Midi vs drum software

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sparky123

Member
I am fairly new to the digital domain, having grown up with analog, the learning curve is a little steeper than I thought it would be be. having said that , I am able to play, record, and listen back. not a fan of using drum loops , so i'm looking for the best and simplest way to play and record drums to my my liking. checked out ez drummer, not quite sure if that's the way to go, and looked at midi key boards. hmmmm. do I need to have to real drummer and a kit or does someone out there know a simple way to accomplish what I trying to do? by the way , I am not a drummer.HELPPPP. Currently using presonus sl 1642, and studio one pro 2. not having very much help in Presonus forum
 
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There's not often a "simple" way to do anything worth doing. All the drums on the album in my signature are programmed MIDI drums... have a listen to the sample tracks... no loops there, lots of variations etc. to make them sound more "real".... it's not rocket science but it is a little painstaking... you can cut and paste bars and sections but it's generally a good idea to do some work on each individual section.

Such is life.
 
Armistice said:
There's not often a "simple" way to do anything worth doing. All the drums on the album in my signature are programmed MIDI drums... have a listen to the sample tracks... no loops there, lots of variations etc. to make them sound more "real".... it's not rocket science but it is a little painstaking... you can cut and paste bars and sections but it's generally a good idea to do some work on each individual section.

Such is life.
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Yours is really convincing. What plugin did you use?
 
sparky123 said:
I am fairly new to the digital domain, having grown up with analog, the learning curve is a little steeper than I thought it would be be. having said that , I am able to play, record, and listen back. not a fan of using drum loops , so i'm looking for the best and simplest way to play and record drums to my my liking. checked out ez drummer, not quite sure if that's the way to go, and looked at midi key boards. hmmmm. do I need to have to real drummer and a kit or does someone out there know a simple way to accomplish what I trying to do? by the way , I am not a drummer.HELPPPP. Currently using presonus sl 1642, and studio one pro 2. not having very much help in Presonus forum
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Since you're not a drummer, you can program every beat in your DAW if you have a plugin. Any beat with any velocity in any pattern imaginable. Painstaking as Armistice mentioned, but also actually pretty fun once you get into it.

OR learn how to drum, get a drum set, get mics for it, learn how to properly mic it, get a new place to live if you're worried about neighboors, get get get.. I realize it's not really a choice for all of us. I have a full acoustic drum set, but I haven't been able to play it for over a year because of where I live at the moment.
 
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dainbramage said:
Since you're not a drummer, you can program every beat in your DAW if you have a plugin. Any beat with any velocity in any pattern imaginable. Painstaking as Armistice mentioned, but also actually pretty fun once you get into it.

OR learn how to drum, get a drum set, get mics for it, get a new place to live if you're worried about neighboors, get get get.. I realize it's not really a choice for all of us. I have a full acoustic drum set, but I haven't been able to play it for over a year because of where I live at the moment.
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Not saying this is the best way and I am not a drummer, and I don't have the patience to click through 3:30 minutes of drums. I have a little drum pad set, little DD-65 sitting on a snare drum stand, get the groove, beat the shit out of the pads (I use SDs learn tool for the pads) route to a single kit (two MIDI tracks one drum set, but you could have more). Quantize to a 16th (not fast enough to do 32nds) and seems like there is enough variation that it doesn't sound stale.

If one even has a pretty decent drumming ability, there is not really a good reason to not get decent drums. Plus its pretty fun to add to drum in your touch.
 
sparky123 said:
I am fairly new to the digital domain, having grown up with analog, the learning curve is a little steeper than I thought it would be be. having said that , I am able to play, record, and listen back. not a fan of using drum loops , so i'm looking for the best and simplest way to play and record drums to my my liking. checked out ez drummer, not quite sure if that's the way to go, and looked at midi key boards. hmmmm. do I need to have to real drummer and a kit or does someone out there know a simple way to accomplish what I trying to do? by the way , I am not a drummer.HELPPPP. Currently using presonus sl 1642, and studio one pro 2. not having very much help in Presonus forum
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Lots of ways to do it, some already discussed above by the very knowledgable and talented people here. If you're not a drummer (I'm not) it can be diffcult to program midi hits to sound like what you want. I use EZD, but have learned to change the measures/loops to give some variety (besides using a humanizer plugin), but the best sound comes from having a real drummer record his tracks to my EZD or clicktrack version.
 
