J. Anthony Allen introduces the drum-programming tools and workflow you'll use throughout the class. He works in Ableton Live but stresses these techniques—MIDI grid, wav files, sample chopping—work in any DAW. The MIDI grid is the most critical element for good drum sounds.
Okay, before we dive in, let's start with the things we usually start with, which is a quick explanation of the tools we're going to use. So if you're jumping into this part three class without any prep, this will make sense. If you have done part one and two, this will be not new information, so you can skip over this one if you want to. But basically what we're talking about here is what software am I going to use to show all this stuff? So I'm primarily going to be using Ableton Live in this class. That's my main workhorse. But you don't need to be using Ableton. A lot of what we do here can be done on just about any of the software programs. So this isn't an Ableton class. This isn't going to be a class on how to use Ableton. This is going to be a class on how to program really great beats. So you'll be able to apply whatever we're doing to whatever software you're using, including Logic, Pro Tools, FL Studio, Cubase, any of the other ones. So don't worry if you're not using Ableton. A lot of the time we're going to be looking at like, this MIDI grid, things like that. You know how to find that in your program. Then you'll be just fine. Also be looking at, you know, wav files and chopping up some stuff like this. But again, this should be pretty standard stuff in any audio program, so as long as you know how to do those things, you'll be just fine. And, you know, a lot of people ask me, is one program better than the other when it comes to this kind of stuff? Not really. I mean, they all really work the same when it comes to basic drum programming stuff. Some of them do things differently than others, and that makes it so that people like one over the other. But you can do all of this stuff in any of the programs just fine. So use whichever program you like. Okay, cool. Next, let's do a little bit of review about how we work with the grid, because it is the singularly most important thing in getting your drums to sound good. So let's dive into that.
