Quantizing Drum Tracks and Fattening Them Up

[Spillenger]

If there's a thread on this already, I missed it. Sorry if I've duplicated anything.

I'm starting to record a basic electric blues shuffle. I use Presonus Studio One 2 Producer and an Axiom Pro keyboard.

I don't know if it's best to record the drums first, but that's what I did. I used one of the virtual instrument drum kits that came with Studio One. My first track was a high hat and snare. I imported a version of the song that I wanted to imitate and played the drum part on the Axiom against that. When I was done, I realized I probably should have recorded each individual drum separately, but I decided to work with what I had.

Here are my questions:

1. Not being a drummer, my tempo was slightly off at times. What I was doing sounded great against the song I imported, but when I soloed the track, I could hear the occasional misses. I know that I can quantize the midi to make it “perfect,” but I’m not sure I want “perfect.” Doesn’t that make the drums sound a bit more robotic than a real person would sound? But say I do want to quantize, what would I set the unit as — 1/16th or 1/8th? My snare is hitting on the 2 and 4 of every bar. The high hat is — not sure how to describe it musically, but think ba-NA-na SPLIT, ba-NA-na SPLIT, where the SPLIT hits on the 2 and 4 with the snare. I’ve tried selecting the whole track and quantizing to 1/16th, and it doesn’t regularize everything.

2. When I play back the snare/ high hat track I recorded, it sounds sharp but thin and metallic. It cuts through, but it’s not full enough. Not enough “thud.” I think what I need to apply is a little reverb and some compression. Is there a primer on this that would explain how to use compression to make a snare drum sound fuller, rounder and fatter?

Finally, is there a good general intro to recording midi drum parts on a DAW. I’m kind of making it up as I go along, and it would be great to save myself some time.

Thanks,
PS

 

[wtfuhz]

I use the same software. You should have a free download for ezdrummer. That's significantly better than Impact. What I do is make a track, pull up the piano roll, and drag/drop and create from there. After I make the basic drums for the whole song, then I add fills and such. After that, humanize as needed.

Try experimenting with mixing different samples together. That will definitely fatten up your tracks if done correctly.

P.S. you can set the % of quantization. Select a lower start % and maybe a little range. Hope that helps!

 

[Spillenger]

wtfuhz,

thanks for your reply which was helpful, but i still have questions.

i actually own ezdrummer. i think i'm having a little trouble with terminology. as i understand it, i can either use a pre-made "loop," which has the entire kit playing a certain kind of groove and which will adjust to the tempo of my song in S1 OR i can play each individual drum and cymbal separately using my Axiom keyboard and a VST and build a drum part manually on my own. my instinct was to do the second one because it would be less 'robotic', but i ran into many issues. which is why, i guess, people use loops. so, are you talking about the first or the second thing? because it looks to me like ezdrummer can do both. when you say 'sample', do you mean loop or VST instrument (e.g., Impact snare)?

i'll try what you said regarding quantization.

again, thanks.

I use the same software. You should have a free download for ezdrummer. That's significantly better than Impact. What I do is make a track, pull up the piano roll, and drag/drop and create from there. After I make the basic drums for the whole song, then I add fills and such. After that, humanize as needed.

Try experimenting with mixing different samples together. That will definitely fatten up your tracks if done correctly.

P.S. you can set the % of quantization. Select a lower start % and maybe a little range. Hope that helps!

 

[wtfuhz]

i can either use a pre-made "loop," which has the entire kit playing a certain kind of groove and which will adjust to the tempo of my song in S1 OR i can play each individual drum and cymbal separately using my Axiom keyboard and a VST and build a drum part manually on my own.

I was referring to the latter. I'm not a huge fan of the pre-made loops. I like that creative say in precisely what my drums are doing, ya know?

Also, by sample I mean for example: Mixing a snare sample with another snare that has been eq'd differently; combining a few kick drums to get a huge one.

One more tip, a little off topic but a tip nonetheless. With snare, if you're looking to fatten the crap out of it and make it very big, I'd slap a plate reverb on there with some moderate pre-delay (around 70-110 ms) and then bring it down a little in the mix. OpenAIR is my favorite for that.

