#an endless loop of algorithmically chosen memories

[ardentpoop]

I once saw a post headcanon that the spn finale was all just deans heaven, not sams. It was what dean wanted for sam, we don't even know if it was what sam wanted anymore. It would explain why we never got a clear picture of the wife or even saw her again after the blurry scene of her, dean would have only cared about sam and any children that came from him. In reality, maybe sam lead a very different life after deans death, and maybe that really was him on the heaven bridge to meet dean, or maybe it was just a projection of him that deans heaven conjured up

I do like this better than canon’s frankly very superficial and romanticized ending bc right, sam having a perfect “apple-pie life” with a perfect american wife and a perfect american kid he named after his dead brother is very much Dean Winchester Fantasy that of course could have never come to pass while he was alive - dean needed to die for that to happen, but it just… it simply couldn’t have been as rose-tinted as that montage made it seem, after everything sam had been through by the time dean died. early s8 was the last time sam tried fighting for a way out of the hunter life and he got punished for it over and over again. late-seasons sam is all “I realized how wrong I was every time I Ran Away” and “this life is Right for me but I can’t do it without my brother” - he stays tethered to it for dean and dean alone. once dean is dead for good (ultimately of his own volition might I add - it’s not even a question whether sam will try bringing him back against his will bc that treatment is reserved for sam whose body belongs to dean as long as he’s alive) it suddenly becomes acceptable for sam to live for himself as opposed to for their Heroic Mission.

ough the idea that the sam joining dean in heaven was just a mirage of him….. delicious. bc dean is happiest when sam fits neatly into the Baby Brother skin he mostly outgrew ages ago anyway!!!! however I also like the idea of actual sam joining him there but really not fitting into the whole bizarre tableau (john and mary are there too Jesus Christ) and reacting so badly that jack and/or cas have to step in. like, heaven is rejecting him bc he’s a foreign object type beat (cue sam’s old religious guilt)

I’m gonna wrap my head around it eventually! I get overwhelmed when I think abt it too hard lmao. TL;DR it makes me feel sick and I want to share that feeling w/ the class by exploring it thru fic 💕

[realestateppcads]

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[a-figment]

~Occasional Weird Essays

Today I sat down to write; to write something that could not fit into the usual literary moulds.

I recalled the times I used to read just to write a book, but only to realize that it kills the joy of pure reading. Endless notes, pages were often abused and a few coffee spills here and there.

“Start with a striking word”, I thought. But words have not only the meaning but memories (quoting Virginia Woolf) that leads to distinctive picture in one’s mind. Words they are subjective or rather personal. My truth may lie in the rustling of leaves or in the whirling storm or in the innumerable winter nights ; the cold wave through my bones, but no words can paint the same picture as I experience it, or even if I could, the reader has his/her own interpretation within their sphere of perception. Words they are subjective or rather personal. It is for this reason I smirk at the modern algorithms encapsulated in the usual “If Or Else” loop and has only definite denotation. My truth will never fit into such frivolous loops.

By this time, I have changed my desk from one room to another;a new place, a new house; quite hard to settle like the pigeon that showed up at the kitchen window in search of a tree to perch or to die. As the cold wave pierce through my bones, I quiver and miss the vigor of young but there was dread of books.

A poetry once written; a mere confession of writer in chosen words conceals the author than it reveals him/her. It is for this reason Basil Hallward had decided to present the “Picture of Dorian Gray” in the art gallery. My mother who often writes poetry in her diary- hidden under the pillows; refused to read it out for it reveals too much. Perhaps one does not want to be hated all the time.

[alive-drumming]

Why do these Song Rhythm Tracks sound so totally great?

These Song Rhythm Tracks do sound totally great, don’t they?

This is one of the most frequent things I hear.  The great sound quality often comes as surprise, perhaps because of the widespread familiarity everybody has with 'Midi Drum Machines', which don't satisfy in the same way as Song Rhythm Tracks.  Midi Drum Machines and Song Rhythm Tracks are two very different products; we summarize their differences in the comparison section below.

The Song Rhythm Tracks Way

[caption id="attachment_29898" align="alignright" width="502"] Song Rhythm Tracks[/caption] Here are the three top reasons why we believe these tracks are so great to jam to, to gig to, and to cut records to.

One - Great Recordings of Great Drummers – Song Rhythm Tracks are arranged from careful studio recordings of excellent drummers.

They are not constructed from midi files fitting together “samples” from single drum hits to form a mechanical style but rather multiple longer-form full recordings by top studio drummers, lasting from up to 8 bars at a time where you hear subtle drum rolls, variations in ride cymbal taps, complex fills and more.  The rhythmic style comes from talented drummers that are very experienced in the particular style be it Reggae, Salsa, Bossa, Rumba, Tango, Rock, Country, Jazz, Pop, Celtic, Praise & Worship, Blues, and lots more!

Two - There is natural variety promoted over the repeats.

That is, a number of recordings of all aspects of playing, fills, post-fills, shots and more are taken and selectively chosen while sequencing and engineering the final audio.  This provides the natural variety one gets with drummers.  It helps prevent the drumming becoming monotonous and repetitive.

Three - The arrangement is always spelling out aspects of the song’s form.

This might have a larger contribution than one might imagine.  It is what real drummers do, but drumming software rarely does.   The drumming is indicating

When you are returning to the ‘top of the form’ again

When your sections are ending and starting again

When you are playing a bridge section

Whether you are playing a middle chorus or, alternatively, the first or last chorus.   This not only helps you keep place while you are playing but it makes the whole experience so much more enjoyable to listen to, or play along with, as well.

All this takes a lot of careful preparation, curation, huge storage, and sophisticated algorithms.   We feel this cannot be achieved on mobile devices themselves which is why our solution involves cloud services working with the mobile App.

Comparison - Midi Drum Machines and Song Rhythm Tracks

[caption id="attachment_30026" align="alignleft" width="275"] midi drum machine[/caption]

Audio Generation

Midi Drum Machines — Audio is generated from the machine ‘playing’ together individual drum ‘hits’ at varying intensities. The machine is effectively taking the place of the drums and, to some extent, the drummer.

    [caption id="attachment_28731" align="alignleft" width="150"] Song Rhythm Tracks[/caption]

Song Rhythm Tracks — Audio is generated from multiple long recordings of talented artists. These recordings can be as much as 8-bars long with repeats using alternate recordings to provide variety.

Source of the Rhythm

Midi Drum Machines — Each rhythm comes from an algorithm specifying which drums are hit when within the bar. Each rhythm can be parameterized by the tempo, linearly increasing and decreasing with ease. Even so, the mechanical sounding rhythm sounds less and natural as the tempo varies further from the norm for the rhythm.

Song Rhythm Tracks — Each rhythm comes from long-form artist’s recordings. Each of these is recorded at multiple tempos where the drummer naturally changes the style of the drumming to suit the tempo, varying the intensity and placement of the hits within the bar to suit the tempo and the style. Effectively, each tempo recording is a unique rhythm, albeit stylistically related to those at the other tempos.

Audio Format

Midi Drum Machines — The machine generates the drumming audio in real-time. Many machines allow for an audio track to be generated but rarely do they provide good setlist facilities for these audio files, as that is not their focus.

Song Rhythm Tracks — Alive Drumming supplies high-quality MP3 audio files that are catalogued and managed from within mobile apps with good setlist facilities and provide a good musician’s player.

Memory Requirements

Midi Drum Machines — Only a small amount of computer memory is required to hold the audio of the drum hits which are often efficiently compressed. The Apps generally have a small memory footprint as well.

Song Rhythm Tracks — The source audio recordings are large requiring much storage space. Also, there are a many of them. Alive Drumming stores these within Cloud Servers where sophisticated programs generate the Song Rhythm Tracks, delivering them to the mobile apps.

Rhythmic Styles

Midi Drum Machines — These are preferred by those affirming the mechanical, highly regular sounding drums. This sound has spawned new genres of music.

Song Rhythm Tracks — Song Rhythm Tracks are preferred by those who like the sound of real-life drummers, drumming on drums and the artistry achieved by these musicians using authentic percussion and drums instruments.

What users are looking for

Midi Drum Machines — Users of Midi Drum Machines often affirm the visual beauty of the machine themselves and the ‘drumming’ facilities they have. The machines become a ‘new type of drum to play‘, and they love their machines as much as any instrumentalists.

Song Rhythm Tracks — Users of Song Rhythm Tracks are not interested in playing Midi Drum Machines, or probably real drums either. They want to benefit from great sounding rhythmic backing tracks that fit the songs they play and with a minimum of effort. They generally would prefer an understated device that works reliably, efficiently and with great ergonomics, particularly during performance. They want the best quality, performance-ready backing tracks.

Use cases

Midi Drum Machines — Users of Midi Drum Machines often use it as an ‘advanced metronome‘ and often improvise along to a 4-bar endless loop. 4-bar and sometime 8-bar phrases are often displayed visually within the Machine with facilities to play and loop alternative phrases.

Song Rhythm Tracks — These are backing music for the practice and performance of fully-arranged, complete Songs (vocal or instrumental). They partly sound so great because you hear the form of the song in the rhythmic backing, just like you do with real drummers. This is not only a longer-form than a 4-bar loop, but it has more structure as well, with arrangements including introduction sections, middle choruses, bridges and more. The arrangement is always visible — particularly during playing where you might need a reminder.

Availability and Formats

Midi Drum Machines — There are many Midi Drum Machines available on mobile and desktop platforms and dedicated physical machines, with various facilities, often specializing in particular rhythmic styles.

Song Rhythm Tracks — There’s the one Song Rhythm Tracks Service which provides all the various rhythms and arrangement smarts.  There are around 4,000 to choose from when alternate tempos and instrumentations are considered. Currently, apps are available on the Apple iOS platform with Android and Web platforms being delivered soon. All iOS Apps have exactly the same facilities and can access the full Alive Drumming catalog.

[alive-drumming]

Why do these Song Rhythm Tracks sound so totally great?

These Song Rhythm Tracks do sound totally great, don’t they?

This is one of the most frequent things I hear.  The great sound quality often comes as surprise, perhaps because of the widespread familiarity everybody has with 'Midi Drum Machines', which don't satisfy in the same way as Song Rhythm Tracks.  Midi Drum Machines and Song Rhythm Tracks are two very different products; we summarize their differences in the comparison section below.

The Song Rhythm Tracks Way

[caption id="attachment_29898" align="alignright" width="502"] Song Rhythm Tracks[/caption] Here are the three top reasons why we believe these tracks are so great to jam to, to gig to, and to cut records to.

One - Great Recordings of Great Drummers – Song Rhythm Tracks are arranged from careful studio recordings of excellent drummers.

