a good bagpipe sound?
Now there's an oxymoron! (just kidding..)
Funny. I heard a guy say once, that perfect pitch is the sound of an accordion crushing a banjo as you chuck it into a dumpster.
Back on topic. In my experience, since I am neither a drummer, nor a keyboardist, a certain amount of midi editing is demanded in order to add a little life to those type tracks. I have had pretty good luck with good soft-synths and samplers like BFD, B4, Bosendorfer 290, etc. But, like I said. Editing is required.
Here are a few thoughts that have shaped the way I handle these things, and helped minimize the amount of "soul destroying" midi tweaking I have to do. I have broken it into separate paragraphs for drums and keys, because I approach both differently, and so anybody who is set in thier approach for either, can easily skip that info.
Drums:
For now I play my parts on a DrumKat with sticks (but will move soon to a Korg Pad Kontrol with fingers). I focus on specific parts of the kit, and record real time midi in stages. For example, I'll record kick & snare in a pass (no fills yet), then hihat & cymbals, then toms, etc. I always play to a scratch track with vocals (acoustic guit & vox) so, my accents and feel are primarily supporting the vocals, and chord changes. Later, after bass guitar, and other instruments are added, I'll add or subtract drum stuff to finalize the drums role in the entire arrangement.
On the first pass (kick & snare), I'll set up pads for: kick, two separate snare hits (for flams), snare drag, and snare rim. I play this track for the best dynamic control I can muster. Even if it means sacrificing some timing. Then I quantize it. Then I manually correct any dynamic stuff that I could have done better. I'm shaping the tones of the snare and kick now by allowing them to be hit harder and softer. I tolerate the stiffness of the quantized timing for now, and will manually move some kick and snare notes later so that it feels good with the final tracks. But for now, I move on.
Second pass (hihat & cymbals). Here, I'm hoping for good dynamics and timing, because I don't want to quantize these. Perfectly quantized hihat and cymbals sound way too machine like to me. So I shoot for good timing first, and dynamics second. I'll punch in corrections until I have met my limitations, and then manually correct a few "out of bounds" velocities and hits (timing) in piano roll mode. No quantization.
At this point, I usually save toms, various fills, and subtle kick/snare groove adjustments until the rest of the songs tracks have taken shape.
Now, because you have a good dynamic range and feel built into your midi timing and velocities, your should be getting the subtle tonal changes that a multi-layered sampler like BFD offers. so when you have a soft snare drag, it's intimate, and a loud snare crack exites the room mics, etc. You should be able to mix your mic outputs, and process a bit (eq, compress, de-ess, distortion, whatever you like), and have a decent (though incomplete) drum track taking shape. At this point, I freeze the synth and move on (for now).
After the rest of the tracks are working good. I add in fills that work with the song, and re-examine the groove. This usually requires the most attention to detail in order to avoid a machine-like quality. So I will play my best on fills, and still have to tweek quite a bit (velocity and timing). But I'll hang in there until it's all grooving good (assuming my other tracks are grooving ok).
I then go through and correct anything a real drummer wouldn't play (hihat, tom, & snare at the same time, etc).
Usually I have a decent sounding drum track with about 8 hours of total investment. It's about as labor intensive as multitracking guitars, doing harmonies, etc.
Lastly, I burn a track of just drums, and ask one of my drummer friends to critique it, and offer pointers. This does two things. It helps me think more like a drummer, and starts the ball rolling in case I want to hire the drummer himself to play it down the road.
Keys:
Piano: This (to me) is the hardest of the keys to get to sound decent, and I avoid piano as an arrangement choice unless the song is just screaming for it. Here's what I've learned about sampled piano so far. Use the best samples you can afford. I use the Bosendorfer 290. It's probably not the best, but it was the best I could afford a few years ago (I'm probably due for something new... suggestions are welcome.)
I don't quantize piano. I will play what I can, pencil the rest in (in piano roll), and tweak velocities and timings until it sounds decent. When it sounds right, each note of a chord will typically have different velocities and timings, usually centered "around" the beat. With all the effort sampled piano takes, it never sounds like a real piano player at a real piano. But then, neither does a recording of a real piano player, playing a real piano (to me anyway).
So, I just try to get a decent "recorded" piano sound, and if I work my butt off, and don't set my expectations too high, I usually end up with a fairly beleivable track that, in the mix, usually doesn't make my skin crawl (too badly).
OK. I'm getting too tired, and can hear the thoughts of some readers willing me to shut up.
I do have a different approach to organ-esque stuff (particularly B4), that, if anyone is interested, I can post later on. Let me know, and I will. Otherwise, I'm shuttin' up here, boss !
Oh, before I shut up, can I just say one more thing ?? I try to think like a drummer, or a piano player when I'm putting together those types of tracks. If I'm putting together a piano part, I think, "how would Ray Charles sound playing this", or on a drum part "how would Ringo sound...", etc. Then, I just do my best to make that sound develop. It sounds like an over simplification, but that type of thinking has helped me a lot.
Oh! Oh! Before I shut up, shuttin' up, can I say just one more thing ? Just one more thing, and then I'll shut up. Here it comes....
Shut up !
post edited by deiseldave - 2007/07/03 17:42:46