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Originally Posted by g22  Interesting, I'm guessing then the main kicks and snares were all at constant/full velocity, and the HH's a mixture of medium and low, with some medium and low kicks and snares mixed in for dynamics/ghost notes.
I've experimented a lot with different techinques as far as recording - live w/ no quantize where just about every note is a different velocity and note length, for the most live feel I can get out of a drum machine.
As well as recording the same way, but quantizing for a tighter, hip hop feel.
But, when I first got into drum machines, my first one didn't have velocity sensitive pads, but I didn't realize it until later, and all my drums were recorded at a constant 100 velocity level.
A lot of ppl liked my drums, but I opted to get a different drum machine that had velocity-sensitivity because I figured most professional beats had that, and pretty much scraped all of the beats done on it.
Looking back on it, those beats were very similar in feel to Prince ( not saying they sounded anywhere near as good) but they had that constant velocity on the kick and snare in common.
I've heard some ppl say that in hip hop its very common for producers to set all the kicks and snare to full or any constant level velocity then do the HH's live, is this true in a lot of professional music? I always thought every drum was played live. |
One thing you will notice with Prince, when he is using a drum machine, he isn't trying to make it sound like live acoustic drums. He plays up the mechanical nature of the thing, the quantized timing and the synthetic sounds. This tends to create an interesting tension with his guitar, synth and bass playing, which are anything but mechanical (he only ever allowed Matt Fink to use a sequencer on one track, "I Would Die 4 U"). Examples: Ballad of Dorothy Parker (very stiff drum machine against loose keys); Shockadelica; Hot Thing; Something In The Water (Does Not Compute); Feel U Up.