HELP with midi drums

[luken2000]

Hey guys, i´m new here and my question is how can i adjust sound of my midi drums which imo sound still quite unnatural. I know that it never gonna sound like a real drummer though i need to find a way how to make it near perfection. Btw it´s a mix of cymbals, toms and hihats from ez drummer dfh, some kick i found on internet and addictive tama snare. Would someone give some advice where am i wrong with it? thanx

 

[squibble94]

Really? I don't think it sounds all that bad. Did you try it in a full mix? It seems like the snare's a little loud though.

 

[suprstar]

To me it sounds like a program, it's too perfect. Some of the pattens (esp. in the cymbals) sound identical in 2 consecutive measures, so it sounds like a copy/paste. You kinda have that 'machine-gun' thing with the double-kicks at the end. It'd be a lot more pronounced if it was more than 3 of those 16ths in a row, but you can def. hear it.

The first thing I'd do is to go thru and edit the velocities, and even the timing a little bit. A velocity change changes the sound of the drum too, not just the volume, which is why a vsti like EZDrummer has a ton of samples of every drum recorded with different strength hits. You have a hodgepodge of samples from all over the place, do you really have a 'complete' set? What are you sequencing these samples with? A good vsti would do all this for you, EZDrummer and Battery both have a 'humanizer' that does exactly this, I think practically any modern drum vsti will too.

 

[luken2000]

Do you think that i have to change the velocity of snare as well? I mean, if you listen to some songs esp. metal, snare sounds almost the same every hit. About the cymbals hihats, this is the stuff i need to change for sure. And I´m mixing, sequencing it all in reaper

 

[luken2000]

fyi, this is the mix looks like. It´s first demo, shitty synth but that´s the kind of sound i want to go for. Drums are the same.

 

[dintymoore]

Do you think that i have to change the velocity of snare as well? I mean, if you listen to some songs esp. metal, snare sounds almost the same every hit. About the cymbals hihats, this is the stuff i need to change for sure. And I´m mixing, sequencing it all in reaper

I don't worry about changing the snare volume on backbeats. It's usually better consistent, and with real drums the snare is usually running through a compressor so that makes it very much the same every hit, same with the kick.

fyi, this is the mix looks like. It´s first demo, shitty synth but that´s the kind of sound i want to go for. Drums are the same.

Sounds pretty good. To me I'd rather bring the synth and guitar down (or the drums up) a bit.

 

[suprstar]

I don't worry about changing the snare volume on backbeats. It's usually better consistent, and with real drums the snare is usually running through a compressor so that makes it very much the same every hit, same with the kick.

That's true, but there's still variance in different hits on the same drum. If you only use one single sample for snare, there's no variance for moving the hit to different spots on the drum head, hitting at different strengths, which alters the sound a lot. Thats a big reason why ezd and battery et al are so much better than the dr770's and sr16's. I put a lot of variance on my stuff, if it's a program I go back and do it by hand. MIDI recorded off v-drums comes in very natural. On this track, the 1st part is 100% program, the 2nd part is played and edited:

I listened to your drum track on a few systems, its really not too bad, it's better than I thought listening to it the first time on my pc speakers here at work. The kick is crazy loud tho, I had to turn the bass ALL the way down to make it listenable. Turn it down or eq some (a lot) of the bass out of it.