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Do we still need drummers in Logic?


Nunstummy

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Review the Spotify top 50 by genre. Check out Pop, Rock, R&B, Indie, Hip Hop and Country. Just listen to 5 songs from each. How many have real drums? 10% maybe?

 

If you’re recording acoustic drums with a drummer please enjoy it, because nobody is ever going to hear it. There’s no relationship between number of streams (revenue) and real drums.

 

If this is what inspires you to make your own music, more power to you. And if your approach brings you the Spotify Top 50 success you dream of, why not? But for some of us, there are many other considerations and inspirations. I mean, I don't even listen to Spotify, say. And I don't give a s*** what's in the Top 50. I make music any way I see fit, always willing to try anything out if it's amusing or challenging or easy or whatever. I bet other people who participate on this forum make music in myriad ways, for various purposes and pleasures, regardless of dogmatism and stream-counts.

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Seem to be two separate conversations going on here.

 

The question isn’t about the validity and usefulness of Logic’s and computer drummers/drum machines. It specifically asks if those replace the need for a real drummer. Of course when software serves the purpose (sometimes better than a real drummer... in techno for example) a real drummer is not necessary. But they have not yet achieved the ability to replace a real drummer (when necessary) or make them obsolete.

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I'm sorry if I've veered off or taken things in a wayward direction, and apologies if I've come across as too strident. I don't think there's a non-subjective answer to "does this replace the need for that?" when it comes to so many things in music. I love the Drummer program in Logic and it's served my songs remarkably well, but it's still only a decision-on-the-day for me to use it. For someone else, these drums might be a placeholder/starting point or they might feel enough like "the real thing" to do all that's needed for the task at hand, with that task at hand perhaps not being at all to do with a "real drummer" anyway. I'm just not seeing it as a yes/no scenario, but rather, I'm excited about more musical possibilities for everybody to play with.
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I remember when the first drum machines appeared in recording studios. Producers thought they didn't need drummers any longer and they were happy to spend time programming drum machines instead. That lasted a couple of years, until they realized... the most competent musicians to program the drum machines were... drummers. So drummers came back in the studio, but many of them were hired only to write the drum arrangements and program them onto drum machines.

 

Then many producers got tired of that and just went back to hiring drummers to play drums. But other producers did not get tired of drum machines and instead took them into a different direction altogether. And continued exploring with creating synthetic or sample-based percussive sounds and patterns that may or may not resemble a drum performance.

 

Nowadays we have software samplers that can sound pretty darn close to a real drumkit played by a real drummer.

 

I feel like we're at a convergence, a time in music history when it matters less and less what tools you decide to use, which gives us a chance to focus on the result, experiment, have fun, and be creative. All those are just tools, it's up to us to decide which ones we want to use or experiment with, and even mix together. Hire a real drummer. Use a software drummer. Use a drum machine. Hire a drummer to program a drum machine. Hire a drummer to play along with a drum machine. Or produce a song without drums and without drum machines.

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I feel like we're at a convergence, a time in music history when it matters less and less what tools you decide to use, which gives us a chance to focus on the result, experiment, have fun, and be creative. All those are just tools, it's up to us to decide which ones we want to use or experiment with, and even mix together. Hire a real drummer. Use a software drummer. Use a drum machine. Hire a drummer to program a drum machine. Hire a drummer to play along with a drum machine. Or produce a song without drums and without drum machines.

 

Exactly. There's such a beautiful blurring between our analog and digital worlds these days. I have a friend who plays horn and we did some work right before the pandemic shut things down. I'd put down some guide parts on some synth or other, thinking we'd replace them with his trumpet. He liked the synths, though and built his arrangement around them, encouraging me to flesh things out in this direction even further. In the end, I have to squint to remember which are the real trumpets and which are from the keyboard.

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I’ll admit to “stoking the debate”. In reality I love real drums, depending on the genre of the song. I’m just finishing an old school R&B song where I programmed the beats, then sending it to a drummer friend to record a real acoustic kit. Inspired by that Andersen .Paak / Bruno Mars collab, it needs real drums. I’m in Toronto and my drummer friend is in Philly. He has 4 different kits and all the right mic’s and we both use Logic 10.6, so it works out well. There are other indie/alternative songs I’m working on where Logic drums are all I need.
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I’ll admit to “stoking the debate”. In reality I love real drums, depending on the genre of the song. I’m just finishing an old school R&B song where I programmed the beats, then sending it to a drummer friend to record a real acoustic kit. Inspired by that Andersen .Paak / Bruno Mars collab, it needs real drums. I’m in Toronto and my drummer friend is in Philly. He has 4 different kits and all the right mic’s and we both use Logic 10.6, so it works out well. There are other indie/alternative songs I’m working on where Logic drums are all I need.

