Blades
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Re: Making MIDI Drums Sound "Real?"
2018/12/08 01:07:03
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I will Start by saying I am a drummer but have been playing edrums for a LONG time.... Like since before they were any good, like back to Simmons drums that are made out of plywood with some rubber liquid nailed on them with a really crap sounding chip full of awful pseudo drum sounds.
One thing I didn't see suggested: have a friend (or forum member) help you out.
The great thing with edrums is that they record really well and believable midi.
There are some decent collaboration sites out there. There are some free and not free options out there, so sometimes it doesn't always mean hiring a drummer.
I Play a vdrums kit connected to a Pearl Mimic Pro module and it sounds amazing... Basically like a vst. I record out to mutilpe tracks and mix as audio. In the end, it basically sounds like a great drum recording because it uses really good samples with regular drumming. I could never even come close with acoustic drums.
So... Anyone looking for some drum tracks, if it's a project I am interested in, I might just make some tracks. I struggle to make full tracks as often as I would like. Pm me if you Want to discuss.
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Kamikaze
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Re: Making MIDI Drums Sound "Real?"
2018/12/08 02:04:32
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☄ Helpfulby Steev 2018/12/08 12:18:49
ChazEd
You can use AD2 to humanize your drums.
You can import your drum midi files into AD2, transform them, and bring them back to your DAW.
It's pretty easy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jg0NklSRlWY
Hope this helps
It's even easier than that. Grab the midi track (it can even be step sequencer), and drag it into the the transform area that shows the beat. No need o mess around with folders. Because of this, you can work through 4 bars at a time easily and quickly. creating subtle variations. Messing with the 8th and 16th accents is then adjusting the velocity balance of each part of the kit really does transform. I've posted about this many times, but I still think it's overlooked, and is an amazing part of AD2. As a quick experiment (just to see how cool this thing is); create a straight beat in step sequencer, with 16th hi hats, a BDrum on the and off the beat, maybe a 16th, Snares on 2 and 4. Don't touch the velocities in step sequencer, leave them all at 100. Drag the midi clip (no need to convert) into the area rhythm display at the bottom of AD2 Transform section. Add a little 8th and 16th accent. Adjust the velocity range. Pull the kick/snare/hats up and down as groups (this a great function when you, 4 articulations of closed hats going on, with a foot closed and two open articulations). Add a little random to the velocities (I don't bother wit the timing, as it's clear when working with a one bar loop, it not random from bar to bar, and fixed to each bar (better for longer loops if random velocity is your thing)) And now the static sequencer beat has a lot more feel, without working through each hit individually. Click on the Rhythm display area and drag it back to the midi track transformed. This dragging back is also great if you have a a busy rhythm with lots of articulations that you want on different midi tracks. It you wanted the hats on one track, solo the hats in the transform tool in AD2 and then drag just the hats to a track. This great to add further subtle changes, taking hats to it's own track, copping out over many bars, the using the velocity transform in PRV to create subtle ramps and falls dynamically to fit the music.  I wish there was swing tool in AD2, so a tend to lean on the MFX for swing and Random. With Kick and and snare on one track and hats on another, you can have two different MFX on each one.  Here's a cool video on swing. Interestingly the slower the beat the more swing you can use it seems
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soens
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Re: Making MIDI Drums Sound "Real?"
2018/12/08 09:55:48
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There Larry Jones
(Johnny: I've been accumulating coffee cans and oat meal boxes for years, thinking I might make a cheesy "drum kit." I was planning just to mic them and use their natural sounds, but I'm liking your idea. Did you know that the percussion on "Susie Darlin'" is some guy slapping the car keys in his pants pocket? I love stories like that, where someone just uses whatever is at hand.)
Don't forget empty plastic beverage bottles of varying sizes. There's literally no end to what can be used for percussive sounds.
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jerrydf
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Re: Making MIDI Drums Sound "Real?"
2018/12/08 11:21:29
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soens
Don't forget empty plastic beverage bottles of varying sizes. There's literally no end to what can be used for percussive sounds.
Also - Hal Blaine's box of tricks including a plastic coca cola bottle, as used in Pet Sounds.
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Steev
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Re: Making MIDI Drums Sound "Real?"
2018/12/08 12:12:13
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Another great and really inexpensive toy of mine is the Alesis Sample Pad Pro. Its' got lots of cools sounds and an SD slot for adding your own creations which is very good for, but where it shines in my book is it's response is fast to be using it to trigger AD 2 playing with drum sticks.
I use it frequently to very effectively trigger Cakewalk Session Drummer 2 & 3, and Addictive Drums 1 & 2, Dimension Pro, Rapture, Rapture pro, Cakewalk TTS1 or other hardware synths, what ever...
No, it's certainly not a Roland Octopad, but it does the trick at a quarter of the price. And what the Sample Pad Pro lacks in internal storage for ultra high quality samples is easily compensated for with your favorite drums perc flavors of Drum VSTi software.
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gswitz
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Re: Making MIDI Drums Sound "Real?"
