calimoose
New member
I'm victim to EZdrummer loops. I'm not a drummer and have no access to a real kit, let alone a properly miked one. So sometimes, I just pick loops and accept that they will sound like ass.
A fellow HRer provided some info to help remedy this sickness, and I think it would be useful for everyone to read (should you have similarly weak drum loops on your tracks):
There are four common occurrences that are dead giveaways for fake drums:
1) Drum programmers aren't drummers. Not much you can do about that, but being an actual drummer myself, I hear a lot of fills and beats that sometimes just can't happen with a real human drummer. A drummer has two hands and two feet.Two of those hands are hitting drums, the feet work the kick drums, hi-hat, maybe a cowbell, whatever. You can't have too many things landing on the same beat. How can two toms be hit at the same time as two cymbals? They can't, unless you have an octopus playing the drums. In that same vein, and this is the harder part for programmers, they try to fill too much space with too many drums. Real drummers like to bang around, but a good drummer doesn't cram every available space with fills, beats, cymbal crashes, ghost hits, etc. A good drummer plays the song. Listen to AC/DC. Phil Rudd does nothing behind the kit, but very few bands have the locomotive rock drive that AC/DC does. It's a like a Panzer tank flying down a mountain. Keep it simple and keep it like a real drummer would play it if you can. Naturally some genres like prog have more complicated drums. Then you can go wild, but still keep it within the limits of an actual human with only two hands and two feet.
2) Dynamics. This is always a dead giveaway. Programmed drums can very easily sound like a typewriter. A real drummer, even a good one, doesn't hit every drum the same way every time. I know that for myself the sound of my snare changes just by switching my other hand from the hats to the ride. When I go to the ride and "open up" my upper body, my snare whacks tend to fatten up due to not having my hi-hat hand riding over the top of my snare hand. Simply put, I can hit the snare flatter and harder. So that happens. And we all have a dominant hand. When rolling around the toms, usually a drummer's right or left hand will hit a little harder. Maybe he'll hit harder on the quarter notes and the eights might be a little softer. Like ONE-e-and-uh-TWO-e-and-uh-THREE-e-and-uh...and so forth. Stuff like that goes a very long way towards killing the typewriter sound. And of course, drummers aren't robots. We don't stay exactly on the grid at all times. A good drummer will use the click track as a guide, not a rule.
3) Cymbals. I don't know what anyone can do about this, but sampled cymbals always sound like ass to me. Good drum packs use real drums for samples, and they generally sound good, but I don't know what happens with the cymbals. You're just stuck with generic sounding boring ass cymbal sounds. Like the actual drums, using dynamics goes a long way towards making cymbals not sound all the same. A drummer won't hit the hats the same way every time. He won't hit a crash the same way every time. Vary it up. A good ride cymbal is like 4 cymbals in one. Where you hit it yields different sounds. When you're pinging the bell, mix in a few body hits.
4) The stereo spread. Drum programmers that haven't spent much time with real drums don't seem to understand that a kit is not 70 feet wide, and most drummers tend to set their kits up the same way with just a few little variations. The hats and ride are rarely ever on the same side. Toms usually go from small to big around the kit. Kicks and snares are centered. Have some spread on the toms and cymbals, but going all the way wide is distracting and sounds weird. Having a crash or tom pop in and out of one ear is just awkward. Keep it realistic. Find the toms in your fake overhead tracks, and pan the close mic'd toms in it's corresponding area of the overheads for a natural sound.
And then after all of that, don't over-process what are probably already processed drum samples. Further compression and EQ just makes them worse. Go easy. They probably already sound fine as-is. Real drums don't sound like plastic machine guns. Draw in your dynamics, timing, and use smart panning and drum samples left alone will probably sound much better than trying to murder them with further processing.
The last bit particularly resonated with me, as I often try and process the drums with mixed results. Cheers.
-CaliMoose
A fellow HRer provided some info to help remedy this sickness, and I think it would be useful for everyone to read (should you have similarly weak drum loops on your tracks):
There are four common occurrences that are dead giveaways for fake drums:
1) Drum programmers aren't drummers. Not much you can do about that, but being an actual drummer myself, I hear a lot of fills and beats that sometimes just can't happen with a real human drummer. A drummer has two hands and two feet.Two of those hands are hitting drums, the feet work the kick drums, hi-hat, maybe a cowbell, whatever. You can't have too many things landing on the same beat. How can two toms be hit at the same time as two cymbals? They can't, unless you have an octopus playing the drums. In that same vein, and this is the harder part for programmers, they try to fill too much space with too many drums. Real drummers like to bang around, but a good drummer doesn't cram every available space with fills, beats, cymbal crashes, ghost hits, etc. A good drummer plays the song. Listen to AC/DC. Phil Rudd does nothing behind the kit, but very few bands have the locomotive rock drive that AC/DC does. It's a like a Panzer tank flying down a mountain. Keep it simple and keep it like a real drummer would play it if you can. Naturally some genres like prog have more complicated drums. Then you can go wild, but still keep it within the limits of an actual human with only two hands and two feet.
2) Dynamics. This is always a dead giveaway. Programmed drums can very easily sound like a typewriter. A real drummer, even a good one, doesn't hit every drum the same way every time. I know that for myself the sound of my snare changes just by switching my other hand from the hats to the ride. When I go to the ride and "open up" my upper body, my snare whacks tend to fatten up due to not having my hi-hat hand riding over the top of my snare hand. Simply put, I can hit the snare flatter and harder. So that happens. And we all have a dominant hand. When rolling around the toms, usually a drummer's right or left hand will hit a little harder. Maybe he'll hit harder on the quarter notes and the eights might be a little softer. Like ONE-e-and-uh-TWO-e-and-uh-THREE-e-and-uh...and so forth. Stuff like that goes a very long way towards killing the typewriter sound. And of course, drummers aren't robots. We don't stay exactly on the grid at all times. A good drummer will use the click track as a guide, not a rule.
3) Cymbals. I don't know what anyone can do about this, but sampled cymbals always sound like ass to me. Good drum packs use real drums for samples, and they generally sound good, but I don't know what happens with the cymbals. You're just stuck with generic sounding boring ass cymbal sounds. Like the actual drums, using dynamics goes a long way towards making cymbals not sound all the same. A drummer won't hit the hats the same way every time. He won't hit a crash the same way every time. Vary it up. A good ride cymbal is like 4 cymbals in one. Where you hit it yields different sounds. When you're pinging the bell, mix in a few body hits.
4) The stereo spread. Drum programmers that haven't spent much time with real drums don't seem to understand that a kit is not 70 feet wide, and most drummers tend to set their kits up the same way with just a few little variations. The hats and ride are rarely ever on the same side. Toms usually go from small to big around the kit. Kicks and snares are centered. Have some spread on the toms and cymbals, but going all the way wide is distracting and sounds weird. Having a crash or tom pop in and out of one ear is just awkward. Keep it realistic. Find the toms in your fake overhead tracks, and pan the close mic'd toms in it's corresponding area of the overheads for a natural sound.
And then after all of that, don't over-process what are probably already processed drum samples. Further compression and EQ just makes them worse. Go easy. They probably already sound fine as-is. Real drums don't sound like plastic machine guns. Draw in your dynamics, timing, and use smart panning and drum samples left alone will probably sound much better than trying to murder them with further processing.
The last bit particularly resonated with me, as I often try and process the drums with mixed results. Cheers.
-CaliMoose