making drums imperfect

[synergy]

I have been using Fruity Loops 3 for a fairly long time now. I have always been happy with it, except for the fact that I couldn't link it directly with Sonar, like a dxi synth. I have Battery, and I just found out how to use it, but I really miss the "shift" function in Fruity. Is there any way to imperfecticate up the drums with Battery?

[Lord Wan]

Play it by hand !

...Or try the quantize effect in Cakewalk :
- select the midi track
- right-click / MIDI Effect / Cakewalk Fx / Quantize
- in the dialog, enable the randomize check box and set the amount of shift.

[moskus]

...Or try the quantize effect in Cakewalk

Groove-Quantise is also great!

[synergy]

thanks guys, that helps a lot, but I guess there is no way to get precise shifting like in Fruity using Battery and Sonar?

[moskus]

I really don't understand what the "shift"-function in FruityLoops do. Please explain!

[synergy]

In FL, you can individually edit notes so that they play fractions of a second off from the actual beat. So for example, you could shift the first kick in a loop to trigger just a hair after the loop begins playing. What is nice about this is that you can mess around shifting the sounds until you get a nice natural "groove". It seems to me that quantitizing just sort of randomizes the timing a little, and you can't get as natural sounding beats.

[gascap]

I came up with a good sound when, after quantizing, went back through the song and played the snare hits again by hand - like Lord Wan suggests. BUT, with the quantized snare track along side of the slightly imperfect "hand made" hits, it created a great type of flam sound - a bit like Stewart Copland. i was pleasantly surprised.

[cordura21]

here's a good article by Craig Anderton.

tempo track tweaking
THE KEY TO SEQUENCED SUCCESS

Subtle adjustment of your tempo track is a much overlooked way of changing the mood of sequences. CRAIG ANDERTON explains how to do it. (more... )

[esactun]

Great link, cordura21!

I had just tried that "1 BPM" technique about two weeks ago on a test recording, and it works great.

[Lord Wan]

Also, if you have each drum instrument on a separate track it is very easy to adjust respective timing of each track. Just slide the Time parameter on the track pannel : with postitive value the drum is behind, with negative value the drum is ahead.
( Since no event can occur before measure 1, your song should start on measure two so you can try negative values on timing offset. )

Beside timing, there is other areas to explore when you are seaking the Graal... oups, the Groove.

I think the respective volume ( or velocity ) of each notes can change a dull robot ryhtm to a rolling grooving beat. This leads to the ghost notes domain. For exemple : a heavy kick hit could have a second quiter note to simulate the bouncing of the pedal.

[ChuckU]

Human drummers tend to rush slightly before a fill, so sliding the last few notes back in the bar ahead of the fill can give this feeling.

If I'm using 120 ticks per beat resolution, two hits (second one with higher velocity) 8 ticks apart, produces a good flam.