They are not constructed from midi files fitting together “samples” from single drum hits to form a mechanical style but rather multiple longer-form full recordings by top studio drummers, lasting from up to 8 bars at a time where you hear subtle drum rolls, variations in ride cymbal taps, complex fills and more.  The rhythmic style comes from talented drummers that are very experienced in the particular style be it Reggae, Salsa, Bossa, Rumba, Tango, Rock, Country, Jazz, Pop, Celtic, Praise & Worship, Blues, and lots more!

Two - There is natural variety promoted over the repeats.

That is, a number of recordings of all aspects of playing, fills, post-fills, shots and more are taken and selectively chosen while sequencing and engineering the final audio.  This provides the natural variety one gets with drummers.  It helps prevent the drumming becoming monotonous and repetitive.

Three - The arrangement is always spelling out aspects of the song’s form.

This might have a larger contribution than one might imagine.  It is what real drummers do, but drumming software rarely does.   The drumming is indicating

When you are returning to the ‘top of the form’ again

When your sections are ending and starting again

When you are playing a bridge section

Whether you are playing a middle chorus or, alternatively, the first or last chorus.   This not only helps you keep place while you are playing but it makes the whole experience so much more enjoyable to listen to, or play along with, as well.

All this takes a lot of careful preparation, curation, huge storage, and sophisticated algorithms.   We feel this cannot be achieved on mobile devices themselves which is why our solution involves cloud services working with the mobile App.

Comparison - Midi Drum Machines and Song Rhythm Tracks

[caption id="attachment_30026" align="alignleft" width="275"] midi drum machine[/caption]

Audio Generation

Midi Drum Machines — Audio is generated from the machine ‘playing’ together individual drum ‘hits’ at varying intensities. The machine is effectively taking the place of the drums and, to some extent, the drummer.

    [caption id="attachment_28731" align="alignleft" width="150"] Song Rhythm Tracks[/caption]

Song Rhythm Tracks — Audio is generated from multiple long recordings of talented artists. These recordings can be as much as 8-bars long with repeats using alternate recordings to provide variety.

Source of the Rhythm

Midi Drum Machines — Each rhythm comes from an algorithm specifying which drums are hit when within the bar. Each rhythm can be parameterized by the tempo, linearly increasing and decreasing with ease. Even so, the mechanical sounding rhythm sounds less and natural as the tempo varies further from the norm for the rhythm.

Song Rhythm Tracks — Each rhythm comes from long-form artist’s recordings. Each of these is recorded at multiple tempos where the drummer naturally changes the style of the drumming to suit the tempo, varying the intensity and placement of the hits within the bar to suit the tempo and the style. Effectively, each tempo recording is a unique rhythm, albeit stylistically related to those at the other tempos.

Audio Format

Midi Drum Machines — The machine generates the drumming audio in real-time. Many machines allow for an audio track to be generated but rarely do they provide good setlist facilities for these audio files, as that is not their focus.

Song Rhythm Tracks — Alive Drumming supplies high-quality MP3 audio files that are catalogued and managed from within mobile apps with good setlist facilities and provide a good musician’s player.

Memory Requirements

Midi Drum Machines — Only a small amount of computer memory is required to hold the audio of the drum hits which are often efficiently compressed. The Apps generally have a small memory footprint as well.

Song Rhythm Tracks — The source audio recordings are large requiring much storage space. Also, there are a many of them. Alive Drumming stores these within Cloud Servers where sophisticated programs generate the Song Rhythm Tracks, delivering them to the mobile apps.

Rhythmic Styles

Midi Drum Machines — These are preferred by those affirming the mechanical, highly regular sounding drums. This sound has spawned new genres of music.

Song Rhythm Tracks — Song Rhythm Tracks are preferred by those who like the sound of real-life drummers, drumming on drums and the artistry achieved by these musicians using authentic percussion and drums instruments.

What users are looking for

Midi Drum Machines — Users of Midi Drum Machines often affirm the visual beauty of the machine themselves and the ‘drumming’ facilities they have. The machines become a ‘new type of drum to play‘, and they love their machines as much as any instrumentalists.

Song Rhythm Tracks — Users of Song Rhythm Tracks are not interested in playing Midi Drum Machines, or probably real drums either. They want to benefit from great sounding rhythmic backing tracks that fit the songs they play and with a minimum of effort. They generally would prefer an understated device that works reliably, efficiently and with great ergonomics, particularly during performance. They want the best quality, performance-ready backing tracks.

Use cases

Midi Drum Machines — Users of Midi Drum Machines often use it as an ‘advanced metronome‘ and often improvise along to a 4-bar endless loop. 4-bar and sometime 8-bar phrases are often displayed visually within the Machine with facilities to play and loop alternative phrases.

Song Rhythm Tracks — These are backing music for the practice and performance of fully-arranged, complete Songs (vocal or instrumental). They partly sound so great because you hear the form of the song in the rhythmic backing, just like you do with real drummers. This is not only a longer-form than a 4-bar loop, but it has more structure as well, with arrangements including introduction sections, middle choruses, bridges and more. The arrangement is always visible — particularly during playing where you might need a reminder.

Availability and Formats

Midi Drum Machines — There are many Midi Drum Machines available on mobile and desktop platforms and dedicated physical machines, with various facilities, often specializing in particular rhythmic styles.

Song Rhythm Tracks — There’s the one Song Rhythm Tracks Service which provides all the various rhythms and arrangement smarts.  There are around 4,000 to choose from when alternate tempos and instrumentations are considered. Currently, apps are available on the Apple iOS platform with Android and Web platforms being delivered soon. All iOS Apps have exactly the same facilities and can access the full Alive Drumming catalog.

[alive-drumming]

Why do these Song Rhythm Tracks sound so totally great?

These Song Rhythm Tracks do sound totally great, don’t they?

This is one of the most frequent things I hear.  The great sound quality often comes as surprise, perhaps because of the widespread familiarity everybody has with 'Midi Drum Machines', which don't satisfy in the same way as Song Rhythm Tracks.  Midi Drum Machines and Song Rhythm Tracks are two very different products; we summarize their differences in the comparison section below.

The Song Rhythm Tracks Way

[caption id="attachment_29898" align="alignright" width="502"] Song Rhythm Tracks[/caption] Here are the three top reasons why we believe these tracks are so great to jam to, to gig to, and to cut records to.

One - Great Recordings of Great Drummers – Song Rhythm Tracks are arranged from careful studio recordings of excellent drummers.

They are not constructed from midi files fitting together “samples” from single drum hits to form a mechanical style but rather multiple longer-form full recordings by top studio drummers, lasting from up to 8 bars at a time where you hear subtle drum rolls, variations in ride cymbal taps, complex fills and more.  The rhythmic style comes from talented drummers that are very experienced in the particular style be it Reggae, Salsa, Bossa, Rumba, Tango, Rock, Country, Jazz, Pop, Celtic, Praise & Worship, Blues, and lots more!

Two - There is natural variety promoted over the repeats.

That is, a number of recordings of all aspects of playing, fills, post-fills, shots and more are taken and selectively chosen while sequencing and engineering the final audio.  This provides the natural variety one gets with drummers.  It helps prevent the drumming becoming monotonous and repetitive.

Three - The arrangement is always spelling out aspects of the song’s form.

This might have a larger contribution than one might imagine.  It is what real drummers do, but drumming software rarely does.   The drumming is indicating

When you are returning to the ‘top of the form’ again

When your sections are ending and starting again

When you are playing a bridge section

Whether you are playing a middle chorus or, alternatively, the first or last chorus.   This not only helps you keep place while you are playing but it makes the whole experience so much more enjoyable to listen to, or play along with, as well.

All this takes a lot of careful preparation, curation, huge storage, and sophisticated algorithms.   We feel this cannot be achieved on mobile devices themselves which is why our solution involves cloud services working with the mobile App.

Comparison - Midi Drum Machines and Song Rhythm Tracks

[caption id="attachment_30026" align="alignleft" width="275"] midi drum machine[/caption]

Audio Generation

Midi Drum Machines — Audio is generated from the machine ‘playing’ together individual drum ‘hits’ at varying intensities. The machine is effectively taking the place of the drums and, to some extent, the drummer.

    [caption id="attachment_28731" align="alignleft" width="150"] Song Rhythm Tracks[/caption]

Song Rhythm Tracks — Audio is generated from multiple long recordings of talented artists. These recordings can be as much as 8-bars long with repeats using alternate recordings to provide variety.

Source of the Rhythm

Midi Drum Machines — Each rhythm comes from an algorithm specifying which drums are hit when within the bar. Each rhythm can be parameterized by the tempo, linearly increasing and decreasing with ease. Even so, the mechanical sounding rhythm sounds less and natural as the tempo varies further from the norm for the rhythm.

Song Rhythm Tracks — Each rhythm comes from long-form artist’s recordings. Each of these is recorded at multiple tempos where the drummer naturally changes the style of the drumming to suit the tempo, varying the intensity and placement of the hits within the bar to suit the tempo and the style. Effectively, each tempo recording is a unique rhythm, albeit stylistically related to those at the other tempos.

Audio Format

Midi Drum Machines — The machine generates the drumming audio in real-time. Many machines allow for an audio track to be generated but rarely do they provide good setlist facilities for these audio files, as that is not their focus.

Song Rhythm Tracks — Alive Drumming supplies high-quality MP3 audio files that are catalogued and managed from within mobile apps with good setlist facilities and provide a good musician’s player.

Memory Requirements

Midi Drum Machines — Only a small amount of computer memory is required to hold the audio of the drum hits which are often efficiently compressed. The Apps generally have a small memory footprint as well.

Song Rhythm Tracks — The source audio recordings are large requiring much storage space. Also, there are a many of them. Alive Drumming stores these within Cloud Servers where sophisticated programs generate the Song Rhythm Tracks, delivering them to the mobile apps.

Rhythmic Styles

Midi Drum Machines — These are preferred by those affirming the mechanical, highly regular sounding drums. This sound has spawned new genres of music.

Song Rhythm Tracks — Song Rhythm Tracks are preferred by those who like the sound of real-life drummers, drumming on drums and the artistry achieved by these musicians using authentic percussion and drums instruments.

What users are looking for

Midi Drum Machines — Users of Midi Drum Machines often affirm the visual beauty of the machine themselves and the ‘drumming’ facilities they have. The machines become a ‘new type of drum to play‘, and they love their machines as much as any instrumentalists.

Song Rhythm Tracks — Users of Song Rhythm Tracks are not interested in playing Midi Drum Machines, or probably real drums either. They want to benefit from great sounding rhythmic backing tracks that fit the songs they play and with a minimum of effort. They generally would prefer an understated device that works reliably, efficiently and with great ergonomics, particularly during performance. They want the best quality, performance-ready backing tracks.

