10-17-2024, 11:56 PM
(This post was last modified: 10-22-2024, 11:34 AM by Hugh Wallington.)
Adding or removing a drum beat from the RHYTHM
When I played Red River Valley I used the STYLE Country Pop, VARIATION B (from COUNTRY).
If I activate the top of RHY2 I get to see which ‘drum kit’ Yamaha have used for this rhythm (the bottom of RHY2 is for turning the rhythm OFF or ON). They have used Real Drums.
(RHY1 is on Rock Kit, but only one very quiet beat, which is insignificant).
You can listen to just the RHYTHM by pressing the START button.
Then while you are listening you can press some of the other Drum Kits to hear what they sound like. I have recorded in turn Real Drums (the kit being used in this instance), followed by Real Brushes, House Kit, Break Kit (on Page 2) and Cuban Kit (on Page 3). Click the below to listen.
https://audio.com/hugh-ar/audio/rhythmdemo1
You could replace the Real Drums Kit Yamaha are using with any of those (ie. REVOICE), which would give a completely different sounding STYLE.
Listen below to what this STYLE sounds like with these different Rhythm Kits.
https://audio.com/hugh-ar/audio/rhythmkitdemo
Getting back to what I started off with .. adding a drum beat to the Rhythm.
If you don’t know this already, with the Yamaha PARTS in a STYLE, if you want to put in a repeating pattern of notes of your own, you first have to DELETE the pattern Yamaha put into that PART ie. you cannot ‘add’ to what Yamaha have put in there. Except for the RHYTHM section. With RHY1 and RHY2 you can add extra drum beats into the pattern; or DELETE a drum sound you do not want.
Listening to the STYLE and the Real Drums in RHY2, on the ‘off beat’ you can hear a single click on a ‘block’. What I wanted to hear was a ‘double click’ on the block, followed by a single click.
Click the below to hear ... first, the drummer doing all ‘single clicks’; followed by what I want him to play .. a double-click followed by a single click.
https://audio.com/hugh-ar/audio/rhythmdemo2
To achieve this I shall add an extra click of the block into RHY1. As I want the ‘block’ sound to be the same, I have changed RHY1’s Rock Kit to Real Drums.
With Country Pop Variation B selected as my STYLE, I headed for the STYLE CREATOR page.
When you get to STYLE CREATOR, this is the screen you get by ‘default’.
Note that RHY2 is always the slot for recording into .. something one would never want to do as it would mess up the drum rhythm of the STYLE!
The important thing to make a note of here is the PATTERN LENGTH, in this case 4 bars ... of 4 beats, (4/4). So when we record anything into any of these PARTS we have to count these bars and beats and don’t play anything at all on the first beat of the 5th bar.
As I am adding an extra drum beat into the mix .. in RHY1 .. it is RHY1 I want to record into. To set this up, hold down the REC CH (top right) and press the RHY1 ON (ie. at the bottom). This will now change the status of RH1 to REC.
Bearing in mind that all the PARTS will start sounding as soon as I get the recording going, I have switched to OFF all the slots apart from RHY2 and BASS. RHY2 and BASS will help me ‘keep to the beat’, but the others would just be a distraction.
The other thing that will help me ‘keep to the beat’ is the METRONOME, so I shall turn that ON when I am ready to do the recording.
But first, I must identify which note is the ‘block’ sound I am wanting to add into the mix .. and you can only do that by playing the notes and listening to the drum sound each one makes.
I can see that the VOICE SECTION chosen is PERC. / DRUM KIT, and that it has been set up in RIGHT1.
If you now press the BALANCE button ...
... the PARTS showing on the screen will be replaced by the VOLUME buttons. The VOLUME in RHY1 was set at about 42, so I have upped RIGHT1 to 65 to be the same volume as RHY2.
Press the EXIT button to get back to the previous screen. Until we actually set up this RART to RECORD (which I will explain how to do in a minute) we can make any alterations we like to R1, and play any notes we like and they will not ‘record’. So what I am going to do now is to play every note on my keyboard running from the very bottom note to the very top note so I can hear the drum sounds that have been allocated to each note. I am trying to identify which one is that ‘block’ .. and listening carefully I reckon it’s C#2.
Listen to the below to hear for yourself what these drum sounds are. Remember that these sounds are from the Real Drums kit. If you had another kit selected the sounds would be different.
Click the below to listen. I have added that C#2 again at the end of this DEMO to confirm that that indeed is the ‘block’ sound I will use for my recording.
https://audio.com/hugh-ar/audio/drumsounds
I did say that I would get the METRONOME going to help me ‘keep to the beat’ .. and also to know when the first beat of the bar is.
To start the recording I need to press the START (or get the SYNC START flashing if I want the first note I press to be on the first beat of the bar).
Ready?
