Drummer wanting to learn synth, need guidance

[croikee]

Hey everyone,

Lifelong drummer here, I'd say average skill, not a lot of playing over the last 20 years (I'm 40 now), but my wife surprised me with a Roland v-drum kit a year ago. My buddy from high school is sharing his Superior Drummer 3 library with me, and we've been sending song structures back and forth via cloud sharing for a year.

Its a lot of fun, but I find myself loading up electronic samples from Superior Drummer and creating loops through the Reaper DAW, that I then layer "acoustic (superior drummer samples) drums on top of.

I realized probably creating loops via a synth would be much easier, so I've been looking into getting an Akai Mini or some other starter synth.

Problem is, I don't play piano or guitar. I can sit down and learn what notes make up chords and try to learn about chords and keys and music theory, but I really am starting from the basics in that area.

I watch people play synth and it seems like they are playing piano, and know what notes to hit when. So while I want to get a synch for loops, I'm wondering if it would be a waste without the piano knowledge.

Thoughts on the best first step for me? Thanks!

[meatballfulton]

If you want to create melodies and play chords, you have two main options. The first is using a keyboard of some kind, the other is to use a pad controller, where the pads can be mapped to play particular notes. The primary use of pad controllers is (surprise) playing drums, they evolved out of drum machines and in particular the Akai MPC series.

Early MPC...a sampler and a sequencer commonly used in hip-hop production before computer based options became widely available.



Modern pad controller from Akai. The similarity with the MPC is obvious, but it it makes no sound on it's own.



A pad controller is in many ways similar to the controller portion of your V-drums, simply arranged in a grid of pads. For decades, people have been "finger drumming" on them. Many modern units have modes that set up the pads into scales, so you can't play notes outside of the scale, making it easy for people with no piano or organ backgrounds create. Comntrollers do not make sound, they simply generate MIDI data which plays a MIDI instrument.

As for the synthesizer instrument yourself, you can choose between a hardware instrument or a software instrument that runs inside Reaper. I think Reaper comes with a few already installed.

[croikee]

Apprecaite the input. So I would need a midi "controller" that is the synth, that plugs into my computer and uses some sort of software to generate the sounds, correct?

To my other point, is it possible learn synth without experience on piano etc? I mean I know it is POSSIBLE, but is it realistic?

[croikee]

Would a grid controller be better for my needs then? Especially if I can map pads to a key and not worry about the piano layout? If so, are there good entry level grid controllers that I can link with VST pluggins that also offer the ability of some synths? Such as base notes etc.

Appreciate any help, really new to this software side of things.

[meatballfulton]

Apprecaite the input. So I would need a midi "controller" that is the synth, that plugs into my computer and uses some sort of software to generate the sounds, correct?

Yes. You can probably use your V-drums as a controller right now, mapping each drum and cymbal to a different note.

To my other point, is it possible learn synth without experience on piano etc?

Most of the learning related to synthesizers is how to create sounds. Keyboard skills have nothing to do with that. Most synths nowadays have patch memories, allowing users to call up preset sounds but synths without memories require you to construct the sound from scratch.

Keys and pads are just the most basic, simple, inexpensive playing methods. Over the years, various wind and string (esp. guitar) controllers have been developed, not to mention drums! You can even find gestural controllers (rings, wands) that can generate MIDI data by moving your hands around...not very practical for playing scales but not all electronic music is tonal.

[croikee]

Appreciate your insight thank you! My understanding, though, is that I would need to know scales and notes in order to map to a controller, whether that is my drums or a midi controller. I'm wondering if there is a way I can plug the key of a song in and then the notes mapped are all in that key, at least until my understanding of notes improves.

Thanks!
John

[madtheory]

An Ableton Push 2 would get you what you want without learning anything... you could work on that later.

[meatballfulton]

This is a free plugin that can be loaded into Reaper and used with any MIDI keyboard. As long as you only play the white keys, it locks your playing to any scale in any key. All you need to be able to understand about the keyboard is where C is.

Keep in mind that as soon as you want to use notes that are outside of the key (known as "passing tones") tools like this don't work.

Windows only, no Mac support.