EZDrummer

mjbphotos said:
My wife said 'there's no room in here for drums' - but what she really meant was that she doesn't want to hear me practicing for endless hours to get even a 'fair' drum part recorded. And my room would suck for recording drums, anyway.
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Drums are loud. I've got an elementary school across the street from me, and my kids, while in the school, say they can hear me drumming. :laughings:
 
Greg_L said:
Being a superbly awesome drummer with impeccable taste and skill, please allow me to share some advice:

1) Program like a drummer - if you can. Drummers have two hands and two feet. Don't program fills or beats that are physically impossible to play. For example, a drummer can't do 16th note fills on the snare, hats, and floor tom at the same time. Well Rami might be able to, but the rest of us can't. Keep it realistic.

2) Humanize your drum track. Vary the dynamics of the hits. Maybe even drop a wongo hit in there somewhere. I don't use software so I don't know how to achieve this, but it's pretty easy to tell when someone does because it sounds like a typewriter.

3) Don't pan your cymbals and toms hard left and right. If you want to you can, but if making a realistic sounding drum track is your goal, avoid hard panning of individual drum/cymbal hits. Use panning, but keep it reasonable. Drums don't sound like that in real life and there's no overhead setup that I've ever heard or tried that provides insanely wide stereo imaging. Only from ground-zero at the drum throne does a floor tom sound like it's stabbing right into one ear.

4) As someone else already mentioned - cut way back on the room mic track or ditch it all together unless you want crazy roominess. I think that most of the time people want their mix to sound like a band in a room. That room mic track almost always puts the drums in the next room. Just go easy with the room mic. I've mixed songs from people with programmed drums, and the room mic track almost always mucks things up.

5) Use real drums
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Good post Greg,

Another thing is that just because you dont have the means to use real drums doesnt mean you cant use a drummer. Drummers are often hired to do the programing for a project, because whos better than a drummer to progam drums?
 
PDP said:
Good post Greg,

Another thing is that just because you dont have the means to use real drums doesnt mean you cant use a drummer. Drummers are often hired to do the programing for a project, because whos better than a drummer to progam drums?
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a composer
 
You can also learn a lot about programming drums by taking a peek at the included midi loops, because they were played by humans on an e kit...

Actually I'm not 100% on if the ones with EZ drummer were or not since IIRC they are perfectly quantised. However some of the stuff I have purchased from toontrack (other stuff) were DEFINITELY played by someone due to the imperfections (small be they are).

Intricate high hat work is some of the toughest stuff to program, because no real drummer is going to hit the same kind of hit more than once and all of these libraries like AD, EZ, Superior BFD have many different varients for the hats, like semi open, open, open some more, full open, splash, choke, etc... and programming all that together to sound right it tough even if you have a little backround in drums.
 
Guitargodgt said:
You can also learn a lot about programming drums by taking a peek at the included midi loops, because they were played by humans on an e kit...

.
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Yup, one of the best things about a DAW is how much more you can learn as opposed to an all analogue studio. You can look at tracks that havent been quantized yet and see where things are slightly behind or ahead of the beat, its not just the groove sometimes its the attack of the instrument, i.e. if the sound of the instrument doesnt peak immediately you can program the notes a bit ahead of the beat, rather than change the sound to something un-natural. Same with velocity, as Greg mentioned, you can look at how the instrument changes velocity.
 
To further add to what Greg said Re: ROOM MIC...

If you must use the room mic and have a hard on for it like myself. Do yourself a favor and turn the bleed off the overheads.

This little tiny itty bitty button in the EZD mixed saved it's life for me a while. Although i was happy to have a mega easy drum programmer i wasn't happy with the "room dynamics" but lived with it.

The day i discovered this little switch was like edison discovering the lightbulb.

Long story short:

Use one or other. Not both. It really helps an EZD mix.

P.S. that price was a freakin steal.
 
Atom Bomb said:
To further add to what Greg said Re: ROOM MIC...

If you must use the room mic and have a hard on for it like myself. Do yourself a favor and turn the bleed off the overheads.

This little tiny itty bitty button in the EZD mixed saved it's life for me a while. Although i was happy to have a mega easy drum programmer i wasn't happy with the "room dynamics" but lived with it.

The day i discovered this little switch was like edison discovering the lightbulb.

Long story short:

Use one or other. Not both. It really helps an EZD mix.

P.S. that price was a freakin steal.
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I never messed with it before. This is really good tip. Trying it on the next song. Thanks man!!!
 
Do you need to turn the bleed off as you are dragging and dropping, or can you open the FX window and turn it off and it takes effect on everything you have laid down?
 
When I looked, I found that the template I'm using (got it from the EZD forums) had the bleed turned off, so it's cool!
 
I just bought this last week, onsale at sweetwater. I haven't' had much of a chance to play with it, but so far I'm loving it. Really excited to see what it can do
 
mjbphotos said:
When I looked, I found that the template I'm using (got it from the EZD forums) had the bleed turned off, so it's cool!
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do you have a link to these templates? I would be half interested to see whats there even though i am very pleased with mine atm.
 
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