Switching Off The Program

As some of you may know, drumming is one of my favorite hobbies.  From the time I got my first drum set back at the young age of 7, to now when I'm busy tapping away on an app on my phone to tracks on Spotify, and including my time playing with the Cherry School Sr. High and Jazz bands from 2015-16, grabbing a set of sticks and playing the drums has always been one of my favorite things to do.

I don't think I could play any different instruments.  I mean, I have learned how to keep a beat with some of the auxiliary percussion instruments such as the tambourine and the shakers, and I would absolutely LOVE to learn how to play the banjo and the bass guitar (but not the regular guitar because too many people play it already), but the drums are still by and large my favorite instrument to play.

There are lots of drummers out there too, some of whom I am lucky enough to know and will forever appreciate.  Musically, nothing beats hearing the drums played live in my mind, and there are also some really good uses of the drums on albums featuring music both binary and non-binary.  We have some people who get really creative behind the kit, and others who instead grab an auxiliary percussion instrument and kick the bass.  It all sounds so fresh to me, and I'm always happy to hear the drums on a new track from one of my favorite artists.

Despite this though, it seems that we have more and more artists and bands either choosing to use a new tool from the get go, and even some artists who adopt this new tool.  Well then again, it isn't exactly a new thing.  It's been in use since at least since the 1980's, and seems to be a cost saving measure for the most part.  When used though, it can make a track sound very processed and cheaply done, or even rushed.

If you haven't guessed by now, I'm talking about the drum programmer.  Not the buttons on the top of the keyboard that make drum sounds, but the little box that you can use to loop drum beats into your music.  There's a way to tell when a drum programmer is in use during a song, and it's a constant looping of the same beat over and over again with no variation except for maybe a cymbal hit or a quick barely noticeable tom fill.  If I hear it being used in place of a real drum set, part of me wants to turn the song off.  It just sounds so computerized and cheap and it makes me sad that no one wanted to provide drums for the track.

More and more artists and bands are moving towards drum programming.  A good example would be country music artist Keith Urban, who has been using them in every track of his that I've heard over the last two years, or rock artist Oscar.  Some songs get a pass because they sound kind of ok, but most of them just sound absolutely awful and lazily done in the drumming department, and again it makes me sad to hear them in use.

You just can't beat the sound of a real drum set, and all the different dynamics and sounds you can make with it, especially with an electronic kit.  There's endless hours of fun to be had both inside and outside of the studio with either one of those.  There's the cymbals that can be rolled, the snare drum that can crescendo up into a tom fill, and the toms that can drive the beat along with the bass drum.  With a programmer, you're basically just pushing a few buttons and then the work is done and there's no experimenting to be done.  That's just it, it seems so boring to haul a drum programmer into the studio and push those two buttons over and over for 7-15 tracks.  It doesn't seem worth it....

Drum programmers seem to be the way of the future, but I feel that they make albums sound lazily done or rushed to completion.  Perhaps, in years future they'll use less of them and opt to go back to a full drum set with all it's customizable options.  It would be more fun that way wouldn't it?  Let's "switch off the program" and get back to great-sounding music.