Bad real drums vs bad sequenced drums

[brandondrury]

I'm doing my homework when it comes to researching the world of programming drums. (It looks like an electronic kit and a hundred hours of drum practice are going to be needed next year). In the mean time I'm stuck with a mouse and finding ways to make drumming with a mouse sound more effective (I hate to use the "real" word).

Anyway, all these articles mention how great a real drummer sounds and how you've got to go through various techniques to make the sequenced drums sound more "real". Well, most of the drummers I know just aren't that good. I know very few who I think really have great "feel".

So I'm wondering, just for discussion's sake, what's worse....poorly played real drums, or poorly sequenced fake drums?

One argument to that story is dance music makes A LOT of money. (I'm guessing more than rock music although that's just a wild guess without any hard facts for basis) The general public seams to be accepting of the mega quantized dance music sound.

So my vote goes in the "bad drummers are worse than poorly sequenced drums"?

Brandon

[richiebee]

They're both as bad as one another. If you don't like the idea of quantized drum patterns, you can introduce grooves to your Cubase programmed rhythms that can be randomized to any degree that you want, whether it be velocity or position and once you have found the groove that works for your song, you can apply it to the whole song, with said randomization that adds the human touch.

Drum programming shouldn't take hours. It just takes a brief study of what drummers do. Remember they only have two hands and two feet (well most drummers do anyway), don't overprogram. Making it sound good to me is down to the samples. If you have a kit with several different velocity samples, especially on the snare, it can make a world of difference.

[brandondrury]

don't overprogram

I think that is what takes the longest. I think overprogramming is probably easier and faster. It's keeping it simple and somehow human that is the real challenge for me thus far.

, you can introduce grooves to your Cubase programmed rhythms that can be randomized to any degree that you want,

How well do these work? I'll probably get to do some experimenting in the next few weeks, but for now I'm still figuring it out how to turn it on.

Brandon

[dach]

I don't know... after the kik/snr/hat groove is done....those little subtleties are what makes it good... and seem real.... grace strokes/notes, hat work, variations in dynamics... you know.... randomization only works with what you already have programmed... it doesn't add additional things like ghosting etc..

I do see your point and agree, but with jazz, I'd think you'd be all over the crazy stuff. For a lot of the stuff I do, simple can work ok, but some things need so much more than cut or paste can bring to the table...

when i'm doing it, most of the refinement comes after I have most everything tracked...

[brandondrury]

I wasn't sure how I would feel about midi sequencing on songs that are supposed to feel like a real drummer was playing on them (more or less). After a long session of arranging and sequencing today and even more time spent really focusing on the little things (for a totally sequencing newbie) I was amazed at how "life" you can give sequenced drums just by fucking them up.

I have a feeling that I'll eventually develop a method to my madness, but tracks with cheesy VSTi drums suddenly sound non-midi or at least less-midi than they were before applying the"human approach". I couldn't find the randomize feature on Cubase so I just did it by hand. I was very happy with it.

I think in time, it'll become second nature to make a real, natural drum performance relatively quickly. But having said that, it's quite clear that you could get as wild as you wanted to with this. I can totally see what Dach is saying about "perfecting" drum sequences, but randomizing by hand certainly made at least 3,000% improvement.

Brandon

[richiebee]

It seems that they made groove quantizing more convoluted in SX after v5, but here's how I do it.

For simple positional quantizing, use MIDI > QUANTIZE SETUP. Here you can choose how much gets quantized, how much gets left and whether it just moves your part closer to the quantize points or right on it (bottom right of window.

(apologies for the size of these - I have no graphics software on this computer to resize)



If you want to use velocity and/or note lengths in your quantizing, you need to set up a groove first. Go to an editor (I find the drum editor works best, but then you don't get to use note lengths) and make your groove - move notes off their quantize points, set velocities etc....

Then go back to the main window, select your bar of groove and choose MIDI > ADVANCED QUANTIZE > PART TO GROOVE.

Now if you go to quantize set up, you have some additional options to set up your groove...



Once again, you can choose how much gets quantized, how much gets left, and how tight that quantizing is. The key here is the random quantize which will move notes off their quantize point to give that human feel.

If you use this feature, once you've programmed a couple of different drum patterns for your song, you can apply it throughout, add some of this randomization, and then go in and add fills and make other changes. I'm not suggesting that it isn't significant work to create drum parts, but you certainly don't have to play them manually, one bar at a time.

