Mechanical sounding midi drum loop fixes

[pike]

Its been a while since I've split midi tracks, but duplicating and deleting the individual drums was the way I used to accomplish it. Clicking on the piano roll on the left is an idea I did not know about (great idea!). I've messed around a little bit with the PT midi templates but I need to revisit that. I agree that PT has not made much improvement to their midi editing (I have PT12 and started with PT6).

The track in question is a punk instrumental that is very fast and the midi groove I'm using is probably meant for a much slower tempo. I'll try your suggestions and see what happens.

BTW I was an intern at a Manhattan production house (Crushing Music) that Shawn Pelton did studio sessions for. He was a cool dude and a nice guy!

Thanks again for the inputs guys.

[andygabrys]

BTW I was an intern at a Manhattan production house (Crushing Music) that Shawn Pelton did studio sessions for. He was a cool dude and a nice guy!

HA! I was interning at JSM Music for a while and Shawn Pelton was often in for our sessions too - that's actually how I got knowledge of what an ABSOLUTE BEAST he is. Besides being a nice guy. Tim Lefebvre too on bass. Amazing.

[pike]

Wow that's cool! Shawn is a total pro! I remember JSM. I thought about working there. An audio engineering buddy of mine (Tovi Rodriguez) used to work there. Its a small world.

[andygabrys]

Tovi came in just as I was saying bye. Good guy!

[HenriettaAtkin]

Great thread, guys.

Re: "groove templates" in Ableton and Pro Tools -- is there anything similar for Logic?

I've found that tweaking the Drummer presets in Logic allows for a lot of control.

[andygabrys]

Great thread, guys.

Re: "groove templates" in Ableton and Pro Tools -- is there anything similar for Logic?

I've found that tweaking the Drummer presets in Logic allows for a lot of control.

yes! In the piano roll editor

Piano roll quantize.jpg (213.17 KiB) Viewed 3048 times

there are various quantize patterns and in the region properties box (non destructive).

region properties make groove template.jpg (207.61 KiB) Viewed 3048 times

You can also take any MIDIregion and in the region properties box (top left of screen) scroll down in the quantize box to "make groove template" so you can steal the feel off any drum loop for example and apply it to any other track - including elastic audio / Flex time.

In Logic X you also have the "groove" track setting on each track in the arrange page which sort of does the same thing as applying groove templates

groove track in arrange page.jpg (229.55 KiB) Viewed 3048 times

[tower888]

Trying to make the drums sound less mechanical means trying to make them sound more like they were played by a human. One way I can spot a fake drum track is when the "drummer" is hitting more than four sound sources at a time. A real drummer only typically has two arms and two legs (respect, Def Leppard)... he/she can't be maintaining a quick and steady ride cymbal pattern while simultaneously doing buzz rolls on the snare. I try to think like a drummer when I program, and keep things realistic. Unless I'm doing electronic music, then all those rules go out the window!

[cardell]

I have Superior Drummer 2 with several different midi drum loop libraries.

Some of the Superior Drummer, drum loop libraries are among the best, most realistic I've ever heard.

I guess it depends on the style of music you're creating.

One trick I do is: I find some great sounding beat...then write something to suit it.

Stuart

[mojobone]

I find that the key to achieving a great feel is to start with a great feel. You can't fake the funk, and all grooves don't work at all tempi. If you find yourself going in and moving individual notes around, you've already lost the speed battle, and splitting out individual drum notes to separate tracks is a huge time suck, especially if you're copying and deleting, though sometimes it's necessary, if you want to say, quantize only the kick drum, cuz not every DAW can do that with just a couple keystrokes.

I try to start by having the right drum feel, rather than try to shoehorn a MIDI loop where it doesn't wanna go. If it's not within 5-6 BPM of the target, I keep looking. By default most MIDI drum loops are too busy, so strip them back, before copying them out, so you don't have to laboriously delete the extraneous notes after the fact. You can always replace the 'too sparse' measures, later. Speaking of which, two-bar loops are OK for some genres, but I like to work with longer ones, whenever possible. Sometimes, even with a shorter loop all it takes to cure a stiff feel is to move the snare hits back a few ticks, or the hihat or ride forward. Percentage quantize and percentage randomize are also good and fast tools, when things are a little stiffer than you'd like. It's also important to have enough round robin samples in whatever you're using to generate the sounds; the 'machine gun' effect is de rigeur for some sub-genres, but I sure don't wanna hear it in jazz, unless it's triphop, and maybe not even then, LOL.

[pike]

Sometimes I get in a hurry and pick a beat, that I find out later, is too stiff and then get stuck trying to fix it. I think your guys suggestion of finding the right groove to begin with is the best way to go. You can never have too many midi drum loops!

Thanks guys!