Creating drum loops with Loop Drummer

Since the time we originally recorded this course, IK Multimedia added some cool new features to amplitude. The first one I want to look at is the Loop Drummer, which you can access by tapping the Drums button here at the bottom of the screen. So, as its name implies, the Loop Drummer is a loop based drum module, which you can use to add drum punks to your recordings. Just in case you are not familiar with the term, a loop is simply a short clip of music, in this case they're all drum patterns. That is designed to follow the tempo of your song and seamlessly repeat or loop for as long as you need them to.

So, for example, right now I'm looking at a star called Rock, which contains eight different groups or collection of patterns. If I tap the arrow to the right of groove1, you can see I could browse through up to eight of them. Each groove itself has eight loops which you can browse in preview using this ring browser area. An inter loop, which is good for starting a song off. Two main loops, which are probably most useful for verses or choruses of your song. We have two variations, A and B, which is similar to main A and B but they usually have some differences.

Like you might hear the bell of a ride cymbal instead of the surface or you may hear an extra kick or high hat beat. It will vary from collection to collection. We also have 2 fills, fill A and fill B, which you might use to transition from one section to another. And you have an outro for ending the song. And to preview of any of these loops, tap the speaker icon and then tap the loops you want to hear. Now each of these loops is only one or two measures long, but you'll notice how they loop seamlessly back on themselves and they'll continue to repeat until I tap to stop them. So, for example, here's the intro.

(MUSIC) should be able to hear how it was repeating there or looping. Here's main A. (MUSIC) (MUSIC) so it's similar but it's using the riot symbol instead of the high hat.

Here is the two variations (MUSIC). (MUSIC) Shelby. And the Altro. And again, I'm just tapping them and sample them and tapping them again to turn them off.

Now, Lutrum only comes with the rock style and groove 1 by default, but if you want, you can purchase individual style packs that range from. Blues to country to electro, funky, metal, pop and punk. You can also purchase the all style pack to get all of the styles at once. Each pack contains 64 loops divided by the eight different groove variations. Now, I've already purchased all the loops for my copy of amplitude but if you haven't the styles and grooves will be grayed out.

And if you tap them you'll be taken to the In-App store where you can purchase them. But again I've already done that in this case. So, let's take a look at how to actually build a drum punk with Loop Drummer. Now, the method will vary depending on if you're currently in the Rig view or the Mixer view or if you are in the Amplitude Studio view. Amplitude Studio is another option you can purchase so it was added since we originally recorded this course and I will be covering it in it's own movie. But notice if I open Drums here in Studio view, at the bottom of the Loop Drummer window, we only see the Mix and Cymbal buttons.

But if I were to switch back to the Rig or the Mixer view, and open the loop browser again. Notice we also have a Loop button and a Play button here. So if you haven't purchased Amplitude Studio, this is the view you'll have to use to build your drum punks. So, let's look at that first. Now, there are two main ways to build your drum punks regardless of which view you're in. You can manually create a punk by combining loops together or you can have amplitude automatically generate a punk for you. To automatically create a punk, tap either the Drum here in the center of the Ring browser or tap the Refresh button here in the upper right.

And notice a drum track timeline has now appeared at the bottom of the loop browser, if I swipe to the left I can see the name of all the loops that amplitude combined together. I'll swipe back to the beginning, notice tap the first loop here, to make sure we start at the beginning. Notice at the Play button here in the lower right we now see 1 to 1, meaning I'm on measure 1 beat 1, so it's the very beginning of the song. And after I tap Play we will see those numbers change as we progress through the pattern (MUSIC).

Now, I just tap Play to stop the playback again. So, that's what amplitude randomly came up with for me. Now, if you want to try a different combination of loops, just tap the Refresh button again or tap the Drum in the center of the ring browser.

And now we have a different drum punk. And one of the nice things about drum loops is that you can change the tempo after the fact and the loop will match your beat. So, for example, I'll tap Tools, tap on BPM for the metronome, let's go all the way up to 140. You can see BPM here in Loop Drummer is set to 140. And I'll tap Play. (MUSIC) So you can see it's matching the tempo. You can also tap where it says BPM tap to have analyze that tempo and you can see now it's changed to 116 27.

And now it sounds like this. (MUSIC) the drum punk in a couple of ways. If you want to replace one loop with another, find the loop you want in the Ring browser. And by the way if you prefer you can browse the styles and loops in a list instead of in the ring by tapping this button in the upper left hand corner. And then just tapping to browse through the different groups. But I kind of like the ring browser so I'm going to tap this button in the very upper right hand corner to switch back.