 

[GazEcc]

Hey there,

First of all, as you'll find in most posts here theres very few hard and fast rules to recording but I'll share my technique with you. I'm a cubase user and when using virtual instrument drums I normally jump to EZDrummer.

When recording the first thing I do is set up a VERY basic click track with EZD, usually hats kick and snare. I try to keep it as simple and non intrusive as possible as I find that if the groove doesn't fit it effects my playing of all other parts. Next I'll lay down everything else I need to build up the guide track. Then I delete my initial drum track and start again. You see, the beauty of EZD is that the MIDI files it comes with were recorded by a real drummer but of course they can't have every possible groove so I'll start out by laying the closest I can find to fit the song in the larger sections ie. 'that'll do for the verse for now'. Then for me its just listen listen listen.

I then try to feel how the drums are if they're very boring (a pretty regular occurrence given its generally only one or two loops over a whole song) I put on my drummer hat [amazon link to drummer hat for only €1431943].

I have very few guidelines here and tend to trust my gut but my usual approach is to ask myself a few questions like this;

1) How important are the drums to the song?
- Is the drum track the most defining instrument in the song?
- Are there parts where the other instruments die (vocals for 3 bars, 1 bar rest then chorus)? For this I try to add a little variety and spice here nothing too over the top.
- Does this part of the song even need drums? I find that a lot of the time just a hi hat hit on the first beat of every second bar can be enough for first verses in acoustic guitar-centric songs.

2) What is the drummers personality?
- Is the drummer a pretty laid back jazzy fucker? a show-off? a typical straight 8 sorta guy? or does he have more energy than enough? You can use this 'personality' to answer questions on what groove and fill's 'he' would use.
- Try to use the 'personality' to make 'him' feel more real but also try to be consistent, if you're working on 4 tracks then have at least a similar personality across all 4
- Is there a lot of variety? this is a personality thing aswell? Some drummers like to swap between hats and ride to show that its a different section whereas others vary dynamics / rhythmic ideas. Watch drummers live to get a feel for this.

3) Is this the right Drum kit? Is EZDrummer the right option?
- EZDrummer has a lot of EZX's to help you build up your kit collections and give you variety. Of course your going to get to love certain ones, for instance I adore the black beauty in the vintage EZX but if its a pop production its never my first snare, let alone my first kit. I'll reach into my sample library and build up a completely different kit normally negating EZDrummer altogether (albeit sometimes utilising the MIDI grooves) on a sampler.

A little side note. A lot of times getting a real world drummer in to record the MIDI for your song (or help you build your midi) can be much better.

Next I worry about velocities and quantisation, Quantising a track as you said can sometimes leech the life from it but this is why EZD has the humanise feature. But for other productions it needs to be rigidly stuck to the grid. This is all about whats right for the prouction.

Now you also mentioned you weren't happy with the sounds of your tracks, be they 'thin' and 'metallic' theres a few tricks to sorting this. you can, as wtfuhz said, use multiple samples to thicken things up. In a hell of a lot of country productions I find myself duplicating the Kick from the MIDI and sending it out to an SR-16 just for that extra punch. but if you don't have any other decent samples, compression and plate reverb can really help you out here.

Last little trick, if you've a good sounding room, place a monitor on one end and a mic on the other, record just your drums back in as an audio track to make a false room track and blend in to taste, or in EZD just add more room and Overhead in and you should be sorted.

Hope this post was of some use to you

Happy recording

 

[DrewPeterson7]

As an alternative to quantizing the midi, maybe just go in and manually fix the individual hits that are a little off? Quantizing will definitely make the performance sound more robotic, and if what you hear sounds fine in the mix but a little off in isolated places when you solo it, I wouldn't do more to it than you absolutely HAVE to.

2. When I play back the snare/ high hat track I recorded, it sounds sharp but thin and metallic. It cuts through, but it’s not full enough. Not enough “thud.” I think what I need to apply is a little reverb and some compression. Is there a primer on this that would explain how to use compression to make a snare drum sound fuller, rounder and fatter?

Is your room mic up in EzDrummer? I would experiment with different room mic settings - maybe try compressing it fairly heavily and mixing it a bit behind the rest of the kit - this would turn your room mic slider into a "fatness" control for the kit, allowing you to add ambient and girth by sliding it up.