If you can't find the groove you're looking for….

[James]

I’ve seen a few posts in EZD, SD3 and the MIDI forums where people are looking for just the right groove for their drum track. As much effort as Toontrack put into all their MIDI packs you can’t have everything – and even if you have all the MIDI expansion packs ($$$ ouch) you might not have just the right shuffle you need – Rosanna by Toto anyone? (Hint, Al Schmidt was the engineer for Toto IV – go look in the Decades SDX MIDI if you have it…)

The point is you don’t just have to use Toontrack MIDI for your EZD or SD3. Most drum MIDI will get you there – and if you do have SD3 it’s easy to tweak it once you have the basic groove in.

Questions about Soft Rock grooves, or New Orleans grooves – I hope the TT guys don’t ban me, but Google is your friend guys. As much as I would like to have the Decades, Rooms of Hansa and Death and Darkness SDX I can’t justify the cost of that but there is a ton of Big Band, 80’s Rock and (Death) Metal MIDI out there if you need it.

As for that Rosanna groove? Someone was kind enough to put the Jeff Porcaro Star Licks lesson on YouTube – Google that and watch the man himself show you how to play it.

Operating system: macOS Catalina (10.15)

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[Bear-Faced Cow]

The Rosanna groove can be found in one of the “yacht rock“ MIDI packs. I forget which one, but it is there.

The only real problem I find with third-party midi packs are that they are in general midi format. Thus, they lack articulations that are key to bring up the characteristics of the groove.

jord

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Jordan L. Chilcott

Web Site: https://jordanchilcottmusic.com/

[James]

Bear-Faced Cow wrote:

The Rosanna groove can be found in one of the “yacht rock“ MIDI packs. I forget which one, but it is there.

The only real problem I find with third-party midi packs are that they are in general midi format. Thus, they lack articulations that are key to bring up the characteristics of the groove.

jord

True, but personally part of the fun of putting a drum beat together for me when I can’t drop one one in that fits is to make it sound like JP recorded it in ’83.

And, forgive my landlubber-itis but what is Yacht Rock?

[James]

BTW the Rose and Anna (sic) grooves can be found in the AOR Rock library – but there’s something not quite right about them – I think probably the ghost notes on the snare are a bit too loud

[Bear-Faced Cow]

“Yacht rock“ is more of a consumer term for AOR. It pretty much encapsulates that easy-going softer side of rock music. One might consider it colloquial or slang.

The problem with the ghost notes on the groove might have more to do with the kit choice or drum mix than anything else. Even still, it’s not really an issue within SD3 considering that you can mutate the groove any way you want with the edit play styles.

I, as well, like writing grooves and tools like SD3 and Logic make it easier today than it was 40 years ago. However, I don’t mind picking up some grooves when they are on sale, some of them are pretty standard which saves me a bit of time. Not to mention, being able to mix-and-match parts within SD3 to come up with totally new groove possibilities.

jord

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Jordan L. Chilcott

Web Site: https://jordanchilcottmusic.com/

[James]

Thanks for the sailing session Jord and you’re right, I’m not having a go at the MDI per se. I just assumed that as it’s pretty clear what groove the team were going for then I wonder is their any reason they didn’t nail it?

[Bear-Faced Cow]

I usually try not to ponder over things like that. It takes away from valuable guitar time. 😀

The first time I ever heard the term “yacht rock“ I was like WTF??

jord

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Jordan L. Chilcott

Web Site: https://jordanchilcottmusic.com/

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