Listen to the Metronome playing the beats in the bar, and when the Metronome clangs telling you it’s the first beat of the bar, press that START button. Counting the bars and the beats, play that C#2 note (the ‘block’) where you want to hear it. As I said earlier, one has to keep going for the ‘measure’ (PATTERN LENGTH) of the STYLE, which in this case is 4 bars of four beats. Do not play anything on the first beat of the 5th bar. When you get to the end of the ‘measure’, what you have recorded will ‘loop’ round and round so you can listen to it and decide if you are happy with what you have recorded.
**Please Note**: You do not STOP the recording at the end of the ‘measure’ (pattern length). You just let it do it’s own thing and run round in ‘loops’.
Obviously you do have to STOP it at some point (after it has looped round a few times and you have listened to it) and you do that by pressing that START/STOP button again. And you press it at nowhere in particular ie. it doesn’t have to be spot on at the end of the ‘measure’. Just stop it ‘looping’ round at some point.
When I put those drum beats in, although my sense of rhythm is fairly good, even I could hear that I didn’t get the timing quite right for that stick hitting the block. A drummer would have got the timing right .. but I am not a drummer.
But no worries, as the keyboard will get those ‘block’ sounds in the right place for me. This is what QUANTIZE does. Gets the notes ‘spot on’ for you.
Moving across to the CHANNEL page I have used the note length they have suggested (the SIZE of the note) and clicked EXECUTE. You can listen to the result of this just by pressing that START button again (and press the START button yet again to STOP it), and if you don’t like it you can click UNDO .. which appears where the word EXECUTE was.
Click the below to listen to the difference between the double-block sound before and after Quantize was applied. The difference is very subtle, but it certainly sounds more like a real drummer would have played it.
https://audio.com/hugh-ar/audio/doubleblockquantized
Finally, we need to SAVE what we have done and give it a name. I have called my new STYLE with the double-click CountryPop2.
And this is what Red River Valley sounds like with my CountryPop2 STYLE.
https://audio.com/hugh-ar/audio/redriver...oubleblock
I do appreciate that if you have never tried using STYLE CREATOR before then all this might seem like a mammoth task. I can assure you that once you have got the hang of what you have to do it only takes a couple of minutes to do something like this. At the end of the day all I was putting in were four single clicks over 4 bars.
And equally, I do understand if you are the sort of person who just wants to ‘plug in and play’ your keyboard so prefer to find a ‘bespoke’ Style for your song and use that. Playing about with STYLE CREATOR wouldn’t be of interest to you. But at the end of the day, our keyboards are very sophisticated bits of kit and you are paying for all the technology to be able to do things like this.
Hugh
More to follow .. on how to REMOVE a drum sound you don’t want to hear in the mix.
When I played Red River Valley I used the STYLE Country Pop, VARIATION B (from COUNTRY).
If I activate the top of RHY2 I get to see which ‘drum kit’ Yamaha have used for this rhythm (the bottom of RHY2 is for turning the rhythm OFF or ON). They have used Real Drums.
(RHY1 is on Rock Kit, but only one very quiet beat, which is insignificant).
You can listen to just the RHYTHM by pressing the START button.
Then while you are listening you can press some of the other Drum Kits to hear what they sound like. I have recorded in turn Real Drums (the kit being used in this instance), followed by Real Brushes, House Kit, Break Kit (on Page 2) and Cuban Kit (on Page 3). Click the below to listen.
https://audio.com/hugh-ar/audio/rhythmdemo1
You could replace the Real Drums Kit Yamaha are using with any of those (ie. REVOICE), which would give a completely different sounding STYLE.
Listen below to what this STYLE sounds like with these different Rhythm Kits.
https://audio.com/hugh-ar/audio/rhythmkitdemo
Getting back to what I started off with .. adding a drum beat to the Rhythm.
If you don’t know this already, with the Yamaha PARTS in a STYLE, if you want to put in a repeating pattern of notes of your own, you first have to DELETE the pattern Yamaha put into that PART ie. you cannot ‘add’ to what Yamaha have put in there. Except for the RHYTHM section. With RHY1 and RHY2 you can add extra drum beats into the pattern; or DELETE a drum sound you do not want.
Listening to the STYLE and the Real Drums in RHY2, on the ‘off beat’ you can hear a single click on a ‘block’. What I wanted to hear was a ‘double click’ on the block, followed by a single click.
Click the below to hear ... first, the drummer doing all ‘single clicks’; followed by what I want him to play .. a double-click followed by a single click.
https://audio.com/hugh-ar/audio/rhythmdemo2
To achieve this I shall add an extra click of the block into RHY1. As I want the ‘block’ sound to be the same, I have changed RHY1’s Rock Kit to Real Drums.
With Country Pop Variation B selected as my STYLE, I headed for the STYLE CREATOR page.
When you get to STYLE CREATOR, this is the screen you get by ‘default’.
Note that RHY2 is always the slot for recording into .. something one would never want to do as it would mess up the drum rhythm of the STYLE!
