Midi Drum can be good?!~

[anywhither]

Hello,
Im going to do some recording practice recently,all instrument recording and mixing is ok for me....except drum sound.
I do everything at home,so I can't have a real drum.
I've tried some Midi Drum Soundfont,but it's not good enough.

it's the step I tried:
(I use Calkwalk Sonar)
1:record the midi drum tracks to audio.(separate snare track,bass drum track,tom track......etc)
2:using Plug-ins to compress and EQing.export and inport again
3:adding some reverb and pan every tracks.
4:export to combine whole tracks to one track.

did I do something wrong?or any other better method?
anyone here is using Midi drum too and have a Good result?

 

[Robert D]

I use gigasampler and Peter Erskin's living drums samples, with no quantitization, triggered by playing an electronic kit. I think the biggest mistake people make with midi drums is trying to make it perfect, usually by over quantitizing. Leave it a little loose. Also, high quality samples are not treated with anything, so the usual approach to drum mixing needs to be applied just the same as if you miced up a kit.
Regards, RD

 

[James Argo]

Robert D was right

anywhither, I use the same setup like yours (SONAR, soundfonts, MIDI drums, etc)
Three (among other) things you would like to pay attention :

1. Most MIDI drum programmer will be glad if their MIDI sequenced drums sound "realistic". Over quantizing it will totaly destroy the feel & exciting of human aspect of the drum tracks. So, sequence them with REAL drummer in mind. Play with velocities & avoid over quantizing the notes. Tempo indeed needs to be watched, but sometime, slightly out of it and back to it's pre-defined value will make your drum sounds real.

2. Most samples/soundfonts already compressed & EQ'ed to it's optimal sound before shipped. So, be very carefull to add some more compression / EQ to them. I never found my self compressed or EQ to great known samples / soundfonts. You might want to play with room / reverb... but pretty rare with compression / EQ unless really necesarry.

3. Try mix 'em using similiar plugins. It needs to be "in one room"...


Jaymz






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[Chibi Nappa]

I've found that the only way to get midi drums even close to realistic is to have a good drummer perform the beat on an electronic set, and then forget about quantizing and editing.

Even with mediocre samples it can come out as acceptable, even if they do still scream "fake drums".

http://www.omnisoul.com/

Go to the "music" section there and listen to the two samples off of the "Use Your Eyes" EP. Those are two songs I recorded using all midi drums. It still grooves and still feels at least a little real since it is all a real performance by a real drummer, despite the fake-ish sounding samples.

 

[DAFFYDRUNK]

Been trying to figure out drums in Acid Pro. I have the Drum Sugar CD and have been using the one shots in addition to some one shots of drums and cymbals I've found on the net. Haven't perfected it yet, but so far it sounds far more realistic than any other fake programmed drums. You use the grid and add one shots just like you'd create something in a sequencer in step time. You can zoom the grid in and out to get more or less "detail". (IE: adjusting the grid form whole notes to 1/128th notes) Kinda hard to explain but once you figure it out it's very cool.

You can't do multiple tracks of a sound in Acid, which makes things more realistic if you do double hits or fast hits. You can also apply volume evelopes, panning envelopes and effects to each track. I'll run 3 snares 2 kicks 10 different hi-hats, 2 rides, 4 snares, ect. To make it easier to tweak panning and effects, I group em by creating busses. Then I apply the effect and panning to the busses so I don't have to tweak 30+ drum tracks. I wish they had loops of just hi-hats and rides that were a measure or 2 long, as the hard part is getting something like a fast triplet on a hi-hat to sound totally real.