Timing

Usually when recording, you record the drums first, then the bass and so forth. My dilemma here on the Loops is that it's very difficult to make songs feel good, timing-wise.

I remember Dave Weckl stated in a video that he prefer artists to send him programmed and quantized parts to which he then tracks drums. This makes sense, because those tracks stay in perfect sync with the click. After the drums are recorded, those guide tracks are of course removed and new recordings of bass, guitar etc are recorded following Dave's timing, not the click.

I find that tracking drums on here mostly becomes an exercise in timing instead of a musical expression, which is frustrating. Of course the answer would be for me to create my own templates, but as a drummer, I prefer to have something to play along to.

Not so much of suggestions here, but more of a pointing to a problem. Not sure of how to solve it.

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it's definitely a transition in writing for those not used to click tracks. I would never play to click tracks until I became a member here, then that took some getting used to. in my opinion, with click tracks u lose feel and dynamics, or added 'sauce' during rolls, etc. over time I think I've got used to writing with click tracks and 'dummy drum' tracks. I find writing a template over some basic drums works best for me, but I can still do clicks as well.

I'm not sure there's a fix to the problem you've pointed out, unless at some point AI can shift and line up something perfectly for us :)

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To expand a bit: Many templates have... let's say suboptimal timing. It's not a critique of anyone, it's just a fact. Several of those templates I have quantized in order to play to them, but I haven't posted the results because I feel it's not respectful to the original creators.

Most rush, so when tracking drums to a template that's mostly ahead of the click, I usually end up feeling behind the beat. Also, it takes ages to quantize audio manually. So it's not that it's impossible to do, just very time consuming and boring.

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I've come across such tracks, when I find myself working to feel the time or be on time, I usually just don't add to it and look for something else to jam too.

a side thing is others timing. I've jammed on a track or two where they are in time, but maybe their timing is much different than my own, like the riff timing. those are fun, figuring out the groove so to speak.

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I have struggled with timing myself quite a bit, in some cases because the track I'm adding to also struggled with it, in other cases because playing to a metronome can really suck out the soul (e.g. "rubato") from a track (this depends on music genre as well) and in some (read: many) cases because of my own imperfections.

Every challenge, however, can also be seen as an opportunity. As a random idea (take it with a grain of salt), when a "regular" beat doesn't work well, maybe you could try to add meaningful percussion that is more "irregular", "sparse", ... not sure how explain properly - like adding/improvising accents here and there, as in live reacting to what you hear. Maybe it will feel uncomfortable at first, but it could be a new world slowly opening :)

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This was posted in the category "Feedback and Suggestions". It's a technical matter. Multitrack recording must be done in a certain manner in order for it to sound right but Wikilopps does not allow for that. This led me to discuss a technical solution to the problem, which obviously went over some peoples heads.
I won't be commenting further.

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