I began the second day of my scrum experiment by watching more tutorials to learn the basics of Ableton. After watching enough videos that I felt comfortable feeling my way around the production environment, I began writing drums. I had not purchased a midi keyboard or audio interface yet, and drums were the best place to start with only a mouse and laptop keyboard for input.
Historically, drums had been my biggest weaknesses when writing music. During college, I relied entirely on my DJing partner, Morgan Hendry of Beware of Safety if I wanted a respectable drum part for anything I was working on.
I started by modifying preset drum patches to find a set that matched the intention of the song. I made a big, airy kick drum with a little bit of feedback to serve as the backbone. For hi hats, I clipped them to be short and snappy, then crunched them down, aiming for the sound of an antiquated, gaming machine sound chip. For the clap, I needed something that would cut through the mix and give a sense of energy and progression to the song.
Patches created, I wrote four full sets of drum loops, more then was called out in sprint planning. I arranged them into a minute and a half long drum only track and took a listen. I was beaming. Not that the bar was high, but these were easily the best drums I had ever written. I decided to end the day on a high note.
I entered my hours into the burndown and saw that I was a full 10 hours behind ideal. But, I finished the day strong and thought that I would be able to either get back on schedule with a strong GSD (getting shit done) day, or by trimming the scope of work down to something more reasonable.
Day 2 Burndown