Use cases

Midi Drum Machines — Users of Midi Drum Machines often use it as an ‘advanced metronome‘ and often improvise along to a 4-bar endless loop. 4-bar and sometime 8-bar phrases are often displayed visually within the Machine with facilities to play and loop alternative phrases.

Song Rhythm Tracks — These are backing music for the practice and performance of fully-arranged, complete Songs (vocal or instrumental). They partly sound so great because you hear the form of the song in the rhythmic backing, just like you do with real drummers. This is not only a longer-form than a 4-bar loop, but it has more structure as well, with arrangements including introduction sections, middle choruses, bridges and more. The arrangement is always visible — particularly during playing where you might need a reminder.

Availability and Formats

Midi Drum Machines — There are many Midi Drum Machines available on mobile and desktop platforms and dedicated physical machines, with various facilities, often specializing in particular rhythmic styles.

Song Rhythm Tracks — There’s the one Song Rhythm Tracks Service which provides all the various rhythms and arrangement smarts.  There are around 4,000 to choose from when alternate tempos and instrumentations are considered. Currently, apps are available on the Apple iOS platform with Android and Web platforms being delivered soon. All iOS Apps have exactly the same facilities and can access the full Alive Drumming catalog.

[alive-drumming]

Why do these Song Rhythm Tracks sound so totally great?

These Song Rhythm Tracks do sound totally great, don’t they?

This is one of the most frequent things I hear.  The great sound quality often comes as surprise, perhaps because of the widespread familiarity everybody has with ‘Midi Drum Machines‘, which don’t satisfy in the same way as Song Rhythm Tracks.  Midi Drum Machines and Song Rhythm Tracks are two very different products; we summarize their differences in the comparison section below.

The Song Rhythm Tracks Way

Song Rhythm Tracks

Here are the three top reasons why we believe these tracks are so great to jam to, to gig to, and to cut records to.

One – Great Recordings of Great Drummers – Song Rhythm Tracks are arranged from careful studio recordings of excellent drummers.

They are not constructed from midi files fitting together “samples” from single drum hits to form a mechanical style but rather multiple longer-form full recordings by top studio drummers, lasting from up to 8 bars at a time where you hear subtle drum rolls, variations in ride cymbal taps, complex fills and more.  The rhythmic style comes from talented drummers that are very experienced in the particular style be it Reggae, Salsa, Bossa, Rumba, Tango, Rock, Country, Jazz, Pop, Celtic, Praise & Worship, Blues, and lots more!

Two – There is natural variety promoted over the repeats.

That is, a number of recordings of all aspects of playing, fills, post-fills, shots and more are taken and selectively chosen while sequencing and engineering the final audio.  This provides the natural variety one gets with drummers.  It helps prevent the drumming becoming monotonous and repetitive.

Three – The arrangement is always spelling out aspects of the song’s form.

This might have a larger contribution than one might imagine.  It is what real drummers do, but drumming software rarely does.   The drumming is indicating

When you are returning to the ‘top of the form’ again

When your sections are ending and starting again

When you are playing a bridge section

Whether you are playing a middle chorus or, alternatively, the first or last chorus.   This not only helps you keep place while you are playing but it makes the whole experience so much more enjoyable to listen to, or play along with, as well.

All this takes a lot of careful preparation, curation, huge storage, and sophisticated algorithms.   We feel this cannot be achieved on mobile devices themselves which is why our solution involves cloud services working with the mobile App.

Comparison – Midi Drum Machines and Song Rhythm Tracks

midi drum machine

Audio Generation

Midi Drum Machines — Audio is generated from the machine ‘playing’ together individual drum ‘hits’ at varying intensities. The machine is effectively taking the place of the drums and, to some extent, the drummer.

    Song Rhythm Tracks

Song Rhythm Tracks — Audio is generated from multiple long recordings of talented artists. These recordings can be as much as 8-bars long with repeats using alternate recordings to provide variety.

Source of the Rhythm

Midi Drum Machines — Each rhythm comes from an algorithm specifying which drums are hit when within the bar. Each rhythm can be parameterized by the tempo, linearly increasing and decreasing with ease. Even so, the mechanical sounding rhythm sounds less and natural as the tempo varies further from the norm for the rhythm.

Song Rhythm Tracks — Each rhythm comes from long-form artist’s recordings. Each of these is recorded at multiple tempos where the drummer naturally changes the style of the drumming to suit the tempo, varying the intensity and placement of the hits within the bar to suit the tempo and the style. Effectively, each tempo recording is a unique rhythm, albeit stylistically related to those at the other tempos.

Audio Format

Midi Drum Machines — The machine generates the drumming audio in real-time. Many machines allow for an audio track to be generated but rarely do they provide good setlist facilities for these audio files, as that is not their focus.

Song Rhythm Tracks — Alive Drumming supplies high-quality MP3 audio files that are catalogued and managed from within mobile apps with good setlist facilities and provide a good musician’s player.

Memory Requirements

Midi Drum Machines — Only a small amount of computer memory is required to hold the audio of the drum hits which are often efficiently compressed. The Apps generally have a small memory footprint as well.

Song Rhythm Tracks — The source audio recordings are large requiring much storage space. Also, there are a many of them. Alive Drumming stores these within Cloud Servers where sophisticated programs generate the Song Rhythm Tracks, delivering them to the mobile apps.

Rhythmic Styles

Midi Drum Machines — These are preferred by those affirming the mechanical, highly regular sounding drums. This sound has spawned new genres of music.

Song Rhythm Tracks — Song Rhythm Tracks are preferred by those who like the sound of real-life drummers, drumming on drums and the artistry achieved by these musicians using authentic percussion and drums instruments.

What users are looking for

Midi Drum Machines — Users of Midi Drum Machines often affirm the visual beauty of the machine themselves and the ‘drumming’ facilities they have. The machines become a ‘new type of drum to play‘, and they love their machines as much as any instrumentalists.

Song Rhythm Tracks — Users of Song Rhythm Tracks are not interested in playing Midi Drum Machines, or probably real drums either. They want to benefit from great sounding rhythmic backing tracks that fit the songs they play and with a minimum of effort. They generally would prefer an understated device that works reliably, efficiently and with great ergonomics, particularly during performance. They want the best quality, performance-ready backing tracks.

Use cases

Midi Drum Machines — Users of Midi Drum Machines often use it as an ‘advanced metronome‘ and often improvise along to a 4-bar endless loop. 4-bar and sometime 8-bar phrases are often displayed visually within the Machine with facilities to play and loop alternative phrases.

Song Rhythm Tracks — These are backing music for the practice and performance of fully-arranged, complete Songs (vocal or instrumental). They partly sound so great because you hear the form of the song in the rhythmic backing, just like you do with real drummers. This is not only a longer-form than a 4-bar loop, but it has more structure as well, with arrangements including introduction sections, middle choruses, bridges and more. The arrangement is always visible — particularly during playing where you might need a reminder.

Availability and Formats

Midi Drum Machines — There are many Midi Drum Machines available on mobile and desktop platforms and dedicated physical machines, with various facilities, often specializing in particular rhythmic styles.

Song Rhythm Tracks — There’s the one Song Rhythm Tracks Service which provides all the various rhythms and arrangement smarts.  There are around 4,000 to choose from when alternate tempos and instrumentations are considered. Currently, apps are available on the Apple iOS platform with Android and Web platforms being delivered soon. All iOS Apps have exactly the same facilities and can access the full Alive Drumming catalog.

[alive-drumming]

Why do these Song Rhythm Tracks sound so totally great?

These Song Rhythm Tracks do sound totally great, don’t they?

This is one of the most frequent things I hear.  The great sound quality often comes as surprise, perhaps because of the widespread familiarity everybody has with 'Midi Drum Machines', which don't satisfy in the same way as Song Rhythm Tracks.  Midi Drum Machines and Song Rhythm Tracks are two very different products; we summarize their differences in the comparison section below.

The Song Rhythm Tracks Way

[caption id="attachment_29898" align="alignright" width="502"] Song Rhythm Tracks[/caption] Here are the three top reasons why we believe these tracks are so great to jam to, to gig to, and to cut records to.

One - Great Recordings of Great Drummers – Song Rhythm Tracks are arranged from careful studio recordings of excellent drummers.

They are not constructed from midi files fitting together “samples” from single drum hits to form a mechanical style but rather multiple longer-form full recordings by top studio drummers, lasting from up to 8 bars at a time where you hear subtle drum rolls, variations in ride cymbal taps, complex fills and more.  The rhythmic style comes from talented drummers that are very experienced in the particular style be it Reggae, Salsa, Bossa, Rumba, Tango, Rock, Country, Jazz, Pop, Celtic, Praise & Worship, Blues, and lots more!

Two - There is natural variety promoted over the repeats.

That is, a number of recordings of all aspects of playing, fills, post-fills, shots and more are taken and selectively chosen while sequencing and engineering the final audio.  This provides the natural variety one gets with drummers.  It helps prevent the drumming becoming monotonous and repetitive.

Three - The arrangement is always spelling out aspects of the song’s form.

This might have a larger contribution than one might imagine.  It is what real drummers do, but drumming software rarely does.   The drumming is indicating

When you are returning to the ‘top of the form’ again

When your sections are ending and starting again

When you are playing a bridge section

Whether you are playing a middle chorus or, alternatively, the first or last chorus.   This not only helps you keep place while you are playing but it makes the whole experience so much more enjoyable to listen to, or play along with, as well.

All this takes a lot of careful preparation, curation, huge storage, and sophisticated algorithms.   We feel this cannot be achieved on mobile devices themselves which is why our solution involves cloud services working with the mobile App.

Comparison - Midi Drum Machines and Song Rhythm Tracks

[caption id="attachment_30026" align="alignleft" width="275"] midi drum machine[/caption]

Audio Generation

Midi Drum Machines — Audio is generated from the machine ‘playing’ together individual drum ‘hits’ at varying intensities. The machine is effectively taking the place of the drums and, to some extent, the drummer.

    [caption id="attachment_28731" align="alignleft" width="150"] Song Rhythm Tracks[/caption]

Song Rhythm Tracks — Audio is generated from multiple long recordings of talented artists. These recordings can be as much as 8-bars long with repeats using alternate recordings to provide variety.

Source of the Rhythm

Midi Drum Machines — Each rhythm comes from an algorithm specifying which drums are hit when within the bar. Each rhythm can be parameterized by the tempo, linearly increasing and decreasing with ease. Even so, the mechanical sounding rhythm sounds less and natural as the tempo varies further from the norm for the rhythm.

Song Rhythm Tracks — Each rhythm comes from long-form artist’s recordings. Each of these is recorded at multiple tempos where the drummer naturally changes the style of the drumming to suit the tempo, varying the intensity and placement of the hits within the bar to suit the tempo and the style. Effectively, each tempo recording is a unique rhythm, albeit stylistically related to those at the other tempos.