And bare in mind that you don't have to stay in the same style or grove as you create your punk. Now, before the intro instead of punk four intro. I'm going to switch it over to blues and sample the intro here. (MUSIC) Maybe I like that so I just drag that, on to punk four intro, it replaces it, and now, I see blues intro. (MUSIC) Or, if I don't want that entry there at all, I can just drag i out.

And release. Notice how the loops shift over to fill that gap. You may have also noticed, as I held down on the loop, I see instructions in the Ring browser, telling me if I want to clear the entire loop sequence. I just have to drag the loop to the center of that browser. And hold that for a second and I can choose to erase the sequence. And I close out the entire drum track. So, I browse back to punk, we'll do main a, do two of those, do a variation A and then followed by fill A.

Now, I'm just going to drag this to the right and you can see it pops over, giving me a space to drop that. And maybe variation B. (INAUDIBLE) Tools again, take the BPM back up to, we'll just maybe do 135. And let's hear what we have.

(MUSIC) Now, we also have the Cymbal button down here in the Loop browser. That's for adding a crash cymbal to the top of any loop. For example, maybe I want to open the song with a crash cymbal. So, I'll select that first loop and I'll tap Cymbal and a little cymbal icon appears. Let's put one on the third loop too. Select it tap Cymbal. Now, let's hear how that sounds.

(MUSIC) So there are my two cymbal hits. Now, when working in the Mixer view, we also have the Loop button here in the Loop Drummer. With it selected, if I tap Play, my loops will play endlessly until I stop playback. That might be useful for rehearsing a guitar punk. You can also tap to create a section of loops to just have those loops repeat themselves. So, maybe I'll just tap this loop and this one. So, I scroll over. Notice that highlight bar that appears above those two loops, that's going to be my loop section. So, if I tap Play Now. (MUSIC) And (INAUDIBLE) I'm if you want to practice, say a specific punk of your song just going to turn looping off for now. Now, the first button here is Mix.

That's used to adjust the overall volume level of the Drums. Just straggle along the ring to raise or lower the volume. (MUSIC) changes it to send 1, so you can increase the send, tap it again and do it for send2. And that lets you apply the reverb and other effects that we looked at earlier with a sense.

Tap it again to change it back to volume and you'll also find a Mute button for silencing the drums, a Solo button for silencing everything but the drums and an eEport button. And that's used if you want to export your drum punk into another app on your iPad, in which case, you could tap Copy and then paste it into another app that supports audio pasting. Or tap File Sharing to export the drum punk as a file that you can grab when you connect your iPad to iTunes on your computer. We're just going to cancel that for now. So that's the gist of the loop browser. Now, if you do have Amplitude Studio installed I want to show you how it works in that view as well.

So, let's switch over to studio. Now, in studio each track is represented visually and the drums get their own track here at the top so you can see how the loops are laid out here. I'll type up here in the timeline to move the play it back to the beginning. And I'll tap Play. (MUSIC). I'll tap Play again to stop. Here in studio view, tapping a track brings up its controls here on the left. So right now, with the drum track selected, you can see the Drum icon in the upper left-hand corner.

If I tap Truck 1 and this as 1 and track 2, 3, 4 and so on. Lets go back to Drums. So, if drums selected I can access to all of its controls so could (INAUDIBLE) have the Drums button here to open up the Loop Drummer and then go to the Mix area. This controls already appear here on the left and I have the Drums selected. Just close that. Here's the volume for the drums. We'll just double tap that to get that back to the center. And here are the send dials.

And the Solo and the Mute buttons are on the track as well. Here's Solo. And there's Mute. So, it's more convenient to get to these controls here in the Studio view. Now, building drum punks is a little different in this view too. If I open the Loop Drummer again. And I'll just close Mix by tapping it. Notice there is no timeline here at the bottom. That's because we can already view the loops here in the drum track. Let's say I want to auto generate a new punk. I'll just tap the Drum icon and just like that have a new drum punk here in the drum track. I'll just tap Play (MUSIC).

But this still works like it did in the Mixer view. I'm just able to see and work with more of the drum punks at once. If I want to replace a punk, I can just drag a new one into its place, again by opening the Loop Drummer. Maybe I'll drag main B, here it says main A and swap that up. And if I want to get rid of the loop I'll drag it down and away by selecting it and dragging. Again, those the other punks shift to the left. And if I want to clear the drum (INAUDIBLE) in Studio view I can just tap any of the loops once. Tap it again to bring up Delete Track and then choose Erase.

And from here, if I wanted to manually create a drum punk again, I could just open up the Loop Drummer and start dragging in punks. So, that's how to work with Amplitude's Loop Drummer. It's a great add-on to Amplitude, especially if you want to play along to a beat other than just the built-in metronome.