Programming drum machines

[labgnat]

Anyone with any advice in programming simple but effective beats in a drum machine? any good websites or books, that will help with this? or is it just a matter of listening to a lot of drums and trying to get the patterns down. i defintely dont' have a drummers mind, and never really know what to put down for the bass lines i come up with.

my drum machine is a Boss Dr. Rhythmn DR-550
well figuring out how to work the machine isn't too tough, just very time consuming, that's 70% of my problem is just not wanting to sit down and mess with it i guess. gotta get over that tho

[Chunk-O-Funk]

I have a Dr-500 too.

Do yo have the manual? It explains the how to's pretty well IIRC, but you're right, programing custom patterns and tying them together to create a song Is time consuming.

If you know the basics about what a drummer does you should be able to come up with your own beats, but like anything else the more you know the better you will be at it. My brother is a drummer so I know some basic rudiments which does help.

I remember they give you a grid pattern in the manual to map out your beats. I think I've used it once or twice. It makes it even more tedious but the results were better.

The easier way would be to tap out a beat in real time. Find a blank pattern in one of the banks, hit shift edit, then start your bass drum pattern on the one and three of the down beat and the snare on the second and fourth down beat. Then go back and add a high-hat or ride. After that it should be easy to edit your pattern. Hope that made sense.

I've since switched to using drum loops so my DR-550 is mostly a metronome or just something to practice with. I still have to sit down and learn how to edit loops. I think when you get down to using a machine or loops most of your time will be taking up by editing and programing. The more patient you are with it the better your results will be, and the more you do it the easier it will become.