Audio Format

Midi Drum Machines — The machine generates the drumming audio in real-time. Many machines allow for an audio track to be generated but rarely do they provide good setlist facilities for these audio files, as that is not their focus.

Song Rhythm Tracks — Alive Drumming supplies high-quality MP3 audio files that are catalogued and managed from within mobile apps with good setlist facilities and provide a good musician’s player.

Memory Requirements

Midi Drum Machines — Only a small amount of computer memory is required to hold the audio of the drum hits which are often efficiently compressed. The Apps generally have a small memory footprint as well.

Song Rhythm Tracks — The source audio recordings are large requiring much storage space. Also, there are a many of them. Alive Drumming stores these within Cloud Servers where sophisticated programs generate the Song Rhythm Tracks, delivering them to the mobile apps.

Rhythmic Styles

Midi Drum Machines — These are preferred by those affirming the mechanical, highly regular sounding drums. This sound has spawned new genres of music.

Song Rhythm Tracks — Song Rhythm Tracks are preferred by those who like the sound of real-life drummers, drumming on drums and the artistry achieved by these musicians using authentic percussion and drums instruments.

What users are looking for

Midi Drum Machines — Users of Midi Drum Machines often affirm the visual beauty of the machine themselves and the ‘drumming’ facilities they have. The machines become a ‘new type of drum to play‘, and they love their machines as much as any instrumentalists.

Song Rhythm Tracks — Users of Song Rhythm Tracks are not interested in playing Midi Drum Machines, or probably real drums either. They want to benefit from great sounding rhythmic backing tracks that fit the songs they play and with a minimum of effort. They generally would prefer an understated device that works reliably, efficiently and with great ergonomics, particularly during performance. They want the best quality, performance-ready backing tracks.

Use cases

Midi Drum Machines — Users of Midi Drum Machines often use it as an ‘advanced metronome‘ and often improvise along to a 4-bar endless loop. 4-bar and sometime 8-bar phrases are often displayed visually within the Machine with facilities to play and loop alternative phrases.

Song Rhythm Tracks — These are backing music for the practice and performance of fully-arranged, complete Songs (vocal or instrumental). They partly sound so great because you hear the form of the song in the rhythmic backing, just like you do with real drummers. This is not only a longer-form than a 4-bar loop, but it has more structure as well, with arrangements including introduction sections, middle choruses, bridges and more. The arrangement is always visible — particularly during playing where you might need a reminder.

Availability and Formats

Midi Drum Machines — There are many Midi Drum Machines available on mobile and desktop platforms and dedicated physical machines, with various facilities, often specializing in particular rhythmic styles.

Song Rhythm Tracks — There’s the one Song Rhythm Tracks Service which provides all the various rhythms and arrangement smarts.  There are around 4,000 to choose from when alternate tempos and instrumentations are considered. Currently, apps are available on the Apple iOS platform with Android and Web platforms being delivered soon. All iOS Apps have exactly the same facilities and can access the full Alive Drumming catalog.

[alive-drumming]

Why do these Song Rhythm Tracks sound so totally great?

These Song Rhythm Tracks do sound totally great, don’t they?

This is one of the most frequent things I hear.  The great sound quality often comes as surprise, perhaps because of the widespread familiarity everybody has with 'Midi Drum Machines', which don't satisfy in the same way as Song Rhythm Tracks.  Midi Drum Machines and Song Rhythm Tracks are two very different products; we summarize their differences in the comparison section below.

The Song Rhythm Tracks Way

[caption id="attachment_29898" align="alignright" width="502"] Song Rhythm Tracks[/caption] Here are the three top reasons why we believe these tracks are so great to jam to, to gig to, and to cut records to.

One - Great Recordings of Great Drummers – Song Rhythm Tracks are arranged from careful studio recordings of excellent drummers.

They are not constructed from midi files fitting together “samples” from single drum hits to form a mechanical style but rather multiple longer-form full recordings by top studio drummers, lasting from up to 8 bars at a time where you hear subtle drum rolls, variations in ride cymbal taps, complex fills and more.  The rhythmic style comes from talented drummers that are very experienced in the particular style be it Reggae, Salsa, Bossa, Rumba, Tango, Rock, Country, Jazz, Pop, Celtic, Praise & Worship, Blues, and lots more!

Two - There is natural variety promoted over the repeats.

That is, a number of recordings of all aspects of playing, fills, post-fills, shots and more are taken and selectively chosen while sequencing and engineering the final audio.  This provides the natural variety one gets with drummers.  It helps prevent the drumming becoming monotonous and repetitive.

Three - The arrangement is always spelling out aspects of the song’s form.

This might have a larger contribution than one might imagine.  It is what real drummers do, but drumming software rarely does.   The drumming is indicating

When you are returning to the ‘top of the form’ again

When your sections are ending and starting again

When you are playing a bridge section

Whether you are playing a middle chorus or, alternatively, the first or last chorus.   This not only helps you keep place while you are playing but it makes the whole experience so much more enjoyable to listen to, or play along with, as well.

All this takes a lot of careful preparation, curation, huge storage, and sophisticated algorithms.   We feel this cannot be achieved on mobile devices themselves which is why our solution involves cloud services working with the mobile App.

Comparison - Midi Drum Machines and Song Rhythm Tracks

[caption id="attachment_30026" align="alignleft" width="275"] midi drum machine[/caption]

Audio Generation

Midi Drum Machines — Audio is generated from the machine ‘playing’ together individual drum ‘hits’ at varying intensities. The machine is effectively taking the place of the drums and, to some extent, the drummer.

    [caption id="attachment_28731" align="alignleft" width="150"] Song Rhythm Tracks[/caption]

Song Rhythm Tracks — Audio is generated from multiple long recordings of talented artists. These recordings can be as much as 8-bars long with repeats using alternate recordings to provide variety.

Source of the Rhythm

Midi Drum Machines — Each rhythm comes from an algorithm specifying which drums are hit when within the bar. Each rhythm can be parameterized by the tempo, linearly increasing and decreasing with ease. Even so, the mechanical sounding rhythm sounds less and natural as the tempo varies further from the norm for the rhythm.

Song Rhythm Tracks — Each rhythm comes from long-form artist’s recordings. Each of these is recorded at multiple tempos where the drummer naturally changes the style of the drumming to suit the tempo, varying the intensity and placement of the hits within the bar to suit the tempo and the style. Effectively, each tempo recording is a unique rhythm, albeit stylistically related to those at the other tempos.

Audio Format

Midi Drum Machines — The machine generates the drumming audio in real-time. Many machines allow for an audio track to be generated but rarely do they provide good setlist facilities for these audio files, as that is not their focus.

Song Rhythm Tracks — Alive Drumming supplies high-quality MP3 audio files that are catalogued and managed from within mobile apps with good setlist facilities and provide a good musician’s player.

Memory Requirements

Midi Drum Machines — Only a small amount of computer memory is required to hold the audio of the drum hits which are often efficiently compressed. The Apps generally have a small memory footprint as well.

Song Rhythm Tracks — The source audio recordings are large requiring much storage space. Also, there are a many of them. Alive Drumming stores these within Cloud Servers where sophisticated programs generate the Song Rhythm Tracks, delivering them to the mobile apps.

Rhythmic Styles

Midi Drum Machines — These are preferred by those affirming the mechanical, highly regular sounding drums. This sound has spawned new genres of music.

Song Rhythm Tracks — Song Rhythm Tracks are preferred by those who like the sound of real-life drummers, drumming on drums and the artistry achieved by these musicians using authentic percussion and drums instruments.

What users are looking for

Midi Drum Machines — Users of Midi Drum Machines often affirm the visual beauty of the machine themselves and the ‘drumming’ facilities they have. The machines become a ‘new type of drum to play‘, and they love their machines as much as any instrumentalists.

Song Rhythm Tracks — Users of Song Rhythm Tracks are not interested in playing Midi Drum Machines, or probably real drums either. They want to benefit from great sounding rhythmic backing tracks that fit the songs they play and with a minimum of effort. They generally would prefer an understated device that works reliably, efficiently and with great ergonomics, particularly during performance. They want the best quality, performance-ready backing tracks.

Use cases

Midi Drum Machines — Users of Midi Drum Machines often use it as an ‘advanced metronome‘ and often improvise along to a 4-bar endless loop. 4-bar and sometime 8-bar phrases are often displayed visually within the Machine with facilities to play and loop alternative phrases.

Song Rhythm Tracks — These are backing music for the practice and performance of fully-arranged, complete Songs (vocal or instrumental). They partly sound so great because you hear the form of the song in the rhythmic backing, just like you do with real drummers. This is not only a longer-form than a 4-bar loop, but it has more structure as well, with arrangements including introduction sections, middle choruses, bridges and more. The arrangement is always visible — particularly during playing where you might need a reminder.

Availability and Formats

Midi Drum Machines — There are many Midi Drum Machines available on mobile and desktop platforms and dedicated physical machines, with various facilities, often specializing in particular rhythmic styles.

Song Rhythm Tracks — There’s the one Song Rhythm Tracks Service which provides all the various rhythms and arrangement smarts.  There are around 4,000 to choose from when alternate tempos and instrumentations are considered. Currently, apps are available on the Apple iOS platform with Android and Web platforms being delivered soon. All iOS Apps have exactly the same facilities and can access the full Alive Drumming catalog.

[alive-drumming]

Why do these Song Rhythm Tracks sound so totally great?

These Song Rhythm Tracks do sound totally great, don’t they?

This is one of the most frequent things I hear.  The great sound quality often comes as surprise, perhaps because of the widespread familiarity everybody has with 'Midi Drum Machines', which don't satisfy in the same way as Song Rhythm Tracks.  Midi Drum Machines and Song Rhythm Tracks are two very different products; we summarize their differences in the comparison section below.

The Song Rhythm Tracks Way

[caption id="attachment_29898" align="alignright" width="502"] Song Rhythm Tracks[/caption] Here are the three top reasons why we believe these tracks are so great to jam to, to gig to, and to cut records to.

One - Great Recordings of Great Drummers – Song Rhythm Tracks are arranged from careful studio recordings of excellent drummers.

They are not constructed from midi files fitting together “samples” from single drum hits to form a mechanical style but rather multiple longer-form full recordings by top studio drummers, lasting from up to 8 bars at a time where you hear subtle drum rolls, variations in ride cymbal taps, complex fills and more.  The rhythmic style comes from talented drummers that are very experienced in the particular style be it Reggae, Salsa, Bossa, Rumba, Tango, Rock, Country, Jazz, Pop, Celtic, Praise & Worship, Blues, and lots more!

Two - There is natural variety promoted over the repeats.

That is, a number of recordings of all aspects of playing, fills, post-fills, shots and more are taken and selectively chosen while sequencing and engineering the final audio.  This provides the natural variety one gets with drummers.  It helps prevent the drumming becoming monotonous and repetitive.

