MAKING DUB WITH COMPUTERS - CHAPTER 15: MIDI (6) - PROGRAMMING A BASIC DRUM RHYTHM - Tutorials - Studio Dubroom - Promoting (Dub ) Reggae and Consciousness

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In this section you can find things that will assist you in your own computer-based musical productions. There's a lot of original Dubroom material which you can use, but also third party material. There's much more than "just" sampled material, as you can find some little pieces of software, presets and other things as well. Everything in this section is, like all stuff in the Dubroom by the way, legal and -a lot of times- absolutely free of charge. Definitely worth a visit, for novice to veteran.
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ABOUT CHAPTER 14
In the previous chapters, we've set up our sequencer: we assigned instruments to midi channels, selected a loop and talked a little about the topic of programming versus playing in order to write music into the Sequencer.
REASON
There are too many sequencers to mention. For the rest of this tutorial, we will use the Sequencer in Propellerheads Reason 3.0.
PIANO(LA) ROLL
The piano(la) roll is that part in your sequencer, from where you can program the sequencer by "writing" midi data. It looks and functions like an ancient "pianola roll", hence the name.

MAKING DUB WITH COMPUTERS - CHAPTER 15: MIDI (6) - PROGRAMMING A BASIC DRUM RHYTHM

We have our sequencer running in a two-bar loop, and connected the instruments we need. For this tutorial, we'll use Propellerhead Reason as our sequencer of choice. The program is much more than just a sequencer, but that doesn't matter for now.

Reggae Music has a foundation of drum and bass. You could say, that when the drum and bass play the right lines, you could basically put anything on top of it. So it is obvious, that the drum and bass need our first attention.

Make sure you have the "Piano Roll" or "Pianola Roll" window active. Your sequencer has one.

First, we decide a BPM and whether we want our riddim to be in straight or in triplets or "swing".

Let's make a riddim in the Rub a Dub style. We put our sequencer on 140 BPM and will use a straight rhythm.

Put any quantize function to 16/16, not 8T or triplets. You will see that you will have 16 different points in a bar, where you can put some thing.

Ready?

Let's start with the Hi Hat. Put one closed Hi Hat note on the very first count, and one on the half-count next to it. You should hear two closed Hi Hat hits now...

Now make sure that you reduce the velocity of the second Hi Hat hit. Velocity is the "volume" of the midi note.

Select the two hi hat hits and copy them to the second count. Do this until the two measures are completely filled. Now change the very last Hi Hat hit from closed to open. Change the velocity if you like.

You should hear something like the following audio example:

EXAMPLE0012.MP3

Now put a snare drum hit on the third count of both measures. And put a kickdrum/bassdrum on every first count. Also put a bassdrum hit on the half count before the second measure, and on the 4th count.

Take a look at the following scheme:

BARS:

HIHAT

SNARE

KICK

PIANO(LA) ROLL

1
- 2 - 3 - 4 -
1
- 2 - 3 - 4 -

X
x X x X x X x
X
x X x X x X x

X

X

X
X x
X
X x

You should hear something like the following audio example:

EXAMPLE0012.MP3

Congratulations! You've created your first drum rhythm! That is to say, the basic rhythm.

But before we pay more attention to the drums, we'll fill in some other instruments.

<<<PREVIOUS CHAPTER<<< - MAKING DUB WITH COMPUTERS - >>>NEXT CHAPTER>>>

This tutorial is in an unfinished stage, but it does contain the basics to get yourself equipped to use just about any DAW or even hardware studio in order to make DUB from Reggae Music in the authentic and original way. When you have a question or comment you'd like to see addressed, feel free to use the Dubroom Contact pages or post your words publicly on our Forum. Click here to read about the latest updates to this tutorial.

JAH

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