I did a quick search here after a few Google searches didn’t turn up the answer I was looking for.
Right now I’m in an apartment and I don’t have drum mics so I double can’t record drums. All I want to do is program drum tracks and record over them but there are no tutorials or FAQs. I have Nyquist and I can make simale beats but I can’t add variations. Is there any way to write something more than just one repetitive beat? Also, please use laments terms because I’m still new to Audacity and mixing/recording in general.
We can’t do music generation and Audacity doesn’t manage MIDI very well. I don’t know of any way to “press this button and get a violin.”
If you can find a drum pad set that has an analog audio out, you could use Audacity to record that without any actual drum sound in the apartment. Just tapping. You may be able to find one with USB audio, but it has to explicitly say so. Most USB connections are for MIDI.
You could also “play” the MIDI drums inside your computer and then use Self Recording to record those.
You need a software drum machine, rather than Audacity, which is primarily a sound-recorder & editor.
If you have Linux OS, Hydrogen is a popular [free] drum machine … Hydrogen (software) - Wikipedia
Although the official release version of Hydrogen is Linux only, the Hydrogen website has “snapshot” development builds for Windows and Mac OS X (Intel) available: www.hydrogen-music.org
I have an electric kit that’s currently being repaired and a keyboard. I can make one of those two work. That being said, then what exactly is Nyquist if not a drum machine?
Nyquist is a powerful scripting language for audio. As such it can be used to make a drum machine. The main limitation is that Nyquist itself does not provide GUI elements, and the Nyquist plug-in GUI provided by Audacity is very basic. However, for your own use, if you are happy to use a non-user-friendly user interface and spend the time developing the code, then it is quite possible to develop a very powerful drum sequencer. This plug-in may provide a useful starting point: Missing features - Audacity Support