Finger dumbing

[BLAXMYTH]

Sup tho!?
I come today with back to back questions...
Yeah, I put "dumbing" in the subject line cause I can help but feel like that's what I'm doing, finger dumbing...I always reflect on Mr. Dibia$e, during and interview, saying something about, always play the pads live, not quantize, if you can't trust your fingers, your f cked.
Of course its up to me how seriously I take that comment, but i'm under the impression this is how most sample workers get down.
I've moved away from sequencing and have found much love for the resampling method. I have an understanding for music timing and have always beat on tables and walls etc. but I'm still sloppy on the pads.
At times I'll get a resample going pretty tight with the chopped music bit and throw it into the sequencer for ease of multi tracking out (doing this less and less these days) but either way, I'm not the tightest.
Now, of course, I'm my worst critic, but I do have a desire to be much sharper/tighter on my finger drumming.

My assumptions:
- I should just make an exercise of finger drumming daily like playing any instrument, with practice making perfect
-Not let "imperfections" get me bent out of shape and roll with the dumbing
-wear a device that mildly shocks me every time I hit a pad out of time...meh, maybe not this one...

I'm sure this has been covered before, but for some reason think it needs to be asked again...
any feedback would be swell, even if its, "dood, shut up and go sp foo!"
aight,
thanks for your time tho.

[hseiken]

"dood, shut up and go sp foo!"

thanks for your time tho.

You're welcome. :p

[jiggity-j]

This helps keep some of my loops tight and not always having to resample: http://www.amazon.com/Korg-TM50BK-Instr ... =metronome

It has a headphone output, but I just play through the built-in speaker while close to me. No swing function though, but i just care about the bpm. I'm sure you can use it to practice. Or save the money and just button mash to a beat.

[janglesoul]

I have a free Metronome app in my phone. Works great.

[rak]

nice tip janglesoul.setting metronome on 606 is a pain most of the time

[l i f]

Two quick suggestions from me to supplememnt those already sed (personally i don't care much for playing against a metronome, but)

Buy a set of drum sticks and practice drumming. Practice against a metronome, sure, but I always preferred practicing against hip hop and jazz records. A favourite pasttme of mine is spark one, whack on a mixtape and start hitting off the first beat and don't stop until the tape finishes. Learn the beats, but play the raps too; endurance and improvisation.

On the sampler I recommend getting a simple drumbreak, however many bars and get it looped starting on the kick on one pad and snare on a second. Then just play them back and forth. Two hands or two fingers. Use gate and hold. You can get a whole lot of beat variation by retriggering and snare-placement. Don't let a metronome tell you when to hit... let the samples speak. Short chops cut in unusual places will force you to find combinations you would never have imagined beforehand once you start juggling a bankfull of them.

One of the biggest cases for me of "it's alright!" is beatjugglers on turntables - shits out of time? So the f^%# what. Take a drumbreak in 4/4 and play a 6/8 beat out of it...

[janglesoul]

Of course LIF is right, in the long run there's really no shortcut. You have to put in the hours practising.

An ever returning daydream of mine: How much better I would have been if I had devoted one hour (half hour, 15 minutes) to just practising every day for the last year.

[BLAXMYTH]

"dood, shut up and go sp foo!"

thanks for your time tho.

You're welcome. :p

My man HS, your like mirror and otherwise in the fewest words telling me I knew the answer all along.
proper tings

[BLAXMYTH]

Overall, thanks for the suggestions all.
Sequencing with quantize has always been the, in my face "obvious" way, to use hardware. My first sampler was an Akai S20, an odd but functional sampler providing limitations close to the sp1200, sortah, for what I know. I just learned to midi a dr.rhythm into it and quantize- sequence.
I never was given advice to go live back then( or before then when I only new of drum machines n keyboards), likewise I had never seen anyone do such a thing with a drum machine or a sampler.
Eventually, when kicking it with some rockers that had drumming skills, for the first time ever, I witnessed someone go ham on my drum machine with 4 fingers( pointer and middle) keeping time and making complicated live rhythm happen, then put the drum machine down and say," heh, neat..." then go back over to the drum set kill it.
10 years later, here I am well behind the curve...

As for metronomes, I'm noticing that an sp like the 404(sx) seems to approximate bpm's with samples and things can go out of sequence between devices or even pads set to the same bpm, unless I'm just plain crazy and confusing past experiences on other devices or just plain crazy...but sure it makes sense to use a metro. to practice with.

In the end actual practice is obviously the way tighten up.
Never thought about getting a couple sticks and feeling it out, but I like the idea.
I'm going to slow down and practice timing with loops for now and wait a little to record more.

Thanks for your thoughts and suggestions guys!
The growth continues.
Cheers!

[BLAXMYTH]

Two quick suggestions from me to supplememnt those already sed (personally i don't care much for playing against a metronome, but)

Buy a set of drum sticks and practice drumming. Practice against a metronome, sure, but I always preferred practicing against hip hop and jazz records. A favourite pasttme of mine is spark one, whack on a mixtape and start hitting off the first beat and don't stop until the tape finishes. Learn the beats, but play the raps too; endurance and improvisation.

