How to make EZdrummer sound good?...

[arcgarrets]

Hey Guys,
I'm having a hard time making ezdrummer sound good. And by good I mean full and loud and heavy sounding and what not. I am very new to recording so I'm still learning alot but I'm stuck here. I'm using logic 9 and DFH. So I use a groove from the library and load it up through ezdrummer but how to make it sound good after that? I don't know what plugins to use or anything. Any advice would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

 

[thesimo]

turn the hit velocity's for all your hits up to the max (127)
gives em more va-va-vooom

then turn the bottom snare volume way down, fade the top snare a little, and then remove all the drums from the ambient mics, and turn those down too.

 

[Travmack199]

Yuup, that's probably your problem haha!

After you change the first hit velocity to 127 the rest will be set to 127 as well.

Also i guess ez drummer has mixing similar to superior? that also is important

 

[Splees]

definitely play around with the velocities a little if they're not smacking hard enough for you. just don't go overboard or else it'll just sound like crap. try to leave some room though. think of it this way, not every drummer plays as hard as they can through out an entire song. leave this extra bit for when you really want to push it. I'd say don't go over 112 until you absolutely need it.

I would try using some parallel compression first. send your drums to an aux with the compressor on it. Try the VCA or FET and set the ratio fairly high 6:1 and up with a fast attack and slow release, you want to squash it. play and slowly bring up the aux fader to bring more body and balls in.

also a good tip.. if you want to repeat your beat, Command R it and make a copy or two (however many you want) but don't loop it. glue those guys together then open up the piano roll, command a to select all. click on transform, go on down to humanize and select that a few times. doing this will keep your repeated drums from sounding like a drum machine but still tight. even if they are good samples and have a built in randomizer this is a nice trick to use.


pay close attention to cymbal velocities especially crashes. make sure they're all different but generally in the same area. you have to remember how a drummer would play them. rides are generally pretty heavy so it's not uncommon for them to be a slightly ahead or behind the rest of the beat when it comes to real drummer trying to compensate for that. now you don't have to go too crazy with this either since most of the loops are played by real drummers. this is more for programming your own beats.

 

[gangaman]

definitely play around with the velocities a little if they're not smacking hard enough for you. just don't go overboard or else it'll just sound like crap. try to leave some room though. think of it this way, not every drummer plays as hard as they can through out an entire song. leave this extra bit for when you really want to push it. I'd say don't go over 112 until you absolutely need it.

I would try using some parallel compression first. send your drums to an aux with the compressor on it. Try the VCA or FET and set the ratio fairly high 6:1 and up with a fast attack and slow release, you want to squash it. play and slowly bring up the aux fader to bring more body and balls in.

also a good tip.. if you want to repeat your beat, Command R it and make a copy or two (however many you want) but don't loop it. glue those guys together then open up the piano roll, command a to select all. click on transform, go on down to humanize and select that a few times. doing this will keep your repeated drums from sounding like a drum machine but still tight. even if they are good samples and have a built in randomizer this is a nice trick to use.


pay close attention to cymbal velocities especially crashes. make sure they're all different but generally in the same area. you have to remember how a drummer would play them. rides are generally pretty heavy so it's not uncommon for them to be a slightly ahead or behind the rest of the beat when it comes to real drummer trying to compensate for that. now you don't have to go too crazy with this either since most of the loops are played by real drummers. this is more for programming your own beats.

ty man this is a great short introduction to make my drums sound nice!