Why do Song Rhythm Tracks sound so totally great?
By: Matthew Hargreaves
Tags: Music, Song Rhythm Tracks, Midi Drum Machines, Best Quality Backing

Comparison — Midi Drum Machines and Song Rhythm Tracks

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 — 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 also 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.

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 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 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 also 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 (around 4,000) and arranging smarts. Currently, apps are only available on the Apple iOS platform but Android and Web platforms will be delivered soon. All iOS Apps have exactly the same facilities and can access the full Alive Drumming catalog.