On the sampler I recommend getting a simple drumbreak, however many bars and get it looped starting on the kick on one pad and snare on a second. Then just play them back and forth. Two hands or two fingers. Use gate and hold. You can get a whole lot of beat variation by retriggering and snare-placement. Don't let a metronome tell you when to hit... let the samples speak. Short chops cut in unusual places will force you to find combinations you would never have imagined beforehand once you start juggling a bankfull of them.

One of the biggest cases for me of "it's alright!" is beatjugglers on turntables - shits out of time? So the f^%# what. Take a drumbreak in 4/4 and play a 6/8 beat out of it...

I had to get my initial responses out, but I wanted to comment on this particularly, Lif, my dude, I feel you. When reflecting on all the music I've listened to and participated in over the many years, hip hop and beat culture in general are extremely critical.
I think, as I said, I'm being my own worst critic overall. If I wanted to be a better artist with samplers as my tool, I just need to put in more time an focus.
I definitely prefer playing against music (loops etc.) vs a metro.
When I played the bass, jamming with a drummer, a open minded drummer, was always a fucking great time. I think I need to keep this mentality going forward and to each his own.
I've been on soundcloud and bandcamp just losing my cool listening to everyone else.
When it comes to beat making drumming no quantize, I need to get beyond just
kick, snare, high hat and keep it more interesting.
Timing wise, sure, I'll actually put in practice and reach for higher levels of "tight", but improvisation and a free feel have always been a magnet for my ear.

At any rate, I really like all the suggestions given and walk away from this thread with, practice and do more as a mantra.
All the same, this has been a good bit of technique therapy.
Thanks for your advise and words of wisdom my droogs.
keep on!

[kel]

Because the pads on the 404 are a little clunky, I feel like "leaning" on them instead of tapping and letting go makes me more accurate when resampling.

[MLTZR]

Hey everyone, just joined the forums and this is my first post. First off, y'all are awesome. Second, in regards to just generally having better time while playing on the pads, a metronome is going to be your best friend, as it is with any musician on any instrument. There are several ways to make your time better while using a metronome, so I'll just list a few of them (also forgive me for nerding out on this, I have an extremely lucrative degree in jazz performance where I learned a lot of this).

The first thing is to get away from putting the metronome on all four quarter notes. Start with putting the metronome on beats 1 and 3 and then practice playing along with that. So essentially, if your BPM is 90, set the metronome to 45 BPM and practice this. Now do the same thing except with the metronome on beats 2 and 4, or so that it lines up with the snare. After you got this down, then we can get more complicated.

Next try putting the metronome on all four beats, but have the metronome click on the off beats, or the the "ands" of the beats. Then, cut the metronome in half again so that it clicks on the off beats of 1 and 3. Do the same thing for the off beats of 2 and 4.

Now, we can get to some super difficult stuff. Put the metronome back on full speed, except imagine that the click is now on the second 16th of the beat. This is when it starts getting really hard to keep it consistent. Do the same thing with the fourth 16th note. Do this until you got it down and then cut the metronome in half.

Basically what I'm trying to get at is that the metronome doesn't have to be on all four downbeats like we expect it to; by displacing where the metronome click is, we can understand the all of the different subdivisions of the beat, thus making us more in control of how you want your beat to groove. (You can also use this method of displacement with triplets, which is very difficult as well.)

Also, I have a metronome app on my phone that goes all the way down to 10 BPM, so another game I like to play is say your beat is at 80 BPM, practice playing a beat with the metronome on all four clicks. Next, do as stated earlier and cut that down to 40 BPM with the metronome clicking on beats 1 and 3. Then, cut that in half again to 20 BPM and practice the beat with the click on just beat 1. Finally, cut that in half one more time down to 10 BPM and practice the beat with the click on beat 1 of every two bars.

Again, this is just for practice to make you have a more comfortable internal time, so if using the resample method, you can play your samples a lot more confidently and with more precision (if that's something you're into). Peace and happy practicing.

[medearis]

Because the pads on the 404 are a little clunky, I feel like "leaning" on them instead of tapping and letting go makes me more accurate when resampling.

Agreed 100%. Coming from my MPC, I wasn't doing enough "leaning".
Now, all I do is lean. I'm almost sideways as I type this.

@Arizona - Not to be douchey but there is a sweet key called "return" or "enter" that will break up your text. It's pretty sweet and the workflow is rad.

[timmytoga]

Agreed 100%. Coming from my MPC, I wasn't doing enough "leaning".
Now, all I do is lean. I'm almost sideways as I type this.

lol

I never thought about how the force required to press the buttons changes the way you... input. You really gotta rock widit.

Cuz SP and MPC both have a definite distinct flavor when it comes to input and output, dig?

[MLTZR]

Because the pads on the 404 are a little clunky, I feel like "leaning" on them instead of tapping and letting go makes me more accurate when resampling.

Agreed 100%. Coming from my MPC, I wasn't doing enough "leaning".
Now, all I do is lean. I'm almost sideways as I type this.

@Arizona - Not to be douchey but there is a sweet key called "return" or "enter" that will break up your text. It's pretty sweet and the workflow is rad.

Noted and edited