As above, (I'm not a drummer either) I program every drum myself with EZDrummer. Once you get into it, it becomes a lot easier and more fun. Or as mjb suggests, use a predefined drum loop and edit it. i do this with drum rolls and things that I can't general work out how to program myself.

You can use a keyboard to play beats and rolls but I find that very difficult on the keys. If you can play the drums you could get an electric kit to trigger the samples. <<<That is my next goal. Learn the drums!
 
You note that you use Studio 1 Pro. Studio one comes with a built in set of drum sound files and plugins. Give it a try to see what it's all about. Studio 1 has a pretty decent interface for handling instrument plugins.

Simply open a new Instrument Track, then go to the browser tab and find the Presences Drums folder. Drag the "classic kit" onto the instrument track, and boom...you should have an emulated key board pop up. With this screen you can press the keys with your mouse to get the sounds from the plug in. Play around and check out the sounds. There's a few other instrument files you could play with too. I like the Classic kit and use that for most of my songs. Easier than trying to figure out how to mic my live kit.

Now try this...instead of pressing the keys on the emulated keyboard, double click in the the recording window beside the instrument track. It will insert a single blank count of track for you, and should open another window which is the midi note grid. This is the method I prefer to use to place my drum hits. In the grid, you can simply double click in the corresponding line with the key board, and a note will appear with the plug in sound. From here you can drag it to what ever point in the timing that you want. You can adjust the length of the note to have it ring longer (crash symbols etc...) by clicking on the end of the note and dragging it to where ever you want. You can also drag the vertical bar below each note up or down to adjust the velocity of the note.

All in all, it's a pretty simple task, but it takes some time to construct the track. The method I use is to create a measure with all parts, then copy and paste as required throughout the song. Then use the humanize feature in the quantizer to make it less robotic and "time perfect".

Another thing I do is record each piece of the plug in kit to a separate track. This way I can pan the parts accordingly to get the 3D sound of the kit in the mix. So in other words, open a new instrument track called snare. then only snare hits show up in here. Then open another instrument track called kick. Only the Kick shows up there. repeat for each element of the kit that you want to create, and then you can mix each piece of the drum individually like you had a mic on each piece. Keep in mind to do this you have to drag the plug in onto each individual track. do not assign a pre-existing instrument plug from another track to the new one, or you lose the ability to mix each piece.

Then you can copy all the midi notes from each separate track to a separate "Room" track, where you can apply a little bit of reverb to get a nice simulated "overhead" mixed in.

Hope this helps a little. If you find that this method ends up working out for you, then consider EZ drummer 2. Rave reviews about this drum plugin everywhere. Another guy in my band uses it and swears by it. And it plugs into Studio 1 easily. If you do decide to buy EzDrummer, wait for a special event, like Christmas, or Easter, or some other holiday. They, as well as Presonus ar enotorius for offer major deals a few times a year on their products.
 
