EZ Drummer- Multi Track

I have a question for all of you EZ Drummer users. 

I have been using EZD for 3-4 years now and for quick song writing, I have just been opening a single track; then dragging and dropping the premade drum patterns and fills into this single track.  I will often open a second track and add high hats and symbols to that as accents.  I have also just been using the mixer in EZD to set my basic kit levels. 
 
So the question is, are there a lot of advantages to bringing EZD into Sonar as a multitrack drum version and how exactly does one do that.  I am assuming that multitracks would give me more flexibility on EQ’ing individual kit parts like bass and snare? 
 
Also, if you have multitracks for drums, which track to do actually drag a preprogrammed pattern into and do the parts automatically disperse to the individual tracks.

The multi-outputs is just that - it can/will still be receiving data from a single midi track. Or you can route as many as you want. But the only difference is that each piece of kit will be routed to its own track, so that you can tweak and adjust to your liking. 

From there on, you can do all those same things you would do with a real multi-mic'ed drumkit. Send the snare to a bus to add reverb, compress each part individually, etc...  I particularly like to mess with the "room mics" - add heavy compression, saturation, etc. It brings the whole thing to life.

You can drive the synth from a single MIDI track but route each instrument to a separate audio output. That way you retain the convenience of editing a single MIDI track while getting the benefits of treating each instrument's audio independently.

I like to split the drums into 4 or 5 audio tracks. Kick and snare on their own mono tracks, toms grouped onto a stereo track, and overheads on another stereo track.

Being able to EQ and effect each voice independently opens up a whole lot of new opportunities. Examples: delay on the snare, compression on overheads, accenting the kick beater with EQ, reverb on toms.

Another cool trick once you're doing it this way: add sends to the snare, toms and (maybe) kick tracks and route them to a bus containing a distortion plugin. Lately I've been using Redopter from D16 for this. You can then either mix a little of the distorted version for subtle grit, or automate the amount of parallel distortion to bring in an entirely new drum sound for specific parts of the song.

Thanks guys, this is going to be a lot to wrap my brain around.  I joined Dave's Gator Tracks forum and have been reading up on his info on EZD.

Bit, I am really interested in how you are reasigning the instruments to individual audio tracks as well.  I do like the simplisity of dragging and dropping files into a single track because it is really easy to compose quick scratch songs this way.  It may be just as easy with multiple tracks of instruments....I just have n't gotten far enough with todays info to know.

Danny, Thanks a bunch for the link to this video.  When I get home from work I will definately down load you video and give it a spin.

ANOTHER THING TO CONSIDER

UPGRADE TO SUPERIOR

worth every penny to me

look into superior.
it has a lot to offer, and the upgrade price, when on sale, is a no brainer.

I use Superior and like it, but there's a lot to be said for simplicity. And yes, EZ is much lighter on the cpu. Get all the bleed samples going and Superior can take over a gigabyte of RAM and a major bite out of the cpu.

Thanks, Bit. Looks like I'll stick with EZ and Steven Slate for now.

Mike, don't forget.....you only need to set that stuff up once...then save it as a track template and you'll never have to set it up again from scratch. Just right click on any of your tracks in edit view after you have everything set up, and "save track template" and you'll always have it. It will look something like this pic.

Then all you have to do is import it when you need it and it will already be set up. Glad you found the vid helpful...best of luck. :)
To see the image better, click here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4909348/4Mike.jpg
-Danny

Hi Deisel, glad you liked the video, thanks! Unfortunately, SD 3 doesn't allow for the same options. However, you could simulate it with a little work. I'm not an SD 3 guy myself, though I appreciate it as being a very good entry level drum module. It just doesn't have enough hits for me and is more velocity controlled than "hit specific" if you know what I mean?

Anyway, for you to achieve over-heads or a room simulation, it's going to take some work on your part but this will definitely give you what you're looking for to an extrent. For the most part, what we are going to do here, is create the overheads with an atmosphere. To do this, you'll need to bounce down and create a wave file while using the drum module of your choice.

For example, if you listen to a drum kit with just the over-heads open and all direct mic'ing muted, you're going to hear the entire kit in a room with the cymbals being the loudest in the mix. You're going to have to simulate this and use a few ms of delay or spacing to compensate. What I would do FIRST is, get a good mix on the kit that you like that sounds great with your song and send it to a drum bus called drum bus 1. Then, save that mix and also save the SD 3 kit as a preset with a name like "name of song full kit". You'll need to revert back to this which is why I'm having you save it.

Next, create another mix of the drums inside SD 3 or using virtual tracks if you've created individuals and turn down the kick, snare and toms just a bit so the cymbals are a little louder and send them to another created drum bus and call it drum bus 2. Next, bounce down a stereo wave file of that drum mix and name it "Overheads". Select the track you just bounced, and move it to the right 2-4 "ticks" (whatever sounds better to you) using the "slide" function in Sonar. Add a small studio room verb or an impulse to drum bus 2. Either will work fine. Put a compressor after the room verb or impulse and smash it pretty good to where it sounds like you have a drum kit in a room where the cymbals are dominating a bit yet the drums do not sound like they are close mic'd. Eq it so it sounds like drums coming through over-heads being cautious of lows and highs. Drums coming through overheads is sort of a mid range type sound with a little sizzle. Don't try to make it sound like a great drum kit for the song...make it sound like overheads picking up an entire kit in a small room.