Three - The arrangement is always spelling out aspects of the song’s form.

This might have a larger contribution than one might imagine.  It is what real drummers do, but drumming software rarely does.   The drumming is indicating

When you are returning to the ‘top of the form’ again

When your sections are ending and starting again

When you are playing a bridge section

Whether you are playing a middle chorus or, alternatively, the first or last chorus.   This not only helps you keep place while you are playing but it makes the whole experience so much more enjoyable to listen to, or play along with, as well.

All this takes a lot of careful preparation, curation, huge storage, and sophisticated algorithms.   We feel this cannot be achieved on mobile devices themselves which is why our solution involves cloud services working with the mobile App.

Comparison - Midi Drum Machines and Song Rhythm Tracks

[caption id="attachment_30026" align="alignleft" width="275"] midi drum machine[/caption]

Audio Generation

Midi Drum Machines — Audio is generated from the machine ‘playing’ together individual drum ‘hits’ at varying intensities. The machine is effectively taking the place of the drums and, to some extent, the drummer.

    [caption id="attachment_28731" align="alignleft" width="150"] Song Rhythm Tracks[/caption]

Song Rhythm Tracks — Audio is generated from multiple long recordings of talented artists. These recordings can be as much as 8-bars long with repeats using alternate recordings to provide variety.

Source of the Rhythm

Midi Drum Machines — Each rhythm comes from an algorithm specifying which drums are hit when within the bar. Each rhythm can be parameterized by the tempo, linearly increasing and decreasing with ease. Even so, the mechanical sounding rhythm sounds less and natural as the tempo varies further from the norm for the rhythm.

Song Rhythm Tracks — Each rhythm comes from long-form artist’s recordings. Each of these is recorded at multiple tempos where the drummer naturally changes the style of the drumming to suit the tempo, varying the intensity and placement of the hits within the bar to suit the tempo and the style. Effectively, each tempo recording is a unique rhythm, albeit stylistically related to those at the other tempos.

Audio Format

Midi Drum Machines — The machine generates the drumming audio in real-time. Many machines allow for an audio track to be generated but rarely do they provide good setlist facilities for these audio files, as that is not their focus.

Song Rhythm Tracks — Alive Drumming supplies high-quality MP3 audio files that are catalogued and managed from within mobile apps with good setlist facilities and provide a good musician’s player.

Memory Requirements

Midi Drum Machines — Only a small amount of computer memory is required to hold the audio of the drum hits which are often efficiently compressed. The Apps generally have a small memory footprint as well.

Song Rhythm Tracks — The source audio recordings are large requiring much storage space. Also, there are a many of them. Alive Drumming stores these within Cloud Servers where sophisticated programs generate the Song Rhythm Tracks, delivering them to the mobile apps.

Rhythmic Styles

Midi Drum Machines — These are preferred by those affirming the mechanical, highly regular sounding drums. This sound has spawned new genres of music.

Song Rhythm Tracks — Song Rhythm Tracks are preferred by those who like the sound of real-life drummers, drumming on drums and the artistry achieved by these musicians using authentic percussion and drums instruments.

What users are looking for

Midi Drum Machines — Users of Midi Drum Machines often affirm the visual beauty of the machine themselves and the ‘drumming’ facilities they have. The machines become a ‘new type of drum to play‘, and they love their machines as much as any instrumentalists.

Song Rhythm Tracks — Users of Song Rhythm Tracks are not interested in playing Midi Drum Machines, or probably real drums either. They want to benefit from great sounding rhythmic backing tracks that fit the songs they play and with a minimum of effort. They generally would prefer an understated device that works reliably, efficiently and with great ergonomics, particularly during performance. They want the best quality, performance-ready backing tracks.

Use cases

Midi Drum Machines — Users of Midi Drum Machines often use it as an ‘advanced metronome‘ and often improvise along to a 4-bar endless loop. 4-bar and sometime 8-bar phrases are often displayed visually within the Machine with facilities to play and loop alternative phrases.

Song Rhythm Tracks — These are backing music for the practice and performance of fully-arranged, complete Songs (vocal or instrumental). They partly sound so great because you hear the form of the song in the rhythmic backing, just like you do with real drummers. This is not only a longer-form than a 4-bar loop, but it has more structure as well, with arrangements including introduction sections, middle choruses, bridges and more. The arrangement is always visible — particularly during playing where you might need a reminder.

Availability and Formats

Midi Drum Machines — There are many Midi Drum Machines available on mobile and desktop platforms and dedicated physical machines, with various facilities, often specializing in particular rhythmic styles.

Song Rhythm Tracks — There’s the one Song Rhythm Tracks Service which provides all the various rhythms and arrangement smarts.  There are around 4,000 to choose from when alternate tempos and instrumentations are considered. Currently, apps are available on the Apple iOS platform with Android and Web platforms being delivered soon. All iOS Apps have exactly the same facilities and can access the full Alive Drumming catalog.

[alive-drumming]

Why do these Song Rhythm Tracks sound so totally great?

These Song Rhythm Tracks do sound totally great, don’t they?

This is one of the most frequent things I hear.  The great sound quality often comes as surprise, perhaps because of the widespread familiarity everybody has with ‘Midi Drum Machines‘, which don’t satisfy in the same way as Song Rhythm Tracks.  Midi Drum Machines and Song Rhythm Tracks are two very different products; we summarize their differences in the comparison section below.

The Song Rhythm Tracks Way

Song Rhythm Tracks

Here are the three top reasons why we believe these tracks are so great to jam to, to gig to, and to cut records to.

One – Great Recordings of Great Drummers – Song Rhythm Tracks are arranged from careful studio recordings of excellent drummers.

They are not constructed from midi files fitting together “samples” from single drum hits to form a mechanical style but rather multiple longer-form full recordings by top studio drummers, lasting from up to 8 bars at a time where you hear subtle drum rolls, variations in ride cymbal taps, complex fills and more.  The rhythmic style comes from talented drummers that are very experienced in the particular style be it Reggae, Salsa, Bossa, Rumba, Tango, Rock, Country, Jazz, Pop, Celtic, Praise & Worship, Blues, and lots more!

Two – There is natural variety promoted over the repeats.

That is, a number of recordings of all aspects of playing, fills, post-fills, shots and more are taken and selectively chosen while sequencing and engineering the final audio.  This provides the natural variety one gets with drummers.  It helps prevent the drumming becoming monotonous and repetitive.

Three – The arrangement is always spelling out aspects of the song’s form.

This might have a larger contribution than one might imagine.  It is what real drummers do, but drumming software rarely does.   The drumming is indicating

When you are returning to the ‘top of the form’ again

When your sections are ending and starting again

When you are playing a bridge section

Whether you are playing a middle chorus or, alternatively, the first or last chorus.   This not only helps you keep place while you are playing but it makes the whole experience so much more enjoyable to listen to, or play along with, as well.

All this takes a lot of careful preparation, curation, huge storage, and sophisticated algorithms.   We feel this cannot be achieved on mobile devices themselves which is why our solution involves cloud services working with the mobile App.

Comparison – Midi Drum Machines and Song Rhythm Tracks

midi drum machine

Audio Generation

Midi Drum Machines — Audio is generated from the machine ‘playing’ together individual drum ‘hits’ at varying intensities. The machine is effectively taking the place of the drums and, to some extent, the drummer.

    Song Rhythm Tracks

Song Rhythm Tracks — Audio is generated from multiple long recordings of talented artists. These recordings can be as much as 8-bars long with repeats using alternate recordings to provide variety.

Source of the Rhythm

Midi Drum Machines — Each rhythm comes from an algorithm specifying which drums are hit when within the bar. Each rhythm can be parameterized by the tempo, linearly increasing and decreasing with ease. Even so, the mechanical sounding rhythm sounds less and natural as the tempo varies further from the norm for the rhythm.

Song Rhythm Tracks — Each rhythm comes from long-form artist’s recordings. Each of these is recorded at multiple tempos where the drummer naturally changes the style of the drumming to suit the tempo, varying the intensity and placement of the hits within the bar to suit the tempo and the style. Effectively, each tempo recording is a unique rhythm, albeit stylistically related to those at the other tempos.

Audio Format

Midi Drum Machines — The machine generates the drumming audio in real-time. Many machines allow for an audio track to be generated but rarely do they provide good setlist facilities for these audio files, as that is not their focus.

Song Rhythm Tracks — Alive Drumming supplies high-quality MP3 audio files that are catalogued and managed from within mobile apps with good setlist facilities and provide a good musician’s player.

Memory Requirements

Midi Drum Machines — Only a small amount of computer memory is required to hold the audio of the drum hits which are often efficiently compressed. The Apps generally have a small memory footprint as well.

Song Rhythm Tracks — The source audio recordings are large requiring much storage space. Also, there are a many of them. Alive Drumming stores these within Cloud Servers where sophisticated programs generate the Song Rhythm Tracks, delivering them to the mobile apps.

Rhythmic Styles

Midi Drum Machines — These are preferred by those affirming the mechanical, highly regular sounding drums. This sound has spawned new genres of music.

Song Rhythm Tracks — Song Rhythm Tracks are preferred by those who like the sound of real-life drummers, drumming on drums and the artistry achieved by these musicians using authentic percussion and drums instruments.

What users are looking for

Midi Drum Machines — Users of Midi Drum Machines often affirm the visual beauty of the machine themselves and the ‘drumming’ facilities they have. The machines become a ‘new type of drum to play‘, and they love their machines as much as any instrumentalists.

Song Rhythm Tracks — Users of Song Rhythm Tracks are not interested in playing Midi Drum Machines, or probably real drums either. They want to benefit from great sounding rhythmic backing tracks that fit the songs they play and with a minimum of effort. They generally would prefer an understated device that works reliably, efficiently and with great ergonomics, particularly during performance. They want the best quality, performance-ready backing tracks.

Use cases

Midi Drum Machines — Users of Midi Drum Machines often use it as an ‘advanced metronome‘ and often improvise along to a 4-bar endless loop. 4-bar and sometime 8-bar phrases are often displayed visually within the Machine with facilities to play and loop alternative phrases.

Song Rhythm Tracks — These are backing music for the practice and performance of fully-arranged, complete Songs (vocal or instrumental). They partly sound so great because you hear the form of the song in the rhythmic backing, just like you do with real drummers. This is not only a longer-form than a 4-bar loop, but it has more structure as well, with arrangements including introduction sections, middle choruses, bridges and more. The arrangement is always visible — particularly during playing where you might need a reminder.

Availability and Formats

Midi Drum Machines — There are many Midi Drum Machines available on mobile and desktop platforms and dedicated physical machines, with various facilities, often specializing in particular rhythmic styles.