2018/12/08 13:14:52
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Remember you can convert audio recordings to midi using melodyne. Just drag the audio clip to a midi track.
Also, drum replacer. Take any rhythmic recording and replace it with the sample of your choice.
Possibilities are limitless!
If I'm being practical, I might start with some loops, then replay the high hat part personally. Loops help me stretch as a rhythm player.
If you want something randomly rhythmic, try looping 4 bars with input-quantize on and tapping out some weirdness adding to it with each loop. Ctrl+l to groove clip, then drag it out for 32 bars.
StudioCat > I use Windows 10 and Sonar Platinum. I have a touch screen. I make some videos. This one shows how to do a physical loopback on the RME UCX to get many more equalizer nodes.
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bitman
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Re: Making MIDI Drums Sound "Real?"
2018/12/08 14:40:57
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I don't know if my midi drums sound real enough to warrant consideration but here is how I do it. I can play drums more or less, so I have a midi kit in the rumpus room attached to the daw via usb. I first play the guitar rhythm for the song from start to finish without a click and try to be as groovy as possible with it not trying to rigidly be on time. More like a jam. Then I drag the guitar track to the timeline so Sonar / Melodyne can make a tempo map from the jam guitar. Then I sit down on the midi drums and play away with it. When I think I've played it well enough I then quantize it to the undulating tempo map to oh, 80% or so because of midi timing strangeness. This is Session Drummer Zep Sizzle Kit Dry (I think). https://www.reverbnation....side-vocalsronnie-dean
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bitman
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Re: Making MIDI Drums Sound "Real?"
2018/12/08 14:44:37
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As for sound, while I haven't tried this yet, is to play be the drum track loudly in a suitable room then record that.
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chuckebaby
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Re: Making MIDI Drums Sound "Real?"
2018/12/08 15:10:36
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There is something else I would like to add...
I have tried many things to make drum sims sound like real drums, but what I found is all the velocity changes and shifting of drum hits milliseconds of the beat didn’t make it sound real at all. The the work I created trying to make something sound more human only made it sound unprofessional and hacked. So I did essentially get what I asked for, it sounded naturally amateur.
The only substitute is the real McCoy
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Blades
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Re: Making MIDI Drums Sound "Real?"
2018/12/08 15:24:21
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Chuckebaby.... Totally agree. Even as a real drummer, programming real sounding drums is not easy. Playing them in with a kit is a different animal. Three is just no way that you could really get all of the subtle things done right. You can great mechanical drum machine parts with programming. But natural recordings are quite difficult.
Even if your drummer is an extremely tight player who can stay on a click, it will have a human factor that would be nearly impossible to get with a programmed part.
Analyze even just the variations of slight open and close and bow vs edge hits on HiHat through a piece and you will see how much difference there is even just from one measure to the next.
I think that programmed parts with some humanizatuon and randomization can work, especially for certain types of music, but for something that needs to breathe and flow naturally would have the best results when pounded out on something like drums.
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Anderton
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Re: Making MIDI Drums Sound "Real?"
2018/12/09 04:45:24
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I realize this thread is about MIDI drums, but don't overlook acoustic drum loops, which by definition sound "real." I use acoustic drum loops (the ones from Discrete Drums) for 85% of the drum sounds in the three albums posted on my YouTube channel. The Simplicity album is almost all Discrete Drums sample libraries. You might think it would be difficult to find parts that fit what you do, but some of their libraries are multitracked, and what makes them come alive is cutting and pasting. Real drummers listen to my music and assume there's a real drummer playing. And that's because there is  , I just do the arranging. One final tip for MIDI drums: Buy cymbals and overdub them. It can make all the difference in the world, because at least to my ears, they sound more unrealistic than any other drum sounds.
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Glyn Barnes
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Re: Making MIDI Drums Sound "Real?"
2018/12/09 22:35:35
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Cakewalk's Groove Quantatise is useful and certainly better than random humanization in most cases because it imparts some sort of feel.
Play around with the parameters and get an idea of how to get results. Remember you can use different parameters on different kit pieces.
There are quite a few preset groove templates but remember you can also use a midi groove on the clipboard.
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mettelus
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Re: Making MIDI Drums Sound "Real?"
2018/12/10 04:59:07
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Not sure if this was mentioned, but another part of realism is the sound of a drum based on where it is hit, so there is sound variation that doesn't translate well when MIDI is firing off a single sample. Velocity alone will not accommodate this, and timing (to me) is the antithesis of a drummer's main purpose. Some VSTis use samples by velocity, and that detail comes through. There are also VSTs that will do similar. However, even with that said...
Stepping back into a "bigger picture" for a second. Another big part of drums is how they are set into a mix, and the post-processing done with them. Reverb creates the "room," panning gives placement, etc. I think where "realism" falls apart is when things feel "static" in a mix (or an entire mix is static). Samples are used a lot for drums, and some issues lie with the entire mix and its dynamics far more than a single component. When a mix has "motion" in it from shifting focus throughout, one component (e.g., drums) can be more static than one realizes, yet the piece still be interesting.
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