Now, mute that track and go back and revert to your "name of song full kit" preset in SD 3 and make sure you have it sounding great in your mix. Remember, this whole set of drums is being sent to drum bus 1. Unmute the "overheads" track and when you press play, both your full kit and the bounced kit with effects will play. Mix in the "overheads" wave file kit to taste as that is now your simulated "overheads" control. :) With a little trial and error, this will work wonders for you. You could also eliminate the "slide" and use a delay if you want to...but I like the slide thing myself. For added texture, you can effect individual tracks with verb on the "full kit" if you wish or even send a different type of verb to drum bus 1 to get more ambience for the up close mics. I would be careful of this though and do all my processing on a per track basis on the full kit though. Hopefully you created individidual tracks for this kit via synth rack like I did in my video...this way you can process the kit individually and maybe create an actual verb for the snare which will not appear on the other drums. :) Hope this helps....best of luck!

Not a problem Deisel, glad it helped you out. Yeah, a few drum modules out there just don't have the hits. That's what makes a drum program realistic. There is only so much that can be done using velocity control for some of them. I'm not even totally happy with the Slate stuff. It has loads of multisamples, but many of them sound too alike. If you want a drum module that has really good hits and control, you gotta go with EZD, Superior or BFD2 in my opinion. The problem with EZD...it's so affordable, just about everyone has it and well...you're gonna wind up with a drum sound that 3 millions others are probably using. Superior, being a bit more pricey, has other options with cooler kits. BFD, totally off the hook and realistic. Pricey, but worth it in my opinion because it is the closest thing I have ever heard to a real mic'd kit.

The others are a bit too perfect to me. They come out of the box sounding really good. Me personally, I like to make my kits sound good on my own. It gives me the ability to show flaws. You can use any EZD or Superior kit right out of the box with little to no tweaking. You can't quite do that with BFD2. It's not perfect just like when you mic a drum kit, not everything is going to be exactly what you want....but you can make BFD exactly what you want. You'll have to work those kit pieces in BFD just like a real kit. When I take away the room and over-heads on Superior or EZD, they lose their realism. Do that to BFD, it sounds like you put a drum on your knee and hit it. It always sounds like a drum...it never sounds fake.

Some guys don't want to mess around with their drums that extensively...and that's perfectly ok and acceptable. That's why programs like SD2 and EZD exist. I'm not knocking them, I just like to work my sounds so that they sound different than everyone else's. I want someone to ask me "dude, what the heck did you use for drums on that tune" instead of "nice drum tone bro, sounds like the drums from hell main snare and the kick from the NY kit". Sure you can manipulate them, but there's a certain realness with BFD that I haven't heard in anything else so far. The downside, it's a bit pricey...but worth it if you want the next best thing to a real mic'd kit in my opinion.

I have several drum modules and use them all. They all have their place. But my heart belongs to BFD with a few Drumagog samples to further enhance it as my weapons of choice. Best of luck! :)

-Danny

Alegria


A picture is worth a thousand words, but a video is worth it's weight in gold. Great stuff Danny! I did watch closely at how you went about using different kits to get individual control of the cymbals. This was another question I had on my list and I'll be looking into this more closely today, on SD2 though. Any plans for a video on parallel compression for the kick and such, or what kit pieces would generally benefit from compression? I know I would be very interested, even if it only confirms I've been doing things right. Thanks for taking the time to share your knowledge Danny... way cool! 

Hi Alegria,
 
Glad you enjoyed the vid, thanks! As far as video's, I don't have any showing p-comp. The video's I make these days are made specifically for each persons needs in lesson format. Most of the one's I have shared are from the little free library I made that I shared on a few sites a few years ago.
 
P-comp is easy. You just send your drums to a bus, put a compressor on the bus so that it tightens up the entire drum track lightly. Then, create an effects bus and load a compressor into it, set up each drum track to have the compressor via send on the track...set the compressor to totally squash at about -20dB of gain removal, and mix that sound in with your kit using the send levels. You'll hear the effect kick in when it's mixed right. It will sound horrible if you use too much. Just experiment with it. You'll probably find a few starting point presets that say p-comp or something. I just experiment with it until it sounds right for the song and mix a little in when I use that technique. But I really don't like that sound, so I don't use it often.
 
As far as kit pieces to compress, I always compress kick and snare. Toms and cymbals to me are a bit more dynamic, so I usually don't mess with them and use automation to control them instead. I do like to create a few drum busses though depending on how many kit pieces I'm using...but I always make a master drum bus and throw a Fairchild compressor on it. It works really well for me and I love what it does to the kit to just keep it tight as an entity. Sometimes I may layer 3 snare drums or more...so I'll send them to a snare bus where I'll have addtional processing going on as well as processing for each snare track. It's always different though. Most times I send my toms to a bus after they've been mixed and they too will be processed as an entity. But it all depends what I'm trying to do really. With kick drums, sometimes I layer 2 together. One will be processed pretty heavy for a bit of attack, the other I'll leave alone for a more natural sound. Just experiment and have fun with it. :)
 
-Danny

@ Danny

You're a gem Danny, thanks for the info. I'll be working on this today.


@ bitflipper

So are you!! Thanks for the explanation. Makes sense. I'm on X1 64, which is another set of bugeroos altogether, but I'm more comfortable now with this interface than I was on Sonar 8.3 - I never upgraded to 8.5 for some reason.

Alegria: thanks so much for the kind words...you're quite welcome. :)

Deisel: Win 7 x64 here...no problems or issues with EZD or Superior. Now, they claimed they needed a patch to run EZD with x64, but it always worked for me using J-Bridge. However, I did get the patch for it and no longer needed to use J-Bridge with it. So no worries...they both work for me using Sonar 32 and 64. :)

Any time Deisel...good luck with everything. By the way, once you get Superior, your EZD sounds will appear there as well once you point the directory to Superior. :)

-Danny