The important thing to make a note of here is the PATTERN LENGTH, in this case 4 bars ... of 4 beats, (4/4). So when we record anything into any of these PARTS we have to count these bars and beats and don’t play anything at all on the first beat of the 5th bar.
As I am adding an extra drum beat into the mix .. in RHY1 .. it is RHY1 I want to record into. To set this up, hold down the REC CH (top right) and press the RHY1 ON (ie. at the bottom). This will now change the status of RH1 to REC.
Bearing in mind that all the PARTS will start sounding as soon as I get the recording going, I have switched to OFF all the slots apart from RHY2 and BASS. RHY2 and BASS will help me ‘keep to the beat’, but the others would just be a distraction.
The other thing that will help me ‘keep to the beat’ is the METRONOME, so I shall turn that ON when I am ready to do the recording.
But first, I must identify which note is the ‘block’ sound I am wanting to add into the mix .. and you can only do that by playing the notes and listening to the drum sound each one makes.
I can see that the VOICE SECTION chosen is PERC. / DRUM KIT, and that it has been set up in RIGHT1.
If you now press the BALANCE button ...
... the PARTS showing on the screen will be replaced by the VOLUME buttons. The VOLUME in RHY1 was set at about 42, so I have upped RIGHT1 to 65 to be the same volume as RHY2.
Press the EXIT button to get back to the previous screen. Until we actually set up this RART to RECORD (which I will explain how to do in a minute) we can make any alterations we like to R1, and play any notes we like and they will not ‘record’. So what I am going to do now is to play every note on my keyboard running from the very bottom note to the very top note so I can hear the drum sounds that have been allocated to each note. I am trying to identify which one is that ‘block’ .. and listening carefully I reckon it’s C#2.
Listen to the below to hear for yourself what these drum sounds are. Remember that these sounds are from the Real Drums kit. If you had another kit selected the sounds would be different.
Click the below to listen. I have added that C#2 again at the end of this DEMO to confirm that that indeed is the ‘block’ sound I will use for my recording.
https://audio.com/hugh-ar/audio/drumsounds
I did say that I would get the METRONOME going to help me ‘keep to the beat’ .. and also to know when the first beat of the bar is.
To start the recording I need to press the START (or get the SYNC START flashing if I want the first note I press to be on the first beat of the bar).
Ready?
Listen to the Metronome playing the beats in the bar, and when the Metronome clangs telling you it’s the first beat of the bar, press that START button. Counting the bars and the beats, play that C#2 note (the ‘block’) where you want to hear it. As I said earlier, one has to keep going for the ‘measure’ (PATTERN LENGTH) of the STYLE, which in this case is 4 bars of four beats. Do not play anything on the first beat of the 5th bar. When you get to the end of the ‘measure’, what you have recorded will ‘loop’ round and round so you can listen to it and decide if you are happy with what you have recorded.
**Please Note**: You do not STOP the recording at the end of the ‘measure’ (pattern length). You just let it do it’s own thing and run round in ‘loops’.
Obviously you do have to STOP it at some point (after it has looped round a few times and you have listened to it) and you do that by pressing that START/STOP button again. And you press it at nowhere in particular ie. it doesn’t have to be spot on at the end of the ‘measure’. Just stop it ‘looping’ round at some point.
When I put those drum beats in, although my sense of rhythm is fairly good, even I could hear that I didn’t get the timing quite right for that stick hitting the block. A drummer would have got the timing right .. but I am not a drummer.
But no worries, as the keyboard will get those ‘block’ sounds in the right place for me. This is what QUANTIZE does. Gets the notes ‘spot on’ for you.
Moving across to the CHANNEL page I have used the note length they have suggested (the SIZE of the note) and clicked EXECUTE. You can listen to the result of this just by pressing that START button again (and press the START button yet again to STOP it), and if you don’t like it you can click UNDO .. which appears where the word EXECUTE was.
Click the below to listen to the difference between the double-block sound before and after Quantize was applied. The difference is very subtle, but it certainly sounds more like a real drummer would have played it.
https://audio.com/hugh-ar/audio/doubleblockquantized
Finally, we need to SAVE what we have done and give it a name. I have called my new STYLE with the double-click CountryPop2.
And this is what Red River Valley sounds like with my CountryPop2 STYLE.
https://audio.com/hugh-ar/audio/redriver...oubleblock
I do appreciate that if you have never tried using STYLE CREATOR before then all this might seem like a mammoth task. I can assure you that once you have got the hang of what you have to do it only takes a couple of minutes to do something like this. At the end of the day all I was putting in were four single clicks over 4 bars.
And equally, I do understand if you are the sort of person who just wants to ‘plug in and play’ your keyboard so prefer to find a ‘bespoke’ Style for your song and use that. Playing about with STYLE CREATOR wouldn’t be of interest to you. But at the end of the day, our keyboards are very sophisticated bits of kit and you are paying for all the technology to be able to do things like this.
Hugh
More to follow .. on how to REMOVE a drum sound you don’t want to hear in the mix.
It's all about the music!