FAO Greg and Rami (or any drummer)

  • Thread starter Thread starter Steenamaroo
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Steenamaroo

Steenamaroo

...
My drums suck! I get it. :p

Really though, I rely on addictive drums more often than not and I've come to the conclusion that the limiting factor isn't really the software; It's more that I don't have a handle on what a real drummer would do.

So.....I took a soundgarden track and made the drums track in AD (i think) hit for hit.

I'm intrigued to see what you think of it.
Obviously it's never gonna be 100% natural, and I do plan to tweak velocities, but in general does it sound better because I've copied a real performance?

There is pretty bad guitar for the first chorus. Ignore that. ;)

 
Yeah that sounds like something a real drummer would play. Just keep in mind when programming your drums that a drummer only has two feet and two hands - unless he drums for Def Leppard. The feet usually only control a kick drum or the hi-hat pedal. In some instances a drummer might have a foot operated cowbell or a cabasa, but not often. It's usually the hi-hat "chick-chick" and the kick drum. That's it for the feet. The hands hit everything else like the drums (obviously) and cymbals or effects stuff like chimes, jamblocks, etc. So when programming a fill, you're a obviously not gonna want three or more hand things happening at once. You're not gonna want a blazing double-kick pattern going with the hi-hat chick mixed in. It just doesn't happen like that. Drummers typically physically can't do things like that. But besides the actual physical limitations of having only two arms and two legs, the sky is the limit as far as what kind of patterns you wanna develop. Good drummers have limb independence. They can do some amazing things. I'm not one of them.

The other thing to consider is that just because it's easy to plug in drum hits wherever you want, you gotta refrain from doing so. Most good drummers serve the song. Very few drummers drop fills all over everything - even if they have the chops to do so. There's something very tasteful and respectful about a drummer that just chugs along providing a backbeat. Look at Phil Rudd. He does nothing back there, but you'll be hard pressed to find a drummer anywhere that doesn't think he's awesome. He serves the song. On the other hand, if the song calls for it, you can go all Neil Peart on our asses. It's all about the song.
 
All good stuff, Greg. Thanks for that.

Whether he's liked or not, a lot of people talk about Ringo that way. Serving the song, I mean.

I'm aware of physical limitations but plausible or common patterns are something that I just never took notice of.
I get the feeling it's something I'll be paying attention to a lot more now.

I actually tried to learn drums a lot of years ago purely for this reason, but man I am not co-ordinated.
100% pat your head and rub your belly material! :P

I even struggle to talk whilst playing piano, or sing whilst playing certain songs on guitar.
 
Steenamaroo said:
All good stuff, Greg. Thanks for that.

Whether he's liked or not, a lot of people talk about Ringo that way. Serving the song, I mean.

I'm aware of physical limitations but plausible or common patterns are something that I just never took note of.
I get the feeling it's something I'll be paying attention to a lot more now.

I actually tried to learn drums a lot of years ago, purely for the understanding of it, but man I am not co-ordinated.
100% pat your head and rub your belly material! :P
Click to expand...

I can't help you with common patterns. I know none. I don't know any rudiments or whatever. I don't have any drum heroes that I look up to for inspiration or ideas. I just play what's in my head. You know, old timers like Bonham and Steve Gadd are most often studied and copied by people that care about being good. They pretty much put "patterns" on the map as far as I know. Pretty much anything happening now with drums is just a re-hash of the old guys.
 
Yup, and wait for Rami to chime in. He's about ten million times better than I am.
 
Don't have time to listen and post right now. I'll be around tonight. :)
 
I can't add much to what Greg said. Other than, the most important thing about making programmed drums sound more "human" is velocities. I used to program my drums in MIDI, and I actually made some pretty authentic sounding tracks, partly because of everything Greg mentioned, and partly because I knew HOW a drummer plays something.

I wouldn't worry about nudging hits a little before or after where they would be quantized. I don't believe for a second that a drummer who happens to be able to play pretty damn close to "quantized" doesn't sound human. It's a waste of time to move things so they sound im-perfect. If you move them enough to be noticeable, they'll sound off anyway. Worry more about velocities. For example, vary your snare hits slightly. But more importantly, vary the velocities of your hi-hat (or ride cymbal) hits. A typical pattern would be to have the 1,2,3,4 louder than the "and"s, if you know what I mean.

So it would look like this:

1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and.

That's simplifying it quite a bit. But a good way to figure out where the harder hits are is to play it on your lap, or your kit, and pay attention to when you're hitting the hi-hat hard and when you're hitting it softer.

Same thing applies to rolls.

The velocities are the one most imprtant thing to making a drum track sound more real, in my opinion.
 
Steen, if you're interested, I can send you some of my MIDI files from my songs for Addictive Drums... you can then at least see and hear some of the things I do to mix it up a bit.. I've been going down a similar path to you as well. I'm not talking about my drumming prowess, which is low, but more my manipulation of what's available.

Even though Addictive uses separate samples for consecutive hits, there are other simple things you can do to decrease the "robot factor" - for instance if I have a series of ride hits in a bar I will program in the main beat, varying velocities and a little tiny bit of off grid shuffling in the time line, but then also add a separate ride bell or ride shaft hit over the top of some hits at a low velocity that is my attempt to simulate that a real drummer doesn't hit the cymbal in exactly the same spot every time - hearing that slight bell or shaft sound makes a huge difference with ride runs..

Same thing applies with hats, snares, toms... bit of rimshot on the snare from time to time or in fills, selective use of the 4 "chick chick" hat options and the four open hat options, bit of rim on the toms...

All makes a difference. And BTW, the Fraud drums were about the least amount of time I'd ever spent on such trickery - normally I'm way more into it. Real drummers can tell, of course, but others can't, usually...
 
Does Steve Morris from Joy Division ever get a nod for good drumming? He often plays a cycle and on the 2nd album had more programmed or synth drums added. I quite like his stuff - more with JD than with New Order which is deliberate machine work.
 
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