so, to answer your question, when I program drums for one of my songs, i hear the beats in my head and then bang my hands on a table, or sofa, or even my stomach, to get the feel of the beat.. I'll often do fills with my hands that I can't recreate on the drum machine - they just don't sound right.. But I *know* how to drum and I air drum with sticks all the time - vic Firth SD1 Generals..
What I do is piece the song together.. I start by just having the main beats, starts stops, intro and ending.. and play guitar along with it.. then I'll air drum and see kind of what comes naturally and then add that to the drum machine - you can program a new measure, then just swap out whatever other measure its replacing.. One thing I learned a long time ago is that I tend to do a little 2 tap lead into a fill or whatever on snare drum.. It took me a while to figure out that that two tap snare intro (on blocks 15 and 16 on the machine) actually belong on the measure BEFORE the fill - not at the beginning of the fill measure.. Ah, the things we learn..
So, that's basically how I do it.. even though I never play drums on a kit (with the exception of Rock Band where I'm a drum God lol) I know in my head what to do and figure out the rest by air drumming the song, then programming what I air drum..
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