sequencing classic rock drums?

I think the best approach is to use the supplied midi files from EZDrummer/Superior/Addictive Drums, etc. and tweak them to your liking.

A lot of classic rock covers have midi files on line that are pretty faithful renderings.

I have made my own jam-along tracks using song midi files I found on line.   Usually the bass and drums and keyboard are pretty acceptable and then I trigger ezdrummer and trilian and then add use dimension or kontakt for the other tracks.  

JR

I've checked out a few midi files. Mostly you see files that are super quantized and velocities are fixed pretty rigidly to some preset static amount. Those can be true pains to add any semblance of musicianship to. I've come across others that are pretty well done with true playing capturing a performance. Many have the chords and correct inversions....these are the most important part for me as I'm not a good real time keyboardist. They're fun to work with when you're really intot he song or artist. I've done a small batch of Steely Dan / Donald Fagen songs that I'm having fun with using Yellow Tools Pro and NI classic collection instruments with.
    I wouldn't even attempt to mess with these if I didn't have Sonar's Cals to work with. Random velocity and Random time are my go to's. I keep the scaling fairly small and increment to a point where I can work with the tracks

thanks x 4.

Yeah. a lot of the stuff is bad elevator music for sure.

I've heard plenty of that.... but I have also heard some midi tracks that were nothing short of amazing. It must have taken someone a very long time to get them that good.

I also heard a band that used sequenced midi way back about 20 years ago. They ran Cakewalk when it was called that... in a 286 computer...remember them? They were gigging in a club for tourists, but they sounded amazing. I spoke with them, thinking they were using tracks but they showed and explained their setup. It was all live sequencing via cakewalk. I found out that they were both accomplished musicians and computer/midi geeks when many musicians didn't understand it at all. They spent one to two weeks programming the sequences depending on the songs. But the music was just about dead on the original in every way. So it is possible to take it one measure at a time....

I would not have the patience to do it that way.

A couple of general points.

• Avoid repeating the same short loops, you will miss the subtle variations that make the track breath.
• If you are using Sonar, considering using groove quantatise and stealing the groove from somthing with the correct feel.
• Toontrack's EZPlayer Pro lets you quickley audition and drag out individual kit peices in a midi loop (you can also do this in Superior Drummer) this is very useful in building tracks from commercial midi loops.
• If you are feeling more adventurous knock out a basic clicktrack in step sequencer or step input, then over dub the the rest of the kit peices playing in real time. Record the whole section, not just a couple of bars and loop them. If you are doing it from a keyboard you could overdub the kit peices seperatly. Finally replace the clicktrack.

I write all my own MIDI drum lines for my own stuff and for covers that I perform as a live act as well. Of course how good or realistic they are depends on your opinion. I have had several musician frinds ask who played drums on some of my tracks. I take that as a compliment but they may have been criticising of course.

To do that I firstly spent a long time listening to drums in my favourite songs and trying to "think like a drummer" always remembering that a drummer only has 2 feet and 2 hands.

To transfer that into Sonar I build the basic beat in the Step Sequencer. If you are writing a 'copy' then it's a matter of getting the tempo roughly correct, you can tweak later, and then listening to where the kick, snare, hi-hats, ride, etc etc fall.

Most songs have a basic beat (I don't mean basic as in simple, I mean that it is a constant part of most of the song) on which the variations are built so time spent on that phase is well worth it. Once you've got that part you've probably got 90% (maybe more) of the average song.

I make sure that's saved and then start working on the variations and fills, saving them as separate step sequences

Once I am happy with those I then arrange them into song sequence order, dragging them out where necessary. Then I bounce to clip to turn them into regular MIDI tracks.

Next step is starting to humanize them. Some of this can be done at the basic stage in the step sequencer but trouble is with that is when they're dragged out there is still a mechanical pattern.

Tricks include shifting the timing very slightly of snare, kick, rides, hats etc. but never all by the same amounts throughout.

Velocity is another thing that needs fine tuning, no drummer hits any drum at exactly the same velocity everytime, there are always very slight differences - all can be recreated using the tools available within Sonar.

