Need help with humanizing drums

[Basp]

Hi,

As a drummer myself i'm struggeling to get MIDI drums to sound right. I've tried automatic humanizing and manual editing, which improves the end-result, but I'd like to know how to get the drums to sound as human as on the Animals as Leaders albums for instance.

Here is an example of one of my MIDI tracks and the sound through my SD2.0 preset:

MIDI track

SD2.0 track

If you guys have any tips on how to improve my MIDI, maybe the drum mix itself, it would be much appreciated!

 

[axxessdenied]

The secret is in the velocities not whether they are stuck to a grid or not. A human never hits something at the exact same strength every time.

 

[davidgotmilk]

varying velocity will make drums sound much more realistic

http://www.sevenstring.org/forum/drums-percussion/104336-bring-your-programmed-drums-life.html

 

[Basp]

This link was actually the basis of my previous humanization efforts. I'm trying to get my drums on super realistic levels beyond what this link can teach me. Any tips there?

 

[Winspear]

I can't remember the exact details of what I wrote in that thread but I know my approach hasn't changed much. I'm not hearing as much velocity variation in your drums as I would expect? Where are the numbers at?
Here's something I did recently - check out the quiet hits on the snare and cymbals drumv2-Master

EDIT: I will take a look at the MIDI

 

[Winspear]

First impressions - cymbal riding is too consistent - don't be afraid to move the offbeats around more and accent the beat even more, have a few hits bordering on too quiet etc. Snare could do with a lot more variation and some drags. The part where the hihat is hit twice as a small fill before the bar is very robotic. Try using the different hihat articulations (switching between open 5 and open 4etc) and being a lot more random. Simply setting those hits to 100 and 50 rather than 80 and 100 is a big improvement (usually the first hit will be much harder). Triplet doublekick part could use a lot more variation in velocity between the onbeats and the two offbeats of the triplet

 

[Basp]

I'll try that, thank you for looking at the MIDI track! I thought I has already pretty random with my velocities, but apparently not enough...

Do you have any more tips or rules, like the one where you hit the first hit in a fill much harder?

 

[GunpointMetal]

Randomizing the velocities doesn't seem to do much unless they are like 15-30 away from each other. I was doing that for a while where I would set everything in by hand, varying all over the place, but only by like 5-10 velocity layers, and it never really sounded like there was any other hits besides HARD.

 

[porchy]

In Logic, I humanize in a drum-by-drum fashion.

So if the snare is at 97 (assuming no buildups or anything), I'll only highlight the snare hits and then randomize via +/-.

You'll see how the spread affects some drums; for snare, let's say, a wider spread is nicer, but for the kick, tighter is probably the better option.

Also, does anybody know is there's a way to humanize velocities (i.e., snap it all to grid, then do something absurdly subtle like adding +/- 1/128th note)?

 

[Brun8]

Varying velocities is really going to help you but also that not every single hit is snap on the grid...as a drummer you know that when you finish a tom/cymbals drum fill one hand is going to hit the left or right crash sooner than the other one if you know what i mean...anyways just my 2 centsss

 

[Winspear]

Also, does anybody know is there's a way to humanize velocities (i.e., snap it all to grid, then do something absurdly subtle like adding +/- 1/128th note)?

I presume you meant timing. I don't use Logic but it'll probably be around the Quantize options. In Sonar, Quantize has a random setting with an amount of deviation etc. I use it pretty heavily on the cymbals where the transients aren't so clear.