MIDI Velocities

I find that from 50 and up would give a good variation. Some pads I used don't start lower than 35 or so.

But you should be able to practice with keyboard to be better.

If doing realtime with keyboard I find doing snare and kick on one track works fine. Then hihat, cymbals and fills on one.

Then you can concentrate of getting a nice feel on smaller parts of drumtrack at a time. And keys are pretty close together on keyboard so for that reason too it's better to divide into parts.

With most drum kits (Session Drummer and external boxes), I have to keep the kick and snare in the 85-105 range (depending on the kit and song) in order to get the hi-hat quiet enough (like 35-55) and still have some room to build the kick and snare.  If I put the kick and snare down to the 60-80 range, I have to use ridiculously small numbers for hi-hat, shaker, etc.

I'm trying to understand typical levels for drums hits. When I trigger in with my keyboard velocities tend to be between 100 and 127

 
Velocity may be influencing more than simply volume - if, for example, different samples are triggered by differing velocities (e.g. a low velocity triggers a sample of a snare struck gently, a high velocity triggers another sample of a snare hit hard) you won't just be lacking volume changes but the tonal changes that help build a more realistic/dynamic drum part. Drum synths (as opposed to samplers) can often use velocity to affect tone, decay, all kinds of things as well as volume.
 
The alternative approaches to getting a wider velocity range are (a) playing in a wider range of velocities (hit the keys less hard when you want softer hits) (b) playing as you do now then edit the MIDI afterwards or (c) program the drums entirely in the piano roll view or step sequencer setting the velocities you want as you go.
 
If you're a good enough keyboard player (a) is probably the fastest way to do things (I'm not good enough so I use a mix of (b) and (c)).
 
As for "typical" velocities, well, that depends on the synth/sampler your using, the patch you've got loaded and how you want the result to sound.  If you're getting consistently high velocities even if you play softly it may be worth checking your controller is sending the full range of velocities, and that the controller velocity curve you're using is the best one for you. A curve that you find works well for keyboard parts may not always be the best curve to use for drums.
 
Don't forget that many synths/samplers have their own built-in mixer as well, and if volume matching is an issue, mixing can sometimes be a better way to solve the problem than adjusting velocities - as can sending each drum to it's own audio track if the synth allows you to, mixing the kit in Sonar then sending the tracks to a dedicated drum bus to manage overall kit level. This emulates "traditional" multi-track tape recording methods and often provides the most flexibility.

Hi all,

Thank for your replies and input. Some useful insights on how to make my drum parts more dynamic.

Another thing I'm struggling with Session Drummer 3 is.

Appart from lowering the master of SD3 slightly I don't alter the SD3 mixer at all. Instead I assign all channels to and audio track within a track folder as per Seths masterclass.

What I'm finding is the default patterns (SD3, Groove monkey, Steven slate etc) peak out the channels, especially kick and snare although, I find high hats is the thing I turn down the most.  Overall they seem to be loud and I find myself reducing chanel faders quite drastically, (well I think they're quite drastic) just to stop SD3 peaking it individual / multi tracked channels.

I'm guessing as long as the individual drum channels, drum buss and master buss aren't peaking it  doesn't mater how much I reduce the fader? Is that the right way to do it?

Thanks
Dean

One of the cool things about SD3 is the way you can audition different velocities from the interface, ie., a click near the bottom of the drum will trigger a lower velocity sample and as you click higher on the drum the velocity increases. And the velocity of the hit makes a big difference in the timbre,  volume, decay, etc.
What you might want to try is recording a minute or two of just clicking each drum in different spots, then going back and listening to each hit and checking the velocity of each one to give you an idea of how they sound.
And in one of Seth's Master Class videos he covers drawing velocity automation so you don't have to edit each individual note, if you want to build the intensity of the hits you can just draw in the automation in the cotroller pane.
As for the volume problem with SD3 I've tried lowering the volume on the SD mixer, the track faders, etc., but for me the best solution seems to be lowering the trim on each track but that's probably gonna vary for everyone, what works for me may sound like crap to you, so experiment away, heh.
Good luck!