Programing drums

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JigglingAtom

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I was wondering if anybody could give me some simple tips on how to built drums on a MIDI grid, I use Ableton Live and the Impulse instrument. I have 500Mb of drum samples that i drag in to that. My main problem is that i never get them to sound very good. They always sound so boxy, I don´t know if you know what i mean but it´s makes sense in my language. I am also open for trying new programs/Vst if you can recommend any....

Peace!
 
JigglingAtom said:
HÆ

I was wondering if anybody could give me some simple tips on how to built drums on a MIDI grid, I use Ableton Live and the Impulse instrument. I have 500Mb of drum samples that i drag in to that. My main problem is that i never get them to sound very good. They always sound so boxy, I don´t know if you know what i mean but it´s makes sense in my language. I am also open for trying new programs/Vst if you can recommend any....

Peace!
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Do you mean the SOUND of the drums is "boxy"? Or do you mean the beat ends up sounding "boxy", as in "no feel" and very "square"?
 
RAMI said:
Do you mean the SOUND of the drums is "boxy"? Or do you mean the beat ends up sounding "boxy", as in "no feel" and very "square"?
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Ends up sounding Square yes. And I always put some reverb on them. Just never get good drums in my recordings,

I think what i am looking after is some Tutorials or something to get better at this.
 
I still don't understand what you mean. Since you sort of morphed both his explanations into one.

Does the SOUND of the samples end up boxy?

Or is it the GROOVE that feels boxy and rigid to you? As in, too robotic and not like a human drummer?

If it's the groove, that's the problem with painting in MIDI grooves, you're...painting grooves, not drumming them. You can get MIDI grooves that will sound better than anything you can program in as they are actual drummer performances.
 
FunkDaddy said:
I still don't understand what you mean. Since you sort of morphed both his explanations into one.

Does the SOUND of the samples end up boxy?

Or is it the GROOVE that feels boxy and rigid to you? As in, too robotic and not like a human drummer?

If it's the groove, that's the problem with painting in MIDI grooves, you're...painting grooves, not drumming them. You can get MIDI grooves that will sound better than anything you can program in as they are actual drummer performances.
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I beg to differ a bit here, FD. You definitely can programme just as good as ready-made grooves. You need to take your time, think like a drummer and have a good programme with a good humanize function like Steven Slate Drums, Battery, EZ Drummer, among others......
 
yup definitely...but man it takes time


The few tracks ive done with programmed acoustic drums have taken twice as long, at least, as my other stuff and thats all because of the drums....

make your first 4 bars then adjust it, velocity, note placement, on each 4 bar unit and it will sound human..I do the main beat with an mpd but the fills have to be drawn in, I dont have a fine enough sense of rhythm...but you can get right into it, its almost the geekiest part of making a song


my computer drums sound computer programmed...got that bit right lol :D
 
has anyone tried jamstix 3?

Id be interested to hear how that technology's progressing
 
IMO the best way to get "realistic" acoustic drum programming is actually playing the parts with a midi controller.

real drums are filled with velocity changes, dynamics, micro timing offsets and accents.

if you "paint" them in you get a very homogenized version of a drum beat, hence "boxy".

also having great samples is key, the drum samples built in to ableton are kinda lame.

try painting sixteenth notes on a hh and notice how machine like and off it sounds, then try actually playing those same sixteenths with a midi controller, totally different sound with the same samples.

personally i have a midi drum kit i use now and it makes a huge difference, before that MPD24, before that midi keyboard, before that paint, and before that 16-step sequencer.... each step towards the midi drum kit made the programming sound more realistic.

also i'm using great samples (joe bariesi w/ superior drummer 2.0)

layering can also help alot FWIW :)
 
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I gave up on this thread after I got the same answer to my question that I asked the question to in the first place. :eek:
 
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