Help with Celtic Drum Patterns

[Mistro17]

Hi. I'm trying to make a drum pattern with a Celtic flavor to it. So far I been experimenting with the drum sequencer but not getting that rhythm you would here like in this video

How do you get this using a player within reason? Or is this something that have to be done manually? I think my kick and snares are in the right place but the way it plays sounds too.... boring/mechanical. I want that heart beat feeling with those hits between (not sure if I'm saying that right). Also, can anyone suggest a good drum set for this purpose? Thanks in advance.

[NekujaK]

Personally, I wouldn't do this with a player device, but would sequence, or record, MIDI notes in Reason's sequencer, where you have more control over note placement and velocity, and you can also apply ReGroove to impart a more human feel.

The dynamics of the drums are critical to a pattern like this. Depending on how hard the drum is struck, it's not only louder or quieter, but the tone of the drum also changes. To get this level of detail you should try to find a good multi-sampled drum library that contains multiple velocity layers and round-robbins, otherwise, the drums will continue to have a mechanical sound to them even if the recorded performance is decent.

[Mistro17]

I just figured out from looking at the screen of that video I need to make a 6/8 drum pattern instead of 4/4 (duh). Does Drum Sequencer support this? I think that would be a good start.

@Nekujak- I'm just being a bit lazy and curious. But I see what you're saying. In the sequencer I can see how making a 6/8 pattern may be easier if not with Drum sequencer.

[mcatalao]

To make a pattern for a 6/8 compass, you can use drum sequencer.

Start by selecting 6/8 time signature on reason sequencer.

You have to limit the size of the lanes to multiples for triplet division, so just select 12.
Since 6/8 is a compound binary time signature (2 times with ternary division) your 1's on the drum must be displaced. So first hits are on 1, 4(instead of 5 on 4/4),7 and 10. From there, you just have to build on your thing.

Imho, the drummer is quite nice to do this because you can even use probability to make accents and add repeats. Your bigger problem is maybe getting a good sample sound for it.

[Reasonable man]

I dont know if you have a mac and logic pro but there are some excellent bodhran loops in the apple loops section of logic pro .
Idellay to make it easier for yourself you could get a few loops and turn them into rex loops and have dr octrorex do mad stuf with em

[Mistro17]

@mcatalao- I did exactly that and got some very good results using drum sequencer. Only thing is I had to use an African frame drum I found in a free VST since finding a bodhran is very hard unless you own Kontakt or have around $100 to spend on the few items that have one.

[mcatalao]

Hey man glad that helped.

Why not just trying to find some free bodrain samples on the net? Freesound.org has some bodrain sounds, and there are others. Just be sure the sounds are on some sort of commons license and load them into a kong or redrum.