Swinging is winning! Step 2: Synths Gated by PercussionĪnother fun trick you can play with audio from real musicians is using it to trigger your cold, sterile hardware. Let’s listen again to the clip before adding the groove: I simply right click on the clip and select “Extract Groove.” Now the “feel” from that clip is available in my groove pool, which will pop up underneath Live’s browser when I extract the groove.īy clicking and dragging that groove onto the MIDI clip that controls my electronic drums, I get an infusion of vibe, and my very straight robotic pocket turns much more interesting. So I’ve clicked and dragged that MIDI loop to a clip in Live’s session view and I’m not going to use the audio instead, I’m going to extract the groove and apply it to my electronic drums. But it has a pocket that’s really interesting and appealing.
We’re looking for a groove that has the feel, some push and pull, something… interesting.Ĭracking open one of Toontrack’s EZX Expansions (Pop/Rock to be exact) I found a groove that on its own doesn’t sound like it would work in anything techno or house. This works because EZDrummer’s MIDI loops are taken from recorded performances of great session drummers.įor starters let’s put an instance of EZDrummer onto a new instrument track and open up the instrument’s MIDI browser. We’re going to use the MIDI library in Toontrack’s EZDrummer to find an interesting groove that’s a bit more interesting and organic than your standard MPC swing. In our session, we start with a straightforward beat in Ableton Live’s Drum Rack. Maybe the easiest way to add some vibe is to change the actual groove of your drum sequence. Let’s get straight into it and, as ever, click on any image to enlarge! Step 1: Steal a Drummer’s Groove In order to elevate this pedestrian drum-machine feeling loop, we’ll use four simple techniques. …and breathe life into it, giving us a really organic feel and a loose, groovy pocket: We’ll take a rather boring and unfinished groove:
Groove is king and EZDrummer is well set up to provide royal rhythm. It’s far, far from the truth! Get the drums right and the rest should fall into place. What do you call someone who hangs out with musicians? … A drummer…
#EZDRUMMER MIDI MAP HOW TO#
In this tutorial, we’re going to show you some options using Toontrack’s EZDrummer on how to do it.ĭon’t let the old joke fool you. But there’s a skill to programming and creating a human feel. In this tutorial, we’re going to use Toontrack’s EZDrummer to add an organic flair to your house tracks.Īnyone can program drums.