Composing On Drums

Whilst I’ve done many, many drum templates here, most are fairly formulaic and structured in order to make them easy to jam to. Or they’re the result of an idea I had but even then, it’s structured to be as accessible - i.e. jammable - as possible. Tricky stuff tends to lay unused…

Anyway, I’ve been tasked by my band to see if I can write a piece on the drums for our next song and they’ll compose to my ideas. It’s a prog rock band so won’t be a ‘normal’ song.

Anyone ever done this? How have they gone about it? Where did they draw inspiration from? It’s surprisingly hard to come up with stuff with no reference music - trying to balance the need for good grounded beats and being a bit more original. I suspect that I might end up wheeling out all my favourite Mike Portnoy moves at this rate! B)

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Sometimes I do this, I program a drum template without any particular guitar idea in mind and try to find ideas afterwards. I try to make a cool simple groovy pattern followed by something a bit more intricate, less formulaic, sometimes in odd time signature with some accents for example (those are cool in unison with the guitar). Half-time parts are cool too, for ethereal and spacey guitar solos... You can add some different feel to the groove on some spots too, like a swing or shuffle feel just for a bar, I don't know... But I'm sure that you can do it without any advice, you're a very good drummer, you'll find some cool ideas :W

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