9.10. Build Your Own Drum Loops (iDrum)

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Nothing defines the character of a pop song quite as much as its drum part. GarageBand comes with 280 drum loops, but relative to the universe of rock music, that's just dust in the wind.

You can build your own drum parts by recording them with a MIDI keyboard, of course. But what if you're stranded on a desert island with nothing but your laptop and a power outlet (and no MIDI keyboard)? You'll need some other way to build drum loops ”like iDrum, a plug-in that installs a full-blown drum pattern editor right into GarageBand.

After installing the software, you can access the iDrum screen, which works like a mini-GarageBand window, built up of parallel drum tracks (Figure 9-11). For example, you can drag these tracks up or down to rearrange them, click the + or “ buttons to delete drum tracks, adjust the L “R knob to specify each drum sound's position in the left-to-right stereo sound field, click the M button to mute a drum or S to solo it, and so on.

Figure 9-11. Click a drum sound in the left-side column ( snare , tom-tom, ride cymbal, whatever), and then "paint" it, by clicking or dragging, onto the proper grid slots. Each drum sound has a different shape and appears in a different vertical location, to help you keep track.

To build a drum pattern, position the iDrum window where you can see both it and the GarageBand window. Create a new drum track, if necessary, by clicking the + button. Choose a drum sound for this track by clicking directly on the existing drum's name (like Kick 1) and choosing from the pop-up menu.

To create the drum part, drag inside each of the 16 vertical rectangles to the right of the drum header. They represent the sixteenth notes in a 4/4 measure, so to make a drum play on the first and third beats, you'd fill up the first and ninth rectangles. The height of your drag determines how loudly that drum plays on that beat.

Tip: Before you spend a lot of time building a handmade pattern, try out some of the samples that come with iDrum. From the iDrum menu, choose Open. Navigate to your Home

Library

Application Support

iDrum

Kits folder. There, even if youre just playing with the iDrum demo version, you'll find some useful virtual drum sets to try out.The full version of iDrum ($70) comes with hundreds of ready-made drum files, each with several variations.

When the loop sounds good, you can proceed in either of two ways: leave the drum pattern as an integral part of your GarageBand project, or export it as a loop.

Incidentally, iDrum isn't the only tool for building drum kits and drum loops in GarageBand. You might also want to check out DoggieBox, a less capable but easier-to-use program, or GarageBand Utilities, a set of three utilities that includes GB Drum Loops. Both of them export GarageBand-ready AIFF files that do nicely as drum loops.

FOR L.A. DISC JOCKEYS ONLY
Ableton Live

If you were to poke your head into the trendier L.A. clubs these days, GarageBand is probably not the program you'll find running on the disc jockeys' PowerBooks. It's more likely to be Ableton's Live ($500).

Like Logic and Digital Performer, this program can record and edit both MIDI performances and live audio recordings. It offers mixing, effects, and automation features, too. It can even stretch or condense any region, MIDI, or digital audio, to make it fit the tempo or the key of your piece.

One key difference, though, is Live's orientation toward live, improvisational jamming. As shown here, its Session view looks something like an Excel spreadsheet. You can drag-and-drop sounds, build sequences, and trigger them live, while the music is continuously playing.

You can also trigger any music clip at any pitch, just by playing the keys on a MIDI keyboard.

You can find both of these, and many other GarageBand utilities, by searching for GarageBand at www. versiontracker .com.

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