Does anyone write odd metered rhythms in their DAWs. If so what you guys like to use.

I am talking about like Meshuggah, Car Bomb, Dillinger Escape Plan, Frontierer type of music, where the tempo also varies and stuff. I've heard that DEP doesn't play to a click, or Haake, and the Car Bomb guitarist Greg likes to write the drums in computer first but honestly, writing rhythms are a tedious and very boring process in computer. I've tried finger drumming but the parts are very complicated (at least for me) to finger drum.

Are there any tips or software that anyone uses to make this style of music where it makes their songwriting time a little easier. Or is it just piano roll with a lot of time.

 

Hm, super open ended question. I'd say getting comfortable with your DAW's midi editor and its keyboard shortcuts is more important than the rest. Most DAWs' MIDI editors have functions or addons that can help quickly generate complex rhythms. Like split selected notes to grid size, evenly space selected notes by N beats, space selected notes according to pattern...

Having a calculator open can be useful to figure out when things line up. For grouping notes, I just count in my head.

If you have the mind for it, there are a dozen or so programming languages that let you compose MIDI using instructions.

Anyway, the more you write, the faster you'll get.

 

Last edited: May 17, 2024

Thanks for the answers, I should definitely look into some more Reaper shortcuts then, I have some but evenly spacing notes could be useful.
And the polyrhytmix thing definitely went under my radar, thanks a lot for that I will look into it. Anything for not punching midis in x)

 

Oh, if you're using Reaper, here's a couple MIDI editor scripts I use:

Script: mrtnz_MIDI chopper.lua
Script: kawa_MIDI_MorseSplit.lua
Script: DanielLumertz_MIDI Toolkit.lua

Morse split in particular is fun!