About real-drumming to MIDI

[jpjeffery]

If I get my drummer mate to play a drum track on his electronic kit in to my laptop via my external Audio interface to Cubase (or similar) how does the software know what the tempo is and/or the time signature is?

I know I could get him to play along to a click track but that would rein him in too much and prevent him from pushing the faster sections or pulling back the slower sections...

Wouldn't it?

JJ

[tacman7]

Cubase doesn't know what tempo it is, he would have to play to a click.

Or record the take and adjust the tempo in cubase. He's not a machine so it's going to change.

There's an SOS article that addresses this:

Using Cubase SX's Timewarp tool

>>In the Key editor, the main use of the Timewarp tool is for building a tempo map around a MIDI recording that might not have been played to a metronome click

[jpjeffery]

Originally Posted by tacman7

Cubase doesn't know what tempo it is, he would have to play to a click.

That's what I thought. My question was prompted by part of the KHR 'Setting up' book in which BD suggests using real drummers to record MIDI drum tracks. I've not finished reading that section though so maybe he does go in to it.

Originally Posted by tacman7

There's an SOS article that addresses this:

Using Cubase SX's Timewarp tool

You're referring to an article on a different site to this one!?!?!? Don't tell Brandon!


Thanks, Tacman.

[garageband]

I could get him to play along to a click track but that would rein him in too much and prevent him from pushing the faster sections or pulling back the slower sections...

No. But don't take our word for it. Try it out. Some drummers fear using a click and that's one of the stock excuses. There's thousands of examples in the world where the drummer's used a click and the feel of the drumming is dynamic and fits the tune. My experience is that most drummers vary the tempo too much for the arena of multitrack recording. When it comes to records, a little push-pull goes a long way. Too much and you'll have something that's unworkable for the musicians recording the rest of the parts later.

[Danny Danzi]

Here's how I do the click thing and it works much better than that click click click sound....I hate that and completely understand why a drummer would never enjoy playing to that!

Open up a new session in your DAW. You should know the BPM of your song before you even play anything. So get a metronome or something and figure out what the bpm will be. Once you have it done, set the bpm in your DAW to that time.

From there, create a midi click track that literally plays a drum kit sound. Kick, snare, hats or a ride and let that be the source of your click. It's 100 times better than that rim shot click or glock or cowbell thing. Once the midi is done, convert it to an audio track so you don't get any issues if you will be tracking any of the drums via midi using the same module. The midi drum track with the complete kit will give the drummer the feeling of playing with a cover tune....jamming along right to it. I don't know of a single drummer that hasn't played along to a cd with the drummer on the cd, so in a sense, we are simulating that. Don't ever delete the click track...even after you have tracked the song. This will allow you to judge whether something is in time or not based on the clicks being in perfect time.

You asked about the midi stuff with a real kit. If you're curious about why there is a rule of thumb suggesting drummers to use midi along with a real kit, I'll give you some of my reasons why I do it. Of course the best method of recording a drum kit is to mic it the right way. However, not everyone can do this successfully and some of the top notch studio's in the worls don't always get it right. I've edited some scary material coming out of top notch, credible studio's that sounds like ass.

What they do is, they run midi triggers on the entire kit as a safety net. These triggers capture the kit in midi format and can be sent into samplers and drum modules to further enhance the kit. They will also use this method for what we call "multing" or the mixture of different kits combined at once. This is a lethal way to get a killer kit because you have added more elements to the original. The object is to let your real kit that was mic'd be the main kit and the midi to be the support kit that just sweetens things up a bit.

Now, in the event that the real kit is sounding pretty bad, you have the midi kit as a safety net and you can bring in modules like BFD or some other killer module and make IT the main kit, and use your original mic'd kit as the support kit since it's not great enough to be the focal point.

Multing kits is a great way to make your drums huge and have several different nuances. For example, say you used a big fat snare that is kinda boxey and mid-rangey as the mic'd snare. Maybe you decided that it just doesn't crack enough even when you eq it. Flying in a sample off the midi and controlling the velocity using a slight piccolo snare may be what gives it that little extra crack that it needs. Or, you could even replace the hit or have a 50/50 mix if you used a program like Drumagog.

The key to capturing drums is to always have a back up plan especially if you are paying for that session. It's nice to come away with 2 versions of your drum session. If you don't need the midi safety net, you just don't use it. Most times though....just about every drum sound you hear today is either a midi safety net or a hybrid of samples tuned and mixed with the original mic's kit. So this is the method to the madness behind it all. Hope this helps answer your question a bit.

[jpjeffery]

Gotta love the people on this website!

That's all good stuff there. Danny's comments about drummers playing along to CDs reminds me that that's how he (my drummer friend), and all of the band have learnt at least some of the covers we're doing anyway, so it won't be that alien to him, especially if I provide a basic drum track.

Nice tips, all. Thanks.

[maschneid]

I use Toontracks Drum Tracker, Have him play it and then this program will take the hits, and convert them to midi for you. Then you just open Cubase or what ever you use and import Midi file walla!!!!

Here is an example of what im talking about. its not finished yet, and its real cymbals mixed with midi drums! but you get the idea.

If he's using an E-Kit which I think you stated! Most of them have a Midi out on the drum module you can connect that to your interface record an bam! midi drum notes played live!