drumming/ quantizing

I am sort of new to recording. I am using reason 4.0 and an akai lpd8 midi device. I am mainly just using it for drums right now and want to make some cool rock beats with some nice fills. I find it easier to tap it out than to program it into redrum. But my problem is I hate playing with a metronome because it keeps screwing me up. I know I can keep good time without it but the problem is that if I do not use it then sequencer bars and tempo is all out of match with what I played. basically I do not like playing with a click track at all. I am not just playing a little basic beat where you can easily quantize. It is a pain in the ass trying to quantize what I am playing because I am not really much of a "counter" when it comes to playing, I just play with feel.

what should I do? Should I just record without regards to a metronome? if I do that then everything looks all out of place in the sequencer. I dont know what to do. and shouldnt drums be 100 percent correctly quantized no matter the note values??

If you can keep good time then surely turning the metronome off is the way forward. It might also be an idea to see if Reason has a count-in option. That will give you a couple of bars of metronome and then it should turn off automatically.

In regards to the drums looking out of place in the sequencer. If there's a couple of measures or bars before the first hit it doesn't matter. Just trim that silence off and drag the trimmed block to the place you want the drums to begin.

Quantizing is a personal thing. There's no golden rule. But it's worth having a think about how a real drummer would work. Nobody in the world can keep "perfect" timing, and if they did it would sound very clinical. A lot of the time the reason why a song makes your head nod is because of syncopation. It's worth googling if you're not sure about it.

It's also worth considering your genre. If the song is going to be mixed by a DJ then sometimes it's not a bad idea to quantize the kicks and snares to make beat-matching a little bit easier. But if it's something for people to put on and enjoy in it's entirity then who cares if it's quantized?

You could also set up your own metronome that isn't annoying for your ears. instead of using the click metronome, use something like a hihat and program it how you want it. If you dont like it on every 4th put it on 1 and 3 or only on the 1 so you still have something that guide you in timing but not on every 4th and with a sound that doesn't hurt.

peace

Turn off the metronome, turn off quantize, set the sequence bars to 999 and record. Nuff said.

You gotta learn to work with beats and bars.

Your gotta learn to program drums in a loop.

Practice some basic drum patterns in 2 or 4 bars loops, use the metronome as a time reference.

Freestylin' is good as is no quantize if you can pull it off, but you need natural rhythm and good timing to make it work

appetite4gnr wrote:I am sort of new to recording.

Ill-Green wrote:Turn off the metronome, turn off quantize, set the sequence bars to 999 and record. Nuff said.

Just jump all in huh, no training wheels or nothing, fuggit throw your hands in the air and yell BANZAI!!