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DRIVE the LOOP or be DRIVEN?



I've been following this discussion about
getting a drummer to sync to a loop or having a drummer
(or any musician) trigger a midi device that will then work off
of the drummers time (continually retriggering the loop).


I've had a lot of experience with this and I believe the latter option
will never work satisfactorily for this reason:

When human beings entrain they constantly have micro speed ups and slow
downs to do so with each other (because we are not perfect and our timing 
varies
subtely even with the most acute of studio trained musicians).

What happens is that you don't play a measure of
140.25 BPM against a measure of 140.28 BPM and then
compensate in the next measure by playing a measure of 140.31 BPM
 hoping that your partner will stay steady with 140.28 BPM as a midi tempo 
reading device will do.

Do you get what I'm saying?  I feel like it's hard to explain so forgive 
me 
if I'm not communicating well.

In other words,  we are stretching the time beat to beat,  16th note by 
16th 
note to stay entrained with each other.

When a drummer triggers a midi device to then trigger the BPM of the loop 
you are driving there are entire bars
of constant drumming that are compensating for the last measure that may 
have been slightly out of sync.

It is really audible when this happens and there is no intrinsic way 
around 
the problem.   We're not even going to
mention the problem of midi latency which can happen.

Consequently,   I would advise people to have the drummer learn how to 
entrain to the pre-existing loop.
This will mimic real playing much more accurately, and the percieved lock 
of 
the loop and the real players
will sound much better than trying to have the drummer drive the whole 
engine.

******************
I encountered this situation a lot in the early 80's when confronting the 
situation of bands that were using
the new Midi language and sequencing in a live setting.   All kinds of 
devices were marketed and sold then to
let the drummer 'drive' the band.   I never heard a single instance where 
the feel was excellent. There was an inherent stiffness
do to the BPM changing only at the bar line.

The same problem happened when I was doing a lot of studio sessions, 
drumming for singer/songwriters.
Many of them had never played with a band before and certainly not a 
metronome and when you are trying to crank out
relatively inexpensive demos you don't have time to teach the 
singersongwriter how to track to a metronome in a relaxed
and musical way.

Consequently,  we had to either play the basic tracks (usually without the 
singer sonwriter) to a click track or
just be content with 'lumpy grooves'.

Several times I had to play with musicians who were not sophisticated 
session players so they couldn't play to a click very well.

We tried to solve this by giving only me, the drummer the click track, and 
having them listen to me as the time and play to me.

The problem with this approach is that I am continually struggling to stay 
on the click because the other musicians are
fluctuating their time.   Normally, we would just entrain to each other 
and 
go with the human results but again,  frequently
I'd find myself playing with a whole rhythm section in a band that just 
wasn't very acute.

We ended up all playing together.............all playing to a click track 
and then going back and erasing the band's tracks
and having them go home and practise to my drum tracks so that they could 
retrack more accurately.

Lol,  this is a band's worst nightmare about being 
signed............having 
to leave their organic process because some producer
is to anal about the results he or she wants.     Honestly, though,  there 
were a lot of musicians who just weren't ready for a recording session and 
we did the best we could to serve them.

Butch Vig found that Nirvana could not track tight tracks at all.    He 
said 
later that Dave Grohl was the only professional musician
in the group.   Consequently,  he had the band play sections of the song 
over and over and over.   He then went through and found the tightest 
sounding bars and looped them.

"Nevermind" is a looped record.     When Cobain and the rest heard about 
it, 
or so the story goes, they were furious.
I can understand, but in retrospect,  "Nevermind" was Cobain's 
masterpiece. 
A lot of people who don't like it's produced feel think that "In Utero" 
was 
a better sounding record.  It was the reaction of the band to Vig's 
production and was produced by
Steve Albini ( a great non-producing producer who has an incredible knack 
for recording fantastic sounds and getting a band to
make great performances and a favorite producer of mine).

Interestingly, by the time that Nirvana tracked 'In Utero' they had really 
improved as a band and had a lot more live shows under their belts so they 
tracked pretty well.

In the long run,  my advice is hope and prey that your drummer is really 
interested in growing as a musician and willing to put in the time to 
learn 
how to play to loops.

I have found that the majority of drummers out their tend not to want to 
take that formidable but completely feasible task.

Also, it just won't work unless you have excellent monitoring of the loop 
for you drummer.
Unfortunately, as my wife just commented, "That's difficult because in the 
real world,  finding good monitoring is a bitch."
What this means is that you will have to be prepared to invest in a 
separate 
loop monitor for at least your drummer because you cannot
depend on a venue to help you to sound good.

I actually found a great solution for this:   Inexpensive wireless 
headphones (about $60-$90) from  Radio Shack).  They are closed ear and 
yet 
you can hear enough of the outside music (i.e., your drumming) to play 
accurately and with feeling.

I advise that you money is far better spent purchasing alternate 
monitoring 
than a device that the drummer can trigger to then retrigger the
live looping start point.

Good luck with it, whichever way it goes.

I'll be happy to correspond with anyone who wants to learn how to do this 
but is having a vexing time with it.

yours,  in search of good time and a good time,   Rick Walker