Ghost notes, very slight hits before and after snares especially can be very effective. If you listen to some of the pre-written MIDI files out on the web you'll notice rolls especially can sound like machine guns. That's a classic case or velocity being identical. It's relatively easy to make some of those sound 100 times better just by changing the velocities.

Of course a good synth/drum machine that can take different samples for different velocities helps a lot to the final result as well.

I hope there's a few ideas there you may find helpful.

I'm talking about bouncing a step sequencer clip to a midi track.

If you don't do that you can't edit each indivdual drum hit in the PRV. The reason being is the step sequencer clip is just one instance of 8 bars (or however long it is) and then repeats so any changes made to say a kick on beat 3 is going to happen on every kick on beat 3, this can be a bit mechanical sounding while trying to 'humanize' the beats.

when working as a one man band or duo or whatever and there was no drummer, I found the best most believable drum/bass backing tracks were very simple and boomy ie: minimal highs.  kind of makes it like they are not there (but they are). you just want something that helps "them" tap their feet and fill out the sonic spectrum a little. just a thought. 

timidi


when working as a one man band or duo or whatever and there was no drummer, I found the best most believable drum/bass backing tracks were very simple and boomy ie: minimal highs.  kind of makes it like they are not there (but they are). you just want something that helps "them" tap their feet and fill out the sonic spectrum a little. just a thought. 

it's currently just a simple two piece proj, either 2 acoustics or an acoustic and an electric. one vocal. bkg vox will be dubbed to sd card as will bass, keys and drums if i ever get the drum sequences going the way i'd like to. i'm thinking about mixing the sd card mixes using my pa rig as my mix monitors/amp so that the mix will be specific to the system it will be played back on, since the freq response of pa bins are not accurate to say the least. that should help to make the pa mix sound better. gotta make the drum tracks first though... one step at a time.

don't know for sure.
it is called a step sequencer, so maybe not.
but that's just an assumption, you know about those...

jhughs


Just a comment about "cheesy sounding" MIDI files: if you play them through cheesy synth, like for example, the Microsoft GS Wavetable SW Synth that defaults on Windows, then yes it's always going to sound cheesy.

As an example, I used the Bass and Drums from Gary Tepel's MIDI of ELP Hoedown (here) to do a guitar-only version of the same (EZ Drummer version and SD version ).  I had to tweak the MIDI a bit to get the cymbal chokes and there were some problems with the bass, but it really freed me up to focus on the guitar parts which took a ton of practice and experimenting with PODFarm and Sonar.

dude you whail!
that was cool. i liked both, each sounded a little different. the ez version was a bit edgier, the sd version a bit smoother. both really rocked. nice stuff!


i'd love to be freed up to do all the other stuff. sequencing the drum parts for 20 songs or more is gonna freak me out if i can even do it. then there's everything else after the drums are done... it's too much.

if the drums in those "cheesy" midi files can clean up and sound like the drums in what you posted above, then i'm interested in that. i'm not a drummer. i am willing to attempt to program all of those drum parts if need be, but i never wanted to. it was out of necessity that i started to.

what was it like working with downloaded files?
how did you download the midi files at that site?

had a small prob with quicktime7 which prevented me from downloading a midi file: make sure in qt7's browser settings tab that the files with the suffix ".mid" and ".midi" and ".kar" are enabled or you might spend a whole night wondering why you can't download a midi file. also, it wouldnt work using firefox for some reason, but worked with internet explorer after the qt7 adjustment.

anyway, managed to download a handful of free midi files to some of the songs on the set list. gonna "run 'em through the mill" and see what comes out the other side. this should be cool (and good practice with sd3 and the prv).

thanks for all the pointers/advise/suggestions. i'd surely still be scratching my head w/o them.
 

I think you're making this more complicated than need be.
Have you watched and listened to these demos from Toontracks EZDrummer?
http://www.toontrack.com/products.asp?item=7
Excuse me if this is not what you are looking for.