 

 

It's a crazy good time for options and we're lucky to be able to enjoy so many aspects of music-making. It's fab that you've got both vision for specific songs and the means to pull them off. While I've really fallen for Logic's Drummer and have been using it more and more all the time, the idea that certain parts of life might start to open up and return closer to normal/safe soon certainly has me back in touch with my main recording drummer and - gasp - my gigging drummer! I've always been into home recording, from teen days with a 4-track in my dad's basement, but I'd love to get my hometown band together in a basement now and rock through a few tracks, everybody crammed together.

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There’s plenty of room for real drummers. With my basic skills in programming Logics drummer there’s a lot I can’t do simply because there’s limits to how you can “communicate” with it. You can turn some knobs, but only those Apple gave you.

 

A real drummer you can just say more like … or a bit less of this … or focus those beats to the hi-hat etc.

 

With logics drummer you can easily get a decent beat, but fine-tuning it to your likings and what the song needs is really up hill.

 

For standard classic pop or electronic it’s probably fine. Progressive/experimental rock like I’m doing is not so easy.

 

But without access to a real drummer that’s what I have to work with:-/

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First of all, "I'm a lazy 8-) ." So, I want the digital computer to help me any way that it can. Logic has an extremely good automated drummer. The designers obviously spent a great deal of time studying what human drummers do, and it was time very well spent.

 

Sometimes, that cyber-drummer is enough. Sometimes, it's a stand-in ... the real actor will be brought in later. In the meantime I can continue to develop my song. When the real drummer-god arrives on the scene, (s)he can then listen to my [dummy ...] track, sit down at a real kit, and proceed to blow it away with pure human virtuosity. If that happens, then both things (ahem ...) "played their part."

 

As for "drum machines," it could well be argued that a great deal of late-80's and 90's music, and even genres like "hip hop," are very direct spin-offs from them and couldn't have been made without them. The best songs take advantage of their mechanical rigidity and the fact that (in most cases) every hit sounds exactly the same. If you want that sound, that's the only way to get it.

 

I never thought that composers and arrangers were ever trying to "replace human drummers." This was actually something that could do something – very different-sounding, and non-human. There were and still are some damned-good "drum-machine programmers" out there ... musicians of a different sort who don't play their instruments directly.

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AI, Pre-recorded midi bits etc simply can't match the job of an actual Drummer. Also, as someone who actually drums and has owned both decent e-drums running the likes of SD3 and BFD3 off them, acoustic drums (really good ones miced well) do the job SO MUCH better, if you can have them :).
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I really like my upgraded 15 years old Roland TD-20 and Toontrack SD3 with the Decades or Hansa kits. Really low latency is mandatory to make the drummer comfortable. I never use the builtin Roland sounds, it's MIDI into Logic or Cubase. Quick, silent, convenient.

 

I will record a bunch of tracks/comp/correct/copy, add fills from my library, switch sounds and never fail to be amazed by the results. Recording just a verse or a chorus in cycle mode, terrific. Just quantize the introfill to 16 Swing C and leave the rest alone, amazing. Try out different ideas that you can undo in literally no time. Stunning.

 

For pop, there's plenty of nuance with edrums. In fact, 90% of the time there's still too much that has to be corrected.

 

I also like and use drummachines/sequenced rhythms all the time. And cut-up loops. Loops are great as a metronome replacement.

 

But if you do acoustic jazz and have a first class drummer, then yes. Get a real, great sounding drumkit. Tune for days. Hire a great sounding studio with terrific mikes. Get an engineer who is a master in recording acoustic jazz. In fact, mic up the whole band for that in the pocket feel. Deal with crosstalk. Make sure the vibes are right, but watch out with the liquor and drugs. Often, there's still convoluted editing to be done.

 

That's really expensive big studio stuff. Not many big studio's around anymore... And the ones that are still there don't use Logic but Pro Tools...

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My childhood dream was to become a recording engineer. I also knew I would never have the money to buy all those synthesizers a nice console and other expensive gear. Reality exceeded my wildest dream. Everything exists in my paper thin MacBook Air.
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