"Faking" it with Drums

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aaronmcoleman

aaronmcoleman

The truth is out there!
I've been recording a while, so I feel like I have the basics (not mastered, but ok). I mostly do guitars, vocals, bass, drums, and a little bit of messing with midi organs and VSTi, but not much on electric instruments. Biggest problem is I can't often record a whole drum kit in my apartment!

So, I have no idea what I'm asking, but what is a way to "fake" it through midi, machines, etc?

Anyone have any links to primers on how to get started making some realistic-ish sounding drums? Basically, where do I get started and what do I need?

I mostly just want something to play along with and get a decent idea of what the song will sound like before having the drummer record. I know ideally I'd like to have him come first, but it's not always possible for me.

Thanks a ton for all your help!

I would search first, but I really don't know what to search for.
 
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i do all my drum tracks in my daw using the piano roll view after a short lesson in drum pattern basic from my music teacher. then because most velocity hits on midi drums are the same i throw a cal at the tracks to humanize them ( varieing the velocitys ) panning the differant tracks to widen the sound of the kit
then record them to audio apply effects and then send them to a bus and mix.
i get a good enough sound for my needs
hope this helps
 
I use a cheapo little drum machine (Zoom MRT-3b) with velocity sensitive pads. I like to mic up my actual set because I play more naturally, but occasionally I use the little box o groove just to make an idea simple without all of the mic hassle.

These are the bits I learned to make it sound more like an actual drum kit and less like a cheesy loop:

use the most dry sounds you can when you build your 'kit'. I seriously just took the exact same drum models all "dry" versions, with names like "dry kick 1" and "dry tom 2" and so on. This is because anything with built in reverbs or gates or compression or chorus will sound different than the rest of my 'send' mix coming back through the return. by putting it in the same hypothetical room for my reverb, instead of something that is actually just part of the sound sample, I find it fits more naturally with the guiatr and bass parts that are also going through the same send.

Watch out especially for snare drum and crash cymbals. These are the most dead givaway sounding repetative sounds in my opinion. You can't use the same sound sample for every snare hit and expect to fool anyone. I use a slight pitch shifted version of the same sound, and a combo of a 'rim' kind of sound with the basic snare hit, and seriously change it up which one is hitting when for every beat. The same snare on every 2 and 4 will sound so robotic its disgusting. I use an entire sound bank of 7 + 7 tones for simulating my crash and ride cymbal, each just slightly different, less or more decay, a couple cents difference in pitch, a 'tone' setting more muffled or more bright.

Use grace notes for hi hats or other 16h note clicky bit sort of sounds from time to time. A real drummer always has a bit of a tap here or there that is technically in the pocket, but not totally uniform, especially when he is doing something complicated. A random 16th before or after a hat or a kick hit but extremely low volume also makes it sound like someone actually grooving to it.

Don't be lazy. program long patterns if you can, 4-8 bars minimum unless you seriously want it to sound like a repetative loop. Last time I was doing this kind of recording I programmed every single bar in the song. It doesn't take too much longer, and just those little extra hits or left out bits or velocity fluctuations from one measure to the next make it sound a lot more natural.

Finally when you're done slaving over it, go back and plug in your mics and do it on real drums.
(okay that last part is a joke, but after a couple of years thinking I could get better sound with a program, I decided I just liked the feel of actually playing so much better, even if the sound wasn't as pristine)
 
One last thing, and I have seen this done by a 'pro' radio played producer: ride your bpm while you record the entire playback, +/- a couple points just varying slightly up or down the tiniest bit as you record the playback of it. Nobody plays at 120 bpm perfectly consistantly, but they do play between 118.5 and 121.5 bpm with consistancy.
 
My VI drum program automatically varies velocity hits, but the thing that pushes it over the edge is using the tempo bar in the DAW and doing that +/- 2.5 bpm depending upon what else is going on. Adds a nice human touch to it.
 
Kip4, what do you mean when you "cal" them? I've done midi drums the same way using the piano roll in the past, and redone all the velocities by hand and it was a pain and still sounded weird.

AbuseTheMuses, I will make some longer loops, and definitely go back and record the real thing when I can! And good call on the bpm changes, I'll try that too.

GregL, you are a machine!

So I guess this leaves me with what VI drums are options, and/or where to get samples to play around with? I've recorded pretty much everything to a click so it won't be hard to loop and build samples. Which VIs vary velocity?

And, I'm using Reaper, when I ride the BPM +/- 2.5 will it stretch all of the audio to fit or just the midi? Oh I also use a Mac so any VI/software would have to work on that.

Thanks a ton for all the advice. You guys always come through!
 
the drum cal thing is specific to cakewalk sonar (5 or 6 onwards i think)
its a random velocity program that varies the hits by a small amout
there are all sorts of cals on the web available if you google it
i personally like the humanize one and i seperate all the drum instruments into seperate tracks and apply differant cals to differant instruments it just makes it sound not quite so mechanized
 
Try using some pro midi groove loops. I stumbled across the place call OddGrooves that have excellent loops and they are pretty cheap. Ther are not quantized and sound VERY real...they have a bunch of free samples too. From there you can trigger a VST like EZ Drummer or other great drumming VSTs ( I use Kontakt 4 with Abbey Roads drums...very convincing).
 
I use VST Drum Sessions but unfortunatly they don't make 'em anymore
Steinberg/Wizoo VST Drum Sessions
Audiofiles (played by a real drummer) with the opp. to edit them both midi/audiowise. Very good. If somebody knows an alternative for these, please let me know.
 
I use Band In A Box a lot for drum programming. You can program tempo changes in each measure which 'humanizes' the playback. Also it allows 'sketching out' the song with the bass, keyboards, etc. it is easy to keep track of where you are in the song during programming. You can mute anything you don't want to record in the final production.
 
I'm not a drummer, but I'll vouch for Greg's notion that human "time" can be really, really good. I've never considered myself a paragon in that department by any means, but on recent project with just guitar and vocal, and no click, I needed to fix a little blurp in the last chorus of the vocal and the singer was gone. To my amazement I was able to clip the same line from the first chorus, and the tempo was dead on (yes, I realize I'm patting myself on the back - I think I may have hurt my elbow! :)). Point is, maybe nobody's perfect, but the little metronome we carry in our head ain't half bad, and I suspect the better than average ones - like Greg's of course :)! - are really quite amazing!

j
 
Try using E-Drums. You get the action (and practice) of playing drums but without all the noise. Plus you have a built in "HUMANIZER"!!! I'm about to buy an Alesis DM5 which (to my ears) sounds damn good. You can also record the MIDI from the performance, then play it back later. The benefit of this, would be to get the performance down, then run your playback through some monitors and mic them up. Record actual moving air. I did that with a drum machine a few times and it worked really well.

just my thoughts
 
Here are some clips of some drum programs for those interested:
Addictive Drums example (thank you Masterbeast):



Andy Sneap The Metal Foundry SDX preset examples:







Superior Drummer 2.0 Avatar Kit:






The Metal Foundry SDX (superior drummer expansion):






NY Vol 2 SDX (superior drummer expansion):
















Music City SDX (superior drummer add on):




 
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