Can you set up drums in a VST (like I do with ReDrums in Reason)? I have two ReDrums set up (one with toms & hats, one with kick/snare/cymbals) I assign specific keys to each of the 16 channels and then play in hi-hat, then snare/kick and then add cymbals and toms all from a keyboard. Because the samples used are multi-sampled, I get varying sounds from each sample depending on how hard I hit the key. Has the advantage of sounding like a real drummer, although I often put in more than a real drummer might play :D only real drummers can usually tell...
I'm waiting for the $$$ to get the hyper-sampled drums and keys for Reason (as soon as I can swing the finances through the spouse :) ).
 
thanks for the replies every one. this reply is for you pegger. yes , I have been playing around with presence drums. usually dragging a kick sound I like onto a track, then maybe a snare onto another, then some hi hats and a little symbals. but, putting it all together with time tempo matching is a bit of a problem. what is this humanize function in the quantizer you mention. I see quantitize on the top of menu bar , but have no idea how to use it. can you tell me more and for some songs I just want no drums sounds at certain part of the song and the come back in a few beats later. once again , thanks to all who replied.
 
Studio 1, like all other DAWs is a powerful when you learn how to use it. I am still scratching at the surface myself. But then everytime I ask myself "what's this for?" and I go find out how it works, I get a sense of gratification of having learned something new and having added another tool to my know-how.

The quantize is powerful, but you can make a big mess out of many things by using it poorly. I had to laugh at myself when I tried to use it without understanding what it did. I tried to apply it to a live recording of my band one day, just to see what happened. It did not end well...suffice it to say. Now that I know what it can do, I am able to get more out of the function, and at the same time I know where I need to focus more care and detail in the recording phase.

So rather than trying to teach you how to use Studio 1 quantizer in a forum, I will point you to these much more informative sources....
PreSonus | Studio One - Download
PRESONUS STUDIO ONE - How to use Quantize (Audio and MIDI) - YouTube

Have fun, and experiment with it. There's no harm or cost to experiment with digital media.
 
sparky123 said:
putting it all together with time tempo matching is a bit of a problem...
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To this, I will suggest that you check what your "Timebase" is set to. I set mine to BARS, with a quantize setting to 1/16ths. This makes it much more easier to drop midi in on the right timing. You can increase or decrease the count on the snap, and turn snap on or off too if you want. The more you zoom in to your edit screen you will see the Timebase scale adjust to the zoom, to the point where you can see the individual counts per beat.
 
man .. thanks so much. I've printed your responses so I don't have to go back and look to see if i'm doing it right. After looking at the other options ,I think this will be my path... thank you pegger!
 
bongoboy said:
Try learning. Or finding someone who can play to do your tracks. Thank you for your response.
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Yeah, that doesn't always work at 2am when the kids are sleeping. Or if you don't have the desire to wait on 3 years of practice to get good enough to match what you can program. Or try to find someone on the internet who has the time to do multiple retakes because you want to go back and change a section.....

Those are nice thoughts, though, learning to play drums or getting someone else to do it.


Programmed drums are a compromise, but a really good compromise. :)
 
Chili said:
Yeah, that doesn't always work at 2am when the kids are sleeping. Or if you don't have the desire to wait on 3 years of practice to get good enough to match what you can program. Or try to find someone on the internet who has the time to do multiple retakes because you want to go back and change a section.....

Those are nice thoughts, though, learning to play drums or getting someone else to do it.


Programmed drums are a compromise, but a really good compromise. :)
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Whenever I try to play real drums, it always ends up with all four limbs hitting something at the same time, on the beat, no matter how good I start out. Pathetic really... but apart from that I don't have the space, or the environment where real drums are even possible... I have enough trouble with real electric guitars, living in an apartment, and so I'd rather direct my learning efforts to playing real piano... that's several levels harder to program than real drums...

That said, I really appreciate good (real) drumming...
 
Chili said:
Yeah, that doesn't always work at 2am when the kids are sleeping. Or if you don't have the desire to wait on 3 years of practice to get good enough to match what you can program. Or try to find someone on the internet who has the time to do multiple retakes because you want to go back and change a section.....

Those are nice thoughts, though, learning to play drums or getting someone else to do it.


Programmed drums are a compromise, but a really good compromise. :)
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Actually, a drum program that is programmed by a real drummer who happens to be good at programming drums like a real drummer is very convincing...

Just saying... :)
 
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