Drum minded guitarist?

[sl2lover]

Do you any of you guys that do originals, incorporate drums with what your coming up with when your making up shit?? I know I do! Not always, but I do, do it a lot! I know I'm more of a drummer than a guitar player when I'm coming up with shit! Anyody else work the same way??

[daemon barbeque]

:ROTF: I thout you call me!:ROTF:
Yeah dude but i am still a drummer
i think the best way to write cool songs is the way you think!

[sl2lover]

I'm glad someone understood what I meant! My drummer is very guitarminded himself! So we work gr8 together!! Our bassplayer is just a bad ass, and is very innovative!! Then our singer/vocals come last! That's how we come up with/write shit! In that order too! How do you guys come up with shit??

[Newc]

Sometimes I start with a guitar riff, other times I build off a bass riff, and still other times I scroll through presets on the Alesis SR-16 and play with the Tempo on it.
Once I get the basic full track done I'll listen to it for months on end until I know exactly where all the bad spots are that I need to fix, and then take a few more months of putting off fixing them

[metalhead28]

Often I actually sit around and hum riff ideas to myself while I am programming drum tracks in Drumkit From Hell. After I get the drum parts created, I figure out how to play the riff that goes with it.

That might sound silly, but that's pretty much how I write everything these days. Sometimes I imagine some really crazy rhythms and by the time I get something going with the drums it can be a challenge to play the parts on guitar, but it keeps it fun. I used to write around guitar riffs first and foremost, but working in the other direction has made my overall compositions more interesting and varied I think. Of course I mostly do technical metal / fusion so it's off-kilter stuff pretty often that I write this way.

[sl2lover]

Wow I never realized how much people use drum machines!! I've never even scene one!! Lol! Timing hasn't been an issue so far, so I won't buy one!

[metalhead28]

Haha, I use the drum software so I can record the songs. I always record the songs as I write them. It's not a timing issue

[Adam]

I almost always write to drum loops I make myself in Fruity Loops. I arrange the songs that way and record demo versions of them in Adobe Audition. It's a system that has worked very well for me.

[sl2lover]

Interesting! Differtent but interesting! Anyboy else have a different way of coming up with shit??

[tanpsi]

For multitracking were I used to play everything, I would add drums later on a keyboard that I had mapped to a midi module, pretty straightforward beats and fills. so most songs composed on guitar, a couple piano

However as soon as I can afford it I'm getting a real kit!

[Shawn Lutz]

cool topic. Yes, I think drums all the time, all the fills and thrills I play rhythmatically are based on drum fills and doubled by the drums. My best friend was a drummer and a great one at that, we'd practice a lot of times just the two of us when the bass player(s) over the years would flake out an not show up. I think that really helped me but at the same time hurt because any other drummer I tried to create with never panned out to much. I love drums but hate doing them in a drum machine or DKFH....not hing like a real live drummer

[Sunbane]

The drums are almost always an afterthought with me, although I do have a general idea of what the song needs. I either try to start with a melody and build riffs around it, or start with riffs and try to put a melody in there.

[Bengal65]

I wish I knew drums. I have a Roland 880 that I have been fumbling with for over a year. I don't know where to put the patterns. I know what a roll is etc., but need to learn to play a kit before I can program? It's bad enough keeping up your guitar playing technique and have to figure out other instruments. Bass is no problem though.

[Guitardude86]

There's a LOT of guitars/drums interaction in Pantera, but maybe it came natually to Dime and Vinnie since they were brothers and so close?

[JacksonWarrior]

For me its all about Metal, and most metal is very percussive in nature to begin with. So I guess alot of the rhythm stuff I come up with is percussion in itself if you catch my drift. I was a drummer from 5th grade-high school so when I come up with stuff, the cadence of it is almost forefront to the actual notes/chordes played, using alot of palm muted gallops to open chordes or muted/open tremolo picking. to create interesting rhythms. So yes, drums are always in my head. Another thing I like to do is take riffs Ive made up and adapt them to different beats. I made a bunch of drum loops using a freeware program by Hammerhead. I exported them as WAV files to my hardrive, then burned a CD of them. Then I blare them on my stereo and play along to them. I love having fast as hell kick drum beats where the picking matches it beat for beat in certain parts.