Song Rhythm Tracks — There’s the one Song Rhythm Tracks Service which provides all the various rhythms and arrangement smarts.  There are around 4,000 to choose from when alternate tempos and instrumentations are considered. Currently, apps are available on the Apple iOS platform with Android and Web platforms being delivered soon. All iOS Apps have exactly the same facilities and can access the full Alive Drumming catalog.

[alive-drumming]

Why do these Song Rhythm Tracks sound so totally great?

These Song Rhythm Tracks do sound totally great, don’t they?

This is one of the most frequent things I hear.  The great sound quality often comes as surprise, perhaps because of the widespread familiarity everybody has with 'Midi Drum Machines', which don't satisfy in the same way as Song Rhythm Tracks.  Midi Drum Machines and Song Rhythm Tracks are two very different products; we summarize their differences in the comparison section below.

The Song Rhythm Tracks Way

[caption id="attachment_29898" align="alignright" width="502"] Song Rhythm Tracks[/caption] Here are the three top reasons why we believe these tracks are so great to jam to, to gig to, and to cut records to.

One - Great Recordings of Great Drummers – Song Rhythm Tracks are arranged from careful studio recordings of excellent drummers.

They are not constructed from midi files fitting together “samples” from single drum hits to form a mechanical style but rather multiple longer-form full recordings by top studio drummers, lasting from up to 8 bars at a time where you hear subtle drum rolls, variations in ride cymbal taps, complex fills and more.  The rhythmic style comes from talented drummers that are very experienced in the particular style be it Reggae, Salsa, Bossa, Rumba, Tango, Rock, Country, Jazz, Pop, Celtic, Praise & Worship, Blues, and lots more!

Two - There is natural variety promoted over the repeats.

That is, a number of recordings of all aspects of playing, fills, post-fills, shots and more are taken and selectively chosen while sequencing and engineering the final audio.  This provides the natural variety one gets with drummers.  It helps prevent the drumming becoming monotonous and repetitive.

Three - The arrangement is always spelling out aspects of the song’s form.

This might have a larger contribution than one might imagine.  It is what real drummers do, but drumming software rarely does.   The drumming is indicating

When you are returning to the ‘top of the form’ again

When your sections are ending and starting again

When you are playing a bridge section

Whether you are playing a middle chorus or, alternatively, the first or last chorus.   This not only helps you keep place while you are playing but it makes the whole experience so much more enjoyable to listen to, or play along with, as well.

All this takes a lot of careful preparation, curation, huge storage, and sophisticated algorithms.   We feel this cannot be achieved on mobile devices themselves which is why our solution involves cloud services working with the mobile App.

Comparison - Midi Drum Machines and Song Rhythm Tracks

[caption id="attachment_30026" align="alignleft" width="275"] midi drum machine[/caption]

Audio Generation

Midi Drum Machines — Audio is generated from the machine ‘playing’ together individual drum ‘hits’ at varying intensities. The machine is effectively taking the place of the drums and, to some extent, the drummer.

    [caption id="attachment_28731" align="alignleft" width="150"] Song Rhythm Tracks[/caption]

Song Rhythm Tracks — Audio is generated from multiple long recordings of talented artists. These recordings can be as much as 8-bars long with repeats using alternate recordings to provide variety.

Source of the Rhythm

Midi Drum Machines — Each rhythm comes from an algorithm specifying which drums are hit when within the bar. Each rhythm can be parameterized by the tempo, linearly increasing and decreasing with ease. Even so, the mechanical sounding rhythm sounds less and natural as the tempo varies further from the norm for the rhythm.

Song Rhythm Tracks — Each rhythm comes from long-form artist’s recordings. Each of these is recorded at multiple tempos where the drummer naturally changes the style of the drumming to suit the tempo, varying the intensity and placement of the hits within the bar to suit the tempo and the style. Effectively, each tempo recording is a unique rhythm, albeit stylistically related to those at the other tempos.

Audio Format

Midi Drum Machines — The machine generates the drumming audio in real-time. Many machines allow for an audio track to be generated but rarely do they provide good setlist facilities for these audio files, as that is not their focus.

Song Rhythm Tracks — Alive Drumming supplies high-quality MP3 audio files that are catalogued and managed from within mobile apps with good setlist facilities and provide a good musician’s player.

Memory Requirements

Midi Drum Machines — Only a small amount of computer memory is required to hold the audio of the drum hits which are often efficiently compressed. The Apps generally have a small memory footprint as well.

Song Rhythm Tracks — The source audio recordings are large requiring much storage space. Also, there are a many of them. Alive Drumming stores these within Cloud Servers where sophisticated programs generate the Song Rhythm Tracks, delivering them to the mobile apps.

Rhythmic Styles

Midi Drum Machines — These are preferred by those affirming the mechanical, highly regular sounding drums. This sound has spawned new genres of music.

Song Rhythm Tracks — Song Rhythm Tracks are preferred by those who like the sound of real-life drummers, drumming on drums and the artistry achieved by these musicians using authentic percussion and drums instruments.

What users are looking for

Midi Drum Machines — Users of Midi Drum Machines often affirm the visual beauty of the machine themselves and the ‘drumming’ facilities they have. The machines become a ‘new type of drum to play‘, and they love their machines as much as any instrumentalists.

Song Rhythm Tracks — Users of Song Rhythm Tracks are not interested in playing Midi Drum Machines, or probably real drums either. They want to benefit from great sounding rhythmic backing tracks that fit the songs they play and with a minimum of effort. They generally would prefer an understated device that works reliably, efficiently and with great ergonomics, particularly during performance. They want the best quality, performance-ready backing tracks.

Use cases

Midi Drum Machines — Users of Midi Drum Machines often use it as an ‘advanced metronome‘ and often improvise along to a 4-bar endless loop. 4-bar and sometime 8-bar phrases are often displayed visually within the Machine with facilities to play and loop alternative phrases.

Song Rhythm Tracks — These are backing music for the practice and performance of fully-arranged, complete Songs (vocal or instrumental). They partly sound so great because you hear the form of the song in the rhythmic backing, just like you do with real drummers. This is not only a longer-form than a 4-bar loop, but it has more structure as well, with arrangements including introduction sections, middle choruses, bridges and more. The arrangement is always visible — particularly during playing where you might need a reminder.

Availability and Formats

Midi Drum Machines — There are many Midi Drum Machines available on mobile and desktop platforms and dedicated physical machines, with various facilities, often specializing in particular rhythmic styles.

Song Rhythm Tracks — There’s the one Song Rhythm Tracks Service which provides all the various rhythms and arrangement smarts.  There are around 4,000 to choose from when alternate tempos and instrumentations are considered. Currently, apps are available on the Apple iOS platform with Android and Web platforms being delivered soon. All iOS Apps have exactly the same facilities and can access the full Alive Drumming catalog.

[alive-drumming]

Why do these Song Rhythm Tracks sound so totally great?

These Song Rhythm Tracks do sound totally great, don’t they?

This is one of the most frequent things I hear.  The great sound quality often comes as surprise, perhaps because of the widespread familiarity everybody has with 'Midi Drum Machines', which don't satisfy in the same way as Song Rhythm Tracks.  Midi Drum Machines and Song Rhythm Tracks are two very different products; we summarize their differences in the comparison section below.

The Song Rhythm Tracks Way

[caption id="attachment_29898" align="alignright" width="502"] Song Rhythm Tracks[/caption] Here are the three top reasons why we believe these tracks are so great to jam to, to gig to, and to cut records to.

One - Great Recordings of Great Drummers – Song Rhythm Tracks are arranged from careful studio recordings of excellent drummers.

They are not constructed from midi files fitting together “samples” from single drum hits to form a mechanical style but rather multiple longer-form full recordings by top studio drummers, lasting from up to 8 bars at a time where you hear subtle drum rolls, variations in ride cymbal taps, complex fills and more.  The rhythmic style comes from talented drummers that are very experienced in the particular style be it Reggae, Salsa, Bossa, Rumba, Tango, Rock, Country, Jazz, Pop, Celtic, Praise & Worship, Blues, and lots more!

Two - There is natural variety promoted over the repeats.

That is, a number of recordings of all aspects of playing, fills, post-fills, shots and more are taken and selectively chosen while sequencing and engineering the final audio.  This provides the natural variety one gets with drummers.  It helps prevent the drumming becoming monotonous and repetitive.

Three - The arrangement is always spelling out aspects of the song’s form.

This might have a larger contribution than one might imagine.  It is what real drummers do, but drumming software rarely does.   The drumming is indicating

When you are returning to the ‘top of the form’ again

When your sections are ending and starting again

When you are playing a bridge section

Whether you are playing a middle chorus or, alternatively, the first or last chorus.   This not only helps you keep place while you are playing but it makes the whole experience so much more enjoyable to listen to, or play along with, as well.

All this takes a lot of careful preparation, curation, huge storage, and sophisticated algorithms.   We feel this cannot be achieved on mobile devices themselves which is why our solution involves cloud services working with the mobile App.

Comparison - Midi Drum Machines and Song Rhythm Tracks

[caption id="attachment_30026" align="alignleft" width="275"] midi drum machine[/caption]

Audio Generation

Midi Drum Machines — Audio is generated from the machine ‘playing’ together individual drum ‘hits’ at varying intensities. The machine is effectively taking the place of the drums and, to some extent, the drummer.

    [caption id="attachment_28731" align="alignleft" width="150"] Song Rhythm Tracks[/caption]

Song Rhythm Tracks — Audio is generated from multiple long recordings of talented artists. These recordings can be as much as 8-bars long with repeats using alternate recordings to provide variety.

Source of the Rhythm

Midi Drum Machines — Each rhythm comes from an algorithm specifying which drums are hit when within the bar. Each rhythm can be parameterized by the tempo, linearly increasing and decreasing with ease. Even so, the mechanical sounding rhythm sounds less and natural as the tempo varies further from the norm for the rhythm.

Song Rhythm Tracks — Each rhythm comes from long-form artist’s recordings. Each of these is recorded at multiple tempos where the drummer naturally changes the style of the drumming to suit the tempo, varying the intensity and placement of the hits within the bar to suit the tempo and the style. Effectively, each tempo recording is a unique rhythm, albeit stylistically related to those at the other tempos.

Audio Format

Midi Drum Machines — The machine generates the drumming audio in real-time. Many machines allow for an audio track to be generated but rarely do they provide good setlist facilities for these audio files, as that is not their focus.

Song Rhythm Tracks — Alive Drumming supplies high-quality MP3 audio files that are catalogued and managed from within mobile apps with good setlist facilities and provide a good musician’s player.

Memory Requirements

Midi Drum Machines — Only a small amount of computer memory is required to hold the audio of the drum hits which are often efficiently compressed. The Apps generally have a small memory footprint as well.

