ORIGINAL: jacktheexcynic

ORIGINAL: droddey

no, i quantize by hand... i've gotten some decent results that way, but it takes forever, and so i never spend the kind of time to get it "right." i do have a keyboard but my keyboarding skills are quite rusty and my p4 and low latency don't get along. i've thought about a drum pad, just haven't gotten around to trying one out.

A drum pad makes all the difference. A keyboard is almost impossible to really play drums on. There's so much travel on the keys that it's not at all like hitting a drum. It takes a while to get fluent on a drum pad, but you really can get enormously more realistic results. I'm using a padKontrol which is nice, but it takes a fair amount of restraint because the pads are pretty sensitive, even with the sensitivity cranked all the way down. It's easy to just start pounding when you are getting into it. But, the good side is that if you develop that light touch, you can much more easily do multi-finger playing instead of just the index finger on each hand type of thing.

not a bad price on the padkontrol... might be worth it for me in the time it would save. i hate trying to lay down a groove by hand, i'd much rather tap it in.

I'm wondering why anybody who is not a good drummer, i.e. us guitar players... would want to program drums from any midi device when there are libraries of midi grooves out there to choose from?
I know I could not do as good a job as are in the libraries and I played a little drums on and off.
I've heard people say they are "stiff" and "robotic" but I just don't see it that way.
As a matter of fact, I don't think its possible for a non drummer, on any controller, to do a better job of programming midi drums than what has already been recorded by real drummers and saved as midi grooves...Thoughts?...

ORIGINAL: serauk

oh boy I get to post again!!!

RLD - in a way I agree, even though I was a drummer - picking the grooves somebody else worked out is great - for me, its more of a starting point, and I still think you need to understand a little of how rhythmic (sp?) structure works to be able to fit those grooves to what you want to accomplish.... and I think even guitarists can figure it out (hey, you left me the opening)... now keyboardists on the other hand...

Yes...I should have added, I very rarely, if ever leave the groove unedited, but use them as a starting point as well.
Same for the fills...get something close then tweak.

At least for me, I never do my drums such that they would be doable with loops. You can't get that live fealing of non-repetitiveness using loops. And I think I do pretty good drums on my pad, and that's with only having been doing it a while. I'll get even better over time. I don't think that drummers have some kind of skill that others can't master, it's just that it's a very physical and loud activity. Leave out the physicality and the volume and I can the other part, i.e. make nice sounds at the right time. Not as good yet as a really good drummer, but I can correct manually as required where I drift a little.

I guess I don't look at midi grooves as loops. Unlike audio loops, midi grooves are easily editable, so you could, if you want, have a drum track that never repeats.
But for the type of Pop/Rock I do, and most of the stuff I hear, the drums are fairly repetitive.
As long as the high hat doesn't sound like a machine and the fills and tags are tastefully done, midi grooves work perfectly well for me.
They are after all, played by a real drummer. I don't see how I could do better than that.
Dean, do you have any samples of a drum track you've programmed?

Greetings all,

Thanks to Dean and serauk for replies. A special thanks to serauk for the can of worms!!

I was pointing out that there are two different acoustic problems: In a performance situation, there are multiple *physical* locations for sources, and to make things worse, multiple *physical* locations for receptors. In mixing, you have recorded tracks being played from speaker or headphones; in that case there are common source locations (same speakers) for the drums and everything else that one is listening to, and there is one listener making adjustments, usually in the middle of two speakers. In this latter case, travel time is not usually an issue, given the common physical source location (or locations for multiple speakers).

For separate source locations (e.g. performance), it can be very complex. The drummer hits, the bassist plays when he/she (hereinafter all "he" because I'm a guy ...) hears the hit, not when the hit occurred (say for example). The drummer hears the bass after twice the travel time, assuming that he's not listening to a headphone mix captured from somewhere in the room, nor from the amplifier speakers, nor to a curious echo caused by the particular shape of the room --- any or all of which plus more that he could be hearing. The drummer concludes that he is early or that the bassist is late. Someone beyond the bassist, but in line with both, thinks everything is fine (agrees with the bassist). Someone behind the drummer, but in line with both, thinks the bassist is late or the drummer is early (agrees with the drummer). Someone who is on the perpendicular bisector of the line between the drummer and the bassist thinks that the drummer is only one travel time early or that the bassist is late by that amount. Given room acoustics, everyone in the room hears a different performance in terms of timing, timbre (because every location will have a different spectrum thanks to the room eigenfunctions), etc. (*)

For common source locations, the timing considerations don't apply. Observers agree about simultaneity or lack thereof.

When I was speaking about 2 msec, I was speaking about being "off" by that amount in a mix (e.g. drums versus bass), either consistently or say up to that amount. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't hear that kind of thing, but I believe that at least some drummers could at least some of the time. There are such claims, anyway. 10 msec bothers me. I think that --- speaking very generally --- the drums and anything that is heavily articulated should be coordinated better than this on average (i.e. *not* timed like a metronome, but coordinated) for most pop or it just won't sound right, unless there is some special sound effect being achieved (lots of exceptions!). When I said "dead on" in an earlier post, I didn't mean "metronome" nor "0 msec." I meant coordinated somewhere better than 10 msec for heavily articulated parts.

Hopefully this all made some sense; it's been a long day.

Regards,
Dave Clark

(*) For those of you who have studied relativity, this should sound familiar. What is interesting is that disagreements about observations are built into the wave equation --- i.e. occur in classical physics. Uh, well, at least I think that is interesting....

I have done a number of small bits that I've done as test runs, working up to my first full fledged tune (with vocals and all, yikes.) That would be the best example, since I've improved it hugely by now, but it's not quit ready to unveil (I'm tracking vocals now.) But, here's a little one. The point of this one wasn't to be particularly good as music, it was more of a test run of the whole process from tracking to mixing, but it's not bad as an example of the drums.

http://www.charmedquark.com/Web2/TmpAudio/EverywhereAreSignsPreview2.wma

In some ways, it's the imperfections that make it sound more real than loops. You could take some loops and cut and paste many times and edit them by hand so that they aren't repetitive. But I'd rather actually perform them and get more feeling into them, feeling that flows the ups and downs of the song.

Hey Dean,
I listened to your sample and it sounds good...not necessarily better or more "live" than using midi grooves, but I think you'll get acceptable results with that technique.

I'd rather hear a less than perfect tune that you did yourself than to listen to something you put together from someone else's stuff.

Well, I look at it the same way as if I've hired a drummer to come in and lay down some tracks.
With numerous takes from a "real" session, I could pick and choose which parts to use and edit to my hearts content.

Not very different than using midi grooves to create a track in my book.

ORIGINAL: RLD
I'm wondering why anybody who is not a good drummer, i.e. us guitar players... would want to program drums from any midi device when there are libraries of midi grooves out there to choose from?
I know I could not do as good a job as are in the libraries and I played a little drums on and off.
I've heard people say they are "stiff" and "robotic" but I just don't see it that way.
As a matter of fact, I don't think its possible for a non drummer, on any controller, to do a better job of programming midi drums than what has already been recorded by real drummers and saved as midi grooves...Thoughts?...

my problem with pre-made grooves isn't that they are stiff (i use cake's groove templates to get me in the ballpark most of the time) but that i never hear a groove that fits the song i wrote. i think it's just my own particular musical style and how i compose...