How do you make midi drums sound realistic?

[TimothyLeary]

Nowadays I hear more often natural drums sounding like programmed drums. People are killing the drums sound.

 

[GunpointMetal]

yeah, that's why most people just go ahead and either program or replace them....they're just gonna compress, EQ, transient effect, limit, recompress, EQ, gate, sidechain compress, EQ, parallel compress, EQ, and hand quantize each hit of a "normally recorded" acoustic drummer to sound like SD2.0 anyways, might as well skip all the bullshit...I think for our next record, we'll program all of the shells to what our drummer plays and just record cymbals. Fake cymbals sound fake to me, always.

 

[imgarrett]

Hey can anyone help me out? I'm running superior 2.0 and all of my cymbals are choking/muting I've ran up and down my keyboard making sure the chokes weren't just on a certain keys but every crash chokes it self out randomly when triggered whether it's in 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 presses.

 

[The Reverend]

This is like the drum version of "Can you tell the difference between an Axe-Fx and a 5150?"

I have nothing to add that hasn't been covered here already. Listen to bands noted for having good drummers - note that good doesn't always mean fast - and see what they do. Listen to what they're playing in relation to what the rest of the band is doing. A blast beat can do things to a chunky riff that a slower, groovier beat can't, and vice versa. Same with fills and such.

Don't forget that the average listener can't tell the difference unless you're f--king up.

 

[Orgalmer]

A lot of this has already been covered but if you learn about writing drums as opposed to worrying about them sounding right I think you'll have more success - I think the biggest giveaway is when someone writes drum parts in a programmer and they just don't make sense or couldn't be played IRL.

I use Battery 3 for all my programming and as far as I'm concerned what comes out my speakers is pretty much exactly what I hear my drummer do live. I put some effort into velocities (in Guitar Pro) but other than that I leave it alone - I set the kicks high and add a groove velocity in the cymbals, and I also add harder hits on the snare and velocity-map my fills. That's about it.

You could use a bunch of samples for everything but I actually use one or two samples for most of my hits. I wouldn't mind having more but I don't think it's necessary to produce a realistic sound.

Just my two cents.

 

[russmuller]

Hey can anyone help me out? I'm running superior 2.0 and all of my cymbals are choking/muting I've ran up and down my keyboard making sure the chokes weren't just on a certain keys but every crash chokes it self out randomly when triggered whether it's in 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 presses.

I can't help but wonder if maybe you've somehow got it configured for aftertouch and that's what's making it choke? Is it like a cymbal catch (hitting a cymbal, then grabbing it to mute it quickly) or like the sample playback itself gets interrupted? That could be the difference between a MIDI mapping issue and some other setting on the computer.

 

[ducer]

Also check this guys Youtube channel - it is basically about mixing metal at home but he has a point when it comes to drums sound.

https://www.youtube.com/user/Jamesmsv?feature=watch

 

[imgarrett]

I can't help but wonder if maybe you've somehow got it configured for aftertouch and that's what's making it choke? Is it like a cymbal catch (hitting a cymbal, then grabbing it to mute it quickly) or like the sample playback itself gets interrupted? That could be the difference between a MIDI mapping issue and some other setting on the computer.

I thought about that, but I haven't really dicked around with superiors settings. It's all default cause I just freshly installed it.

 

[cgabb]

Would you be kind enough to tell me what program was used on your friend's recording ? It's the first time programmed drums sound good to me. (granted he worked his ass off to get this sound but still)

 

[Poltergeist]

This is an excellent thread. I'm just getting into programming midi drums and it sure is a tedious thing that I couldn't manage to do without a midi controller. What about options like in Pro Tools like midi merge, couldn't you just lay down you bass and snare hits and then fill in your crashes and rides ect with a second recording pass for more of a realistic feel? It is very difficult to keep the timing correct while playing all of the hits on a keyboard like you would a real drum kit... but hell it'd be way harder for me with my note duration fluency/knowledge programming them individually.

 

[russmuller]

This is an excellent thread. I'm just getting into programming midi drums and it sure is a tedious thing that I couldn't manage to do without a midi controller. What about options like in Pro Tools like midi merge, couldn't you just lay down you bass and snare hits and then fill in your crashes and rides ect with a second recording pass for more of a realistic feel? It is very difficult to keep the timing correct while playing all of the hits on a keyboard like you would a real drum kit... but hell it'd be way harder for me with my note duration fluency/knowledge programming them individually.

That's exactly what I do. First pass is usually whatever is keeping time, second pass is kick/snare, next pass is toms/fills, then crashes/cymbals. It's a slow process because I'm no badass like Paul from Chimp Spanner.

 

[hikizume976]

a little late to the party as well. Just thought I'd leave this here for anyone looking for help in making programmed drums sound more realistic.

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