Song Rhythm Tracks — The source audio recordings are large requiring much storage space. Also, there are a many of them. Alive Drumming stores these within Cloud Servers where sophisticated programs generate the Song Rhythm Tracks, delivering them to the mobile apps.

Rhythmic Styles

Midi Drum Machines — These are preferred by those affirming the mechanical, highly regular sounding drums. This sound has spawned new genres of music.

Song Rhythm Tracks — Song Rhythm Tracks are preferred by those who like the sound of real-life drummers, drumming on drums and the artistry achieved by these musicians using authentic percussion and drums instruments.

What users are looking for

Midi Drum Machines — Users of Midi Drum Machines often affirm the visual beauty of the machine themselves and the ‘drumming’ facilities they have. The machines become a ‘new type of drum to play‘, and they love their machines as much as any instrumentalists.

Song Rhythm Tracks — Users of Song Rhythm Tracks are not interested in playing Midi Drum Machines, or probably real drums either. They want to benefit from great sounding rhythmic backing tracks that fit the songs they play and with a minimum of effort. They generally would prefer an understated device that works reliably, efficiently and with great ergonomics, particularly during performance. They want the best quality, performance-ready backing tracks.

Use cases

Midi Drum Machines — Users of Midi Drum Machines often use it as an ‘advanced metronome‘ and often improvise along to a 4-bar endless loop. 4-bar and sometime 8-bar phrases are often displayed visually within the Machine with facilities to play and loop alternative phrases.

Song Rhythm Tracks — These are backing music for the practice and performance of fully-arranged, complete Songs (vocal or instrumental). They partly sound so great because you hear the form of the song in the rhythmic backing, just like you do with real drummers. This is not only a longer-form than a 4-bar loop, but it has more structure as well, with arrangements including introduction sections, middle choruses, bridges and more. The arrangement is always visible — particularly during playing where you might need a reminder.

Availability and Formats

Midi Drum Machines — There are many Midi Drum Machines available on mobile and desktop platforms and dedicated physical machines, with various facilities, often specializing in particular rhythmic styles.

Song Rhythm Tracks — There’s the one Song Rhythm Tracks Service which provides all the various rhythms and arrangement smarts.  There are around 4,000 to choose from when alternate tempos and instrumentations are considered. Currently, apps are available on the Apple iOS platform with Android and Web platforms being delivered soon. All iOS Apps have exactly the same facilities and can access the full Alive Drumming catalog.

[alive-drumming]

Why do these Song Rhythm Tracks sound so totally great?

These Song Rhythm Tracks do sound totally great, don’t they?

This is one of the most frequent things I hear.  The great sound quality often comes as surprise, perhaps because of the widespread familiarity everybody has with 'Midi Drum Machines', which don't satisfy in the same way as Song Rhythm Tracks.  Midi Drum Machines and Song Rhythm Tracks are two very different products; we summarize their differences in the comparison section below.

The Song Rhythm Tracks Way

[caption id="attachment_29898" align="alignright" width="502"] Song Rhythm Tracks[/caption] Here are the three top reasons why we believe these tracks are so great to jam to, to gig to, and to cut records to.

One - Great Recordings of Great Drummers – Song Rhythm Tracks are arranged from careful studio recordings of excellent drummers.

They are not constructed from midi files fitting together “samples” from single drum hits to form a mechanical style but rather multiple longer-form full recordings by top studio drummers, lasting from up to 8 bars at a time where you hear subtle drum rolls, variations in ride cymbal taps, complex fills and more.  The rhythmic style comes from talented drummers that are very experienced in the particular style be it Reggae, Salsa, Bossa, Rumba, Tango, Rock, Country, Jazz, Pop, Celtic, Praise & Worship, Blues, and lots more!

Two - There is natural variety promoted over the repeats.

That is, a number of recordings of all aspects of playing, fills, post-fills, shots and more are taken and selectively chosen while sequencing and engineering the final audio.  This provides the natural variety one gets with drummers.  It helps prevent the drumming becoming monotonous and repetitive.

Three - The arrangement is always spelling out aspects of the song’s form.

This might have a larger contribution than one might imagine.  It is what real drummers do, but drumming software rarely does.   The drumming is indicating

When you are returning to the ‘top of the form’ again

When your sections are ending and starting again

When you are playing a bridge section

Whether you are playing a middle chorus or, alternatively, the first or last chorus.   This not only helps you keep place while you are playing but it makes the whole experience so much more enjoyable to listen to, or play along with, as well.

All this takes a lot of careful preparation, curation, huge storage, and sophisticated algorithms.   We feel this cannot be achieved on mobile devices themselves which is why our solution involves cloud services working with the mobile App.

Comparison - Midi Drum Machines and Song Rhythm Tracks

[caption id="attachment_30026" align="alignleft" width="275"] midi drum machine[/caption]

Audio Generation

Midi Drum Machines — Audio is generated from the machine ‘playing’ together individual drum ‘hits’ at varying intensities. The machine is effectively taking the place of the drums and, to some extent, the drummer.

    [caption id="attachment_28731" align="alignleft" width="150"] Song Rhythm Tracks[/caption]

Song Rhythm Tracks — Audio is generated from multiple long recordings of talented artists. These recordings can be as much as 8-bars long with repeats using alternate recordings to provide variety.

Source of the Rhythm

Midi Drum Machines — Each rhythm comes from an algorithm specifying which drums are hit when within the bar. Each rhythm can be parameterized by the tempo, linearly increasing and decreasing with ease. Even so, the mechanical sounding rhythm sounds less and natural as the tempo varies further from the norm for the rhythm.

Song Rhythm Tracks — Each rhythm comes from long-form artist’s recordings. Each of these is recorded at multiple tempos where the drummer naturally changes the style of the drumming to suit the tempo, varying the intensity and placement of the hits within the bar to suit the tempo and the style. Effectively, each tempo recording is a unique rhythm, albeit stylistically related to those at the other tempos.

Audio Format

Midi Drum Machines — The machine generates the drumming audio in real-time. Many machines allow for an audio track to be generated but rarely do they provide good setlist facilities for these audio files, as that is not their focus.

Song Rhythm Tracks — Alive Drumming supplies high-quality MP3 audio files that are catalogued and managed from within mobile apps with good setlist facilities and provide a good musician’s player.

Memory Requirements

Midi Drum Machines — Only a small amount of computer memory is required to hold the audio of the drum hits which are often efficiently compressed. The Apps generally have a small memory footprint as well.

Song Rhythm Tracks — The source audio recordings are large requiring much storage space. Also, there are a many of them. Alive Drumming stores these within Cloud Servers where sophisticated programs generate the Song Rhythm Tracks, delivering them to the mobile apps.

Rhythmic Styles

Midi Drum Machines — These are preferred by those affirming the mechanical, highly regular sounding drums. This sound has spawned new genres of music.

Song Rhythm Tracks — Song Rhythm Tracks are preferred by those who like the sound of real-life drummers, drumming on drums and the artistry achieved by these musicians using authentic percussion and drums instruments.

What users are looking for

Midi Drum Machines — Users of Midi Drum Machines often affirm the visual beauty of the machine themselves and the ‘drumming’ facilities they have. The machines become a ‘new type of drum to play‘, and they love their machines as much as any instrumentalists.

Song Rhythm Tracks — Users of Song Rhythm Tracks are not interested in playing Midi Drum Machines, or probably real drums either. They want to benefit from great sounding rhythmic backing tracks that fit the songs they play and with a minimum of effort. They generally would prefer an understated device that works reliably, efficiently and with great ergonomics, particularly during performance. They want the best quality, performance-ready backing tracks.

Use cases

Midi Drum Machines — Users of Midi Drum Machines often use it as an ‘advanced metronome‘ and often improvise along to a 4-bar endless loop. 4-bar and sometime 8-bar phrases are often displayed visually within the Machine with facilities to play and loop alternative phrases.

Song Rhythm Tracks — These are backing music for the practice and performance of fully-arranged, complete Songs (vocal or instrumental). They partly sound so great because you hear the form of the song in the rhythmic backing, just like you do with real drummers. This is not only a longer-form than a 4-bar loop, but it has more structure as well, with arrangements including introduction sections, middle choruses, bridges and more. The arrangement is always visible — particularly during playing where you might need a reminder.

Availability and Formats

Midi Drum Machines — There are many Midi Drum Machines available on mobile and desktop platforms and dedicated physical machines, with various facilities, often specializing in particular rhythmic styles.

Song Rhythm Tracks — There’s the one Song Rhythm Tracks Service which provides all the various rhythms and arrangement smarts.  There are around 4,000 to choose from when alternate tempos and instrumentations are considered. Currently, apps are available on the Apple iOS platform with Android and Web platforms being delivered soon. All iOS Apps have exactly the same facilities and can access the full Alive Drumming catalog.

[alive-drumming]

Why do these Song Rhythm Tracks sound so totally great?

These Song Rhythm Tracks do sound totally great, don’t they?

This is one of the most frequent things I hear.  The great sound quality often comes as surprise, perhaps because of the widespread familiarity everybody has with 'Midi Drum Machines', which don't satisfy in the same way as Song Rhythm Tracks.  Midi Drum Machines and Song Rhythm Tracks are two very different products; we summarize their differences in the comparison section below.

The Song Rhythm Tracks Way

[caption id="attachment_29898" align="alignright" width="502"] Song Rhythm Tracks[/caption] Here are the three top reasons why we believe these tracks are so great to jam to, to gig to, and to cut records to.

One - Great Recordings of Great Drummers – Song Rhythm Tracks are arranged from careful studio recordings of excellent drummers.

They are not constructed from midi files fitting together “samples” from single drum hits to form a mechanical style but rather multiple longer-form full recordings by top studio drummers, lasting from up to 8 bars at a time where you hear subtle drum rolls, variations in ride cymbal taps, complex fills and more.  The rhythmic style comes from talented drummers that are very experienced in the particular style be it Reggae, Salsa, Bossa, Rumba, Tango, Rock, Country, Jazz, Pop, Celtic, Praise & Worship, Blues, and lots more!

Two - There is natural variety promoted over the repeats.

That is, a number of recordings of all aspects of playing, fills, post-fills, shots and more are taken and selectively chosen while sequencing and engineering the final audio.  This provides the natural variety one gets with drummers.  It helps prevent the drumming becoming monotonous and repetitive.

Three - The arrangement is always spelling out aspects of the song’s form.

This might have a larger contribution than one might imagine.  It is what real drummers do, but drumming software rarely does.   The drumming is indicating

When you are returning to the ‘top of the form’ again

When your sections are ending and starting again

When you are playing a bridge section

Whether you are playing a middle chorus or, alternatively, the first or last chorus.   This not only helps you keep place while you are playing but it makes the whole experience so much more enjoyable to listen to, or play along with, as well.

