an ED4 note in the third cell
(leave the fourth cell empty), and viola... a triplet.
An alternate way for creating a triplet is to change the speed of the module with
the Fxx command.  For example if you were at speed 6 and wanted to create a sex-
tuplet (over a quarter note), just put the F04 command in, and then your six notes
followed by a F06 command to resume the speed.  This is the easiest way to do it
if nothing else if going on in your other tracks, but I don't like to use it
because of its inflexibility and also it makes the track not fit neatly into
measures and the pattern lengths get all fucked up.
See the sample track in the mod file to see other ways of playing with 3x2 and 2x3.

Making a whole tune "swing" or "shuffle"
This is something that a lot of people already do, but I thought I would share it
here since its related to rhythm.  If you alternate the speeds of the mod at every
sixteenth note you can create the illusion on swing.  I would say though that you
are better off just doing the whole thing in a triple meter instead so that you
can use the earlier techniques of ghost notes by filling in triplets.  The cool
thing about changing the speeds though is that you can control how much "swing" to
put on the notes depending on the distance between the two speeds.  A straight 
triplet feel would have the lower speed 2/3's of he upper (ie. 4 and 6), but for
a truer swing feel try 5 and 7, or for a tight swing 5 and 6.  Experiment on your
own with this one... I've seen some trax that have like 13 and 7 for there speeds.

Quintuplets
These are a favorite of mine and are something that you wouldn't think possible
in mod format, but there is a way to make them work.  The only problem is you have
to manipulate the tempo so it will fuck up your other tracks unless they too are
playing a quintuplet.  I use them mainly in my drum solos though so it doesn't
matter.  First let me demonstrate a sixteenth note 5-let (taking up a quarter note)
with the initial speed at 6 and the initial tempo at 120.  I'm using fast tracker
notation here-- so you can follow the format is note-instrumet-volume-effect.
A4 1 40 E95   -- - -- F78   (tempo 120)
A4 1 40 ED4   -- - -- ---
A4 1 40 ED3   -- - -- ---
A4 1 40 ED2   -- - -- F64   (temp 100 or 4/5 of initial tempo)

For a slow 5-let that takes up a half note try this: (initial speed 6, tempo 120)
A4 1 40 F05   
A4 1 40 ---   
A4 1 40 ---   
A4 1 40 ---   
A4 1 40 ---   
-- - -- F06

I know that looks simplistic, and it is really because it doesn't allow for any
polyrhythms (check out the example mod though, you can have some independence).


END
Well that concludes this edition of drum trax for now.  If you have any questions
or comments please feel free to send me an email KDOSTALE@indiana.edu or find me
on #trax.  Greets go out to all those on trax who have welcomed me into their
little kooky channel.  Also, be sure to check out the example MOD that should have
come with this text file that shows you how to do a lot of this stuff.

lates --Spyder