Rich

[dach]

The key here is the random quantize which will move notes off their quantize point to give that human feel.

I have used randomization in the past but don't anymore... I don't even use any quantizing when doing drums since I switched platforms a couple of year ago.

The only problem with randomization, unless it's only set for a couple of ticks is the window of time it works with... which is both before and after the beat. This is usually contrary to how good drummers play, which is usually one or the other depending on the groove of the beat... push or pull or even "straight"...

I rarely do a one bar groove that's a "keeper" anymore... it's usually 4 bars or longer... harder, but for many non-pop styles of music, you will notice that not only is there a definite 1 or 2 bar drum beat, that everyone is referring to here, but an additional groove or pulse that is comprised of many bars... "usually" felt by the downbeat of each bar..... which is part of something even larger...

the beat you are creating is just a building block for the "pulse" of the song... when the "pulse" is grooving, meaning you can feel a definite flow from the beginning of "A" to the transition into "B" and so forth, now you've got something called a good performance.... like a band is doing when they are "on" and feeling the music/song. Obviously, all instruments are playing, but a one or two bar of midi drums cut and pasted usually will not allow this to happen very well....

so.... as I was scratching the surface of in the other controller thread.... sometimes to get the "beat" set up to work as part of the "pulse" and for everything to flow seamlessly... you may need to massage the overall beat & rhythm instruments, in stages, in order to get a flow throughout the song from beginning to end. (the big advantage of mostly downward fader movements instead of upward is you are creating additional space for other neat things to happen like quickly drawing attention to other elements)

One thing I've learned after producing several thousand cuts, and this has been discussed in the producers forum as well as the controller thread, is that people who mix well... not only perform balancing, eq and compression well, etc, but they are looking at the BIG picture.... creating a performance with what they have to guide the listener from beginning to end while keeping it as exciting as possible.... the grouping/bussing fader movements I was talking about are just ONE of MANY things that can be done... and of course there are always exceptions to any rule.

Not only is it difficult to explain this but the fact that most musicians just don't listen makes it tougher. Most musicians, including myself are trained to discriminate and pick out minute details, and can follow several instruments throughout the song while ignoring other elements. The ironic thing is, most people just don't listen this way. They listen to a song as something WHOLE when musicians and many engineers only listen to it as a bunch of separate elements, parts or sections....

music that feels good, makes people move, makes people sing, etc, etc.... usually makes money... regardless of style... music that does not, usually doesn't do as well.... you will not always be faced with the perfect idea, song, tracks or performance, so it should be your job to do what you can to make it appealing to the people that listen to it

[dach]

another way of looking at the picture:

http://recforums.prosoundweb.com/index.php/t/12249/0/

read what Ross hagarth said (2nd post down)

....
"i know that i have music everyday in my life in one shape or another
it is my inspiration for work , it is my work and inspiration
i look at audio differently then music
audio is technical
music is not
i try and take audio and turn that back into music or keep the music and the audio one
sometimes, and very often i need to manipulate audio and forge that back into music
i do find that i think about this and act on this almost everyday"
......

[dach]

Also on PSW, there is thread about Andy Wallace and the way he uses faders....

[brandondrury]

Ross hagarth

Like that guy knows anything!!

http://www.hoaxproductions.com/discography.html

Forget the 200 trillion albums sales. Scroll down to the movies. This is where it's at! Top Gun, Days of Thunder, and Beverly Hills Cop. This guys work defined my life at age 6.

Most musicians, including myself are trained to discriminate and pick out minute details, and can follow several instruments throughout the song while ignoring other elements. The ironic thing is, most people just don't listen this way. They listen to a song as something WHOLE when musicians and many engineers only listen to it as a bunch of separate elements, parts or sections....

music that feels good, makes people move, makes people sing, etc, etc.... usually makes money... regardless of style... music that does not, usually doesn't do as well.... you will not always be faced with the perfect idea, song, tracks or performance, so it should be your job to do what you can to make it appealing to the people that listen to it

I'm pretty sure that Dach is just paraphrasing a passage from Psalms or Corinthians or one of those books of the bible! Seriously, that's the name of the game right there. Unfortunately, neither Dach nor Ross Hogarth give any specific insight into how some dickhead in his living room is to achieve this. (Except maybe the moving fader trick).



Brandon