Funky Funky Fresh PART 2

  • Thread starter Thread starter Schwarzenyaeger
  • Start date Start date
Schwarzenyaeger

Schwarzenyaeger

Formerly "Dog-In-Door"
That's right, the beloved original already has a sequel.



Looking for advice especially on the drums. It's really mostly just one drum pattern. How do I make it more exciting?
 
I'm a terrible drummer, so my advice isn't worth a hill of beans. But still...Try adding some ghost notes on the snare to give a little more human feel. And vary the velocity of some of those notes, like the hihats that don't occur on a 2 or 4 beat. Crash cymbals in particular suffer from max-velocity hits. I always back off on the crash velocity or else they sound like some robot caveman trying to destroy a perfectly good piece of brass. Depending on which sampler you're using, you can always bring up the overhead volume in the mix, or bring up the volume of that cymbal in particular. Usually I find that I don't need it.

Take an evening and try to tap out that same rhythm on an imaginary drum set. Pay attention to how hard you hit certain notes. See if you can start to see patterns in how the accents fall (mainly on 2 and 4 beats). Lighten up on the notes that don't occur on 2 or 4 in a song that's in 4/4 time.

Getting a human feel while step-editing in a piano roll is really tough. It's as much an art as a science, and I'm apparently neither artist nor scientist when it comes to this. Every time I try to dink around with velocities and accents, I end up with something totally inhuman. I play drums at a kindergarten level, but I still have better luck with an e-kit than a MIDI keyboard or step editing in piano roll.

Nice heavy guitar tones though, and I like the organ. Cool solo at the end as well. And your drum samples sound good to me. See how it sounds to you if you back off the velocity on some of the kit pieces. Sometimes those not-quite-100-percent hits sound more convincing than the full-on 100% hits.
 
I liked the guitar and keyboard sounds a lot. Real good playing. The only comment on guitar tone was that the real distorted rhythm power guitar didn't quite have enough bite to me. Minor complaint tho. I thought it all sounded good.

The bass sound was a little too twangy for me.

Some of the guitar was a little too dry. I don't know if I've ever said something didn't have *enough* reverb. :) There was a funky clean-ish guitar part that I thought sounded too dry.
 
Thanks for the listens, everybody.

@Tadpui: Superior Drummer seems to give 0 sh*ts about my velocity settings. It doesn't change the volume no matter how high or low I go with the MIDI note.
Any ideas?
 
Thanks for the listens, everybody.

@Tadpui: Superior Drummer seems to give 0 sh*ts about my velocity settings. It doesn't change the volume no matter how high or low I go with the MIDI note.
Any ideas?

Hmmm...I would verify that it's actually the velocity that you're altering. Not sure which DAW you're using, but in Reaper, velocity is the default item that shows up under the piano roll. There are a ton of different properties that you can alter, maybe it's set to some property other than velocity?

I just started messing with SD2, so I'm not very well-versed in its inner workings yet. But in my initial fumblings with it, it responded to velocity just like the other drum samplers that I've used, without having to change any settings.
 
It's labeled "Velocity" and goes from 1-127. Every time I move it, it plays the respective sound of what I'm moving. I'm on Pro Tools atm. I remember doing this in Ableton easy-peasy.
I'm giving the Quantize and Velocity randomizers a spin...
 
That's pretty good! I had no idea Austrians were so funky. I like the bass tone and the organ. When I say I hate keyboards, by the way, that doesn't include the organ... I think it's called a Hammond? The one in all the Boston songs.

Now we all get to sit on our hands and wait for part III. Use Roman numerals when naming your sequels, by the way. It's much classier.
 
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