All this takes a lot of careful preparation, curation, huge storage, and sophisticated algorithms.   We feel this cannot be achieved on mobile devices themselves which is why our solution involves cloud services working with the mobile App.

Comparison - Midi Drum Machines and Song Rhythm Tracks

[caption id="attachment_30026" align="alignleft" width="275"] midi drum machine[/caption]

Audio Generation

Midi Drum Machines — Audio is generated from the machine ‘playing’ together individual drum ‘hits’ at varying intensities. The machine is effectively taking the place of the drums and, to some extent, the drummer.

    [caption id="attachment_28731" align="alignleft" width="150"] Song Rhythm Tracks[/caption]

Song Rhythm Tracks — Audio is generated from multiple long recordings of talented artists. These recordings can be as much as 8-bars long with repeats using alternate recordings to provide variety.

Source of the Rhythm

Midi Drum Machines — Each rhythm comes from an algorithm specifying which drums are hit when within the bar. Each rhythm can be parameterized by the tempo, linearly increasing and decreasing with ease. Even so, the mechanical sounding rhythm sounds less and natural as the tempo varies further from the norm for the rhythm.

Song Rhythm Tracks — Each rhythm comes from long-form artist’s recordings. Each of these is recorded at multiple tempos where the drummer naturally changes the style of the drumming to suit the tempo, varying the intensity and placement of the hits within the bar to suit the tempo and the style. Effectively, each tempo recording is a unique rhythm, albeit stylistically related to those at the other tempos.

Audio Format

Midi Drum Machines — The machine generates the drumming audio in real-time. Many machines allow for an audio track to be generated but rarely do they provide good setlist facilities for these audio files, as that is not their focus.

Song Rhythm Tracks — Alive Drumming supplies high-quality MP3 audio files that are catalogued and managed from within mobile apps with good setlist facilities and provide a good musician’s player.

Memory Requirements

Midi Drum Machines — Only a small amount of computer memory is required to hold the audio of the drum hits which are often efficiently compressed. The Apps generally have a small memory footprint as well.

Song Rhythm Tracks — The source audio recordings are large requiring much storage space. Also, there are a many of them. Alive Drumming stores these within Cloud Servers where sophisticated programs generate the Song Rhythm Tracks, delivering them to the mobile apps.

Rhythmic Styles

Midi Drum Machines — These are preferred by those affirming the mechanical, highly regular sounding drums. This sound has spawned new genres of music.

Song Rhythm Tracks — Song Rhythm Tracks are preferred by those who like the sound of real-life drummers, drumming on drums and the artistry achieved by these musicians using authentic percussion and drums instruments.

What users are looking for

Midi Drum Machines — Users of Midi Drum Machines often affirm the visual beauty of the machine themselves and the ‘drumming’ facilities they have. The machines become a ‘new type of drum to play‘, and they love their machines as much as any instrumentalists.

Song Rhythm Tracks — Users of Song Rhythm Tracks are not interested in playing Midi Drum Machines, or probably real drums either. They want to benefit from great sounding rhythmic backing tracks that fit the songs they play and with a minimum of effort. They generally would prefer an understated device that works reliably, efficiently and with great ergonomics, particularly during performance. They want the best quality, performance-ready backing tracks.

Use cases

Midi Drum Machines — Users of Midi Drum Machines often use it as an ‘advanced metronome‘ and often improvise along to a 4-bar endless loop. 4-bar and sometime 8-bar phrases are often displayed visually within the Machine with facilities to play and loop alternative phrases.

Song Rhythm Tracks — These are backing music for the practice and performance of fully-arranged, complete Songs (vocal or instrumental). They partly sound so great because you hear the form of the song in the rhythmic backing, just like you do with real drummers. This is not only a longer-form than a 4-bar loop, but it has more structure as well, with arrangements including introduction sections, middle choruses, bridges and more. The arrangement is always visible — particularly during playing where you might need a reminder.

Availability and Formats

Midi Drum Machines — There are many Midi Drum Machines available on mobile and desktop platforms and dedicated physical machines, with various facilities, often specializing in particular rhythmic styles.

Song Rhythm Tracks — There’s the one Song Rhythm Tracks Service which provides all the various rhythms and arrangement smarts.  There are around 4,000 to choose from when alternate tempos and instrumentations are considered. Currently, apps are available on the Apple iOS platform with Android and Web platforms being delivered soon. All iOS Apps have exactly the same facilities and can access the full Alive Drumming catalog.

[alive-drumming]

Why do these Song Rhythm Tracks sound so totally great?

These Song Rhythm Tracks do sound totally great, don’t they?

This is one of the most frequent things I hear.  The great sound quality often comes as surprise, perhaps because of the widespread familiarity everybody has with 'Midi Drum Machines', which don't satisfy in the same way as Song Rhythm Tracks.  Midi Drum Machines and Song Rhythm Tracks are two very different products; we summarize their differences in the comparison section below.

The Song Rhythm Tracks Way

[caption id="attachment_29898" align="alignright" width="502"] Song Rhythm Tracks[/caption] Here are the three top reasons why we believe these tracks are so great to jam to, to gig to, and to cut records to.

One - Great Recordings of Great Drummers – Song Rhythm Tracks are arranged from careful studio recordings of excellent drummers.

They are not constructed from midi files fitting together “samples” from single drum hits to form a mechanical style but rather multiple longer-form full recordings by top studio drummers, lasting from up to 8 bars at a time where you hear subtle drum rolls, variations in ride cymbal taps, complex fills and more.  The rhythmic style comes from talented drummers that are very experienced in the particular style be it Reggae, Salsa, Bossa, Rumba, Tango, Rock, Country, Jazz, Pop, Celtic, Praise & Worship, Blues, and lots more!

Two - There is natural variety promoted over the repeats.

That is, a number of recordings of all aspects of playing, fills, post-fills, shots and more are taken and selectively chosen while sequencing and engineering the final audio.  This provides the natural variety one gets with drummers.  It helps prevent the drumming becoming monotonous and repetitive.

Three - The arrangement is always spelling out aspects of the song’s form.

This might have a larger contribution than one might imagine.  It is what real drummers do, but drumming software rarely does.   The drumming is indicating

When you are returning to the ‘top of the form’ again

When your sections are ending and starting again

When you are playing a bridge section

Whether you are playing a middle chorus or, alternatively, the first or last chorus.   This not only helps you keep place while you are playing but it makes the whole experience so much more enjoyable to listen to, or play along with, as well.

All this takes a lot of careful preparation, curation, huge storage, and sophisticated algorithms.   We feel this cannot be achieved on mobile devices themselves which is why our solution involves cloud services working with the mobile App.

Comparison - Midi Drum Machines and Song Rhythm Tracks

[caption id="attachment_30026" align="alignleft" width="275"] midi drum machine[/caption]

Audio Generation

Midi Drum Machines — Audio is generated from the machine ‘playing’ together individual drum ‘hits’ at varying intensities. The machine is effectively taking the place of the drums and, to some extent, the drummer.

    [caption id="attachment_28731" align="alignleft" width="150"] Song Rhythm Tracks[/caption]

Song Rhythm Tracks — Audio is generated from multiple long recordings of talented artists. These recordings can be as much as 8-bars long with repeats using alternate recordings to provide variety.

Source of the Rhythm

Midi Drum Machines — Each rhythm comes from an algorithm specifying which drums are hit when within the bar. Each rhythm can be parameterized by the tempo, linearly increasing and decreasing with ease. Even so, the mechanical sounding rhythm sounds less and natural as the tempo varies further from the norm for the rhythm.

Song Rhythm Tracks — Each rhythm comes from long-form artist’s recordings. Each of these is recorded at multiple tempos where the drummer naturally changes the style of the drumming to suit the tempo, varying the intensity and placement of the hits within the bar to suit the tempo and the style. Effectively, each tempo recording is a unique rhythm, albeit stylistically related to those at the other tempos.

Audio Format

Midi Drum Machines — The machine generates the drumming audio in real-time. Many machines allow for an audio track to be generated but rarely do they provide good setlist facilities for these audio files, as that is not their focus.

Song Rhythm Tracks — Alive Drumming supplies high-quality MP3 audio files that are catalogued and managed from within mobile apps with good setlist facilities and provide a good musician’s player.

Memory Requirements

Midi Drum Machines — Only a small amount of computer memory is required to hold the audio of the drum hits which are often efficiently compressed. The Apps generally have a small memory footprint as well.

Song Rhythm Tracks — The source audio recordings are large requiring much storage space. Also, there are a many of them. Alive Drumming stores these within Cloud Servers where sophisticated programs generate the Song Rhythm Tracks, delivering them to the mobile apps.

Rhythmic Styles

Midi Drum Machines — These are preferred by those affirming the mechanical, highly regular sounding drums. This sound has spawned new genres of music.

Song Rhythm Tracks — Song Rhythm Tracks are preferred by those who like the sound of real-life drummers, drumming on drums and the artistry achieved by these musicians using authentic percussion and drums instruments.

What users are looking for

Midi Drum Machines — Users of Midi Drum Machines often affirm the visual beauty of the machine themselves and the ‘drumming’ facilities they have. The machines become a ‘new type of drum to play‘, and they love their machines as much as any instrumentalists.

Song Rhythm Tracks — Users of Song Rhythm Tracks are not interested in playing Midi Drum Machines, or probably real drums either. They want to benefit from great sounding rhythmic backing tracks that fit the songs they play and with a minimum of effort. They generally would prefer an understated device that works reliably, efficiently and with great ergonomics, particularly during performance. They want the best quality, performance-ready backing tracks.

Use cases

Midi Drum Machines — Users of Midi Drum Machines often use it as an ‘advanced metronome‘ and often improvise along to a 4-bar endless loop. 4-bar and sometime 8-bar phrases are often displayed visually within the Machine with facilities to play and loop alternative phrases.

Song Rhythm Tracks — These are backing music for the practice and performance of fully-arranged, complete Songs (vocal or instrumental). They partly sound so great because you hear the form of the song in the rhythmic backing, just like you do with real drummers. This is not only a longer-form than a 4-bar loop, but it has more structure as well, with arrangements including introduction sections, middle choruses, bridges and more. The arrangement is always visible — particularly during playing where you might need a reminder.

Availability and Formats

Midi Drum Machines — There are many Midi Drum Machines available on mobile and desktop platforms and dedicated physical machines, with various facilities, often specializing in particular rhythmic styles.

Song Rhythm Tracks — There’s the one Song Rhythm Tracks Service which provides all the various rhythms and arrangement smarts.  There are around 4,000 to choose from when alternate tempos and instrumentations are considered. Currently, apps are available on the Apple iOS platform with Android and Web platforms being delivered soon. All iOS Apps have exactly the same facilities and can access the full Alive Drumming catalog.