MIDI Drums
Home > Home Recording Forum > Recording Techniques > MIDI Drums
Posted on Jul 22, 2010 09:13 am
mclir9
www.witchsmark.com
Member Since: Aug 13, 2006
I have a drummer in which he is very erratic and inconsistent as far as timing(he will totally speed up when he gets excited and then slow down again by as much as 130BPM to 140BPM and then back down again) and also as far as how hard he hits his drums (I can be recording him at -18 to -12db and all of a sudden he throws some strikes in there that almost clip and I can't seem to control them with a Compressor). I have recently discovered Session Drummer 3 in Sonar 8.5PE, and have been messing around with it and I love the reality of the sounds of some of the Acoustic sets they provide and also that ultimately you can bounce each individual drum to its own Audio track just like a drummer recorded 8 tracks individually. My question is this.... I want to try and program in the drums for our next album, and I was wondering before I waste my time, are there pitfalls to this?? Has anyone else done this and gotten away with it as to sounding realistic or is it too obvious even to an untrained ear?? I know that alot of musicians will say it strips out the feel of a live drummer, but I'm not to sure I buy that scenario.
[ Back to Top ]
Jul 22, 2010 09:39 am If you have the money, I'd say get a program like drumagog. A few people on this forum have used it. It takes the audio from his drumming and turns it into midi. Then you can edit those and "force" him into time.
If its totally click synced with machine-like precision, it does give a different feel than a live, "loose" drummer. But its no more "fake" or "bad" sounding. Just...different. For some genres it fits right in (listen to some of deon's stuff on his myspace. The drums are incredible sounding and fit right in with the mix).
But i guess overall, i'd say you can look at it as the lesser of two evils. It might be too perfect, but too perfect might sound better than what you're describing his skill as. You also could just midi them in by ear. But make sure you vary the velocity and even timing a bit randomly (but keeping in mind the music's natural accents, and go along with them). It can be done, with a good amount of realism as well, so that most people might not even notice. Just take your time with it :)
mclir9www.witchsmark.comMember
Since: Aug 13, 2006
Jul 22, 2010 10:54 am I tried Drumagog, and the only issue I have with that is when I record the overheads there really is no replacement drum for them through Drumagog, so when I edit the timing of the Kick and Snare I get residual Kick and Snare from the overheads and all of a sudden I am getting a double snare/kick.
CptTrippsCzar of Turd PolishMember
Since: Jun 20, 2006
Jul 22, 2010 01:14 pm Editing the timing is damn near impossible imo if your OH are doing what they are supposed to do. Sounds like you need to sit that drummer down with a guitar track recorded to only a metronome and get him in shape.
I recently tracked a drummer that gave me all sorts of problems. I gave her a click, lots of positive reinforcement and about 6 hours to get two workable drum takes.
Also, if you mic every drum/cymbal to it's own track you can indeed drumagog that. Does not sound like much fun to me though, plus I don't have the inputs needed (about 11) to mic my kit in this way. It would allow you to move hits to be more in time but would kill any chance of a room mic as well.
I say just keep tracking him until he gets it right :)
mclir9www.witchsmark.comMember
Since: Aug 13, 2006
Aug 06, 2010 08:20 am Figured out a system that has worked like a charm on the last 2 songs recorded. I went ahead and programmed the song into Guitar Pro 6, with all of the instruments so the song is laid out exactly how we want it from beginning to end. Then I mute out the drums and just let the rest of the instruments play, and the drummer sits down and plays the drums with the original programmed BPM. Then we futz with the timing of the song (being that it is MIDI it's as easy as changing the BPM #) till he is comfortable with a BPM (in 1 song the BPM was 155 except for slowing down the choruses to 153, weird but he was comfortable). Then I export the song(minus the drums) to WAV and import into Sonar. Now he has a comfortable click track to play too, and the timing issues are taken care of.
