Mechanical sounding midi drum loop fixes

[pike]

Occasionally I'll have midi drums loops that give me a hard time when trying to make them sound real. I'll go in and manually move drums/velocity around to fix this problem, but that can take a lot of time. It seems that fast drum tempos are harder to fix than slower tempos. The templates that come with Pro Tools don't seem to be that good at making the midi tracks sound real.

Are there any midi templates or software apps that are good at helping with this issue?

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

Thanks

Kevin

[Paulie]

I think time is the key. The really successful writer here spend lots of time to make their tracks sound real, whether it's string parts, brass, guitar or drum parts.

Are you separating out each part of the drum kit so you can work on them and mix them individually?

[Len911]

Jamstix

http://www.rayzoon.com/jamstix3.html

You can do about anything drum wise. The main thing is that it has not only style models, but also "named drummer styles", and also "the brain" that allows you to weight the various parameters. It also allows you to import midi drum loops and use one of the modeled drummers to perform it. Also you can use it with your Superior Drummer 2. It also comes with drum samples. You enter your song structure. You can also manually enter or edit your own patterns. There is a "limb" simulator algorithm, so you only have patterns that a real drummer could play with two hands and feet.

I have the basic $99 program. There are also other configurations and paks, with more styles, more drummer models, more samples, etc. The basic seems plenty for me.

[pike]

Paulie, Yes I separate the mix on the drums to different tracks but the midi stays on one track. I don't think pro tools has an easy way to separate midi.

Len911, Jamstix looks very interesting! I think I'll try it out if they have a demo.

Thanks guys!

[edmondredd]

depending on the style of music Pike, you could spend between 2 minutes (full quantize and fixed velocities) and a couple of hours editing your drum tracks.
There's no single drummer who could play the same velocities or (sorry drummers out there) even be exactly on time.
First, as Paulie said, separate your kit, so you could have individual control on each output.
Then the trick is basically, randomize velocities (could be between a range) and use the swing quantize. I'm not sure if it exists on pro tools though.
Don't be afraid to dive in the piano roll, and manually adjust a couple of settings, after listening to the track.
Adding ghost notes, sometimes varying the hi-hat samples, could add more to create realistic drum patterns.
Sometime, you'd need to double say the kick, to make it sound beefier, some other times you'd need to try parallel compression,
and then when you're done, it would be a nice if you could share your track with a real drummer, and hear his feedback,

[allen]

Is it possible to copy the one midi track to several tracks and Isolate each part of the kit on each track in pro tools? Once on separate tracks you could push attacks forward or backwards in time. This might help with timing sounding more real. RMX by spectrasonics hides the details in a chromatic notation making difficult to determine which note is for which instrument in their loops. I do not know if that is a similar problem you are running into with your program or not.

Allen

[andygabrys]

hey Kevin,

I don't do much stuff that is too tweaked by hand unless its something I have programmed from scratch.

There are so many different places to get drum MIDI loops. As long as you use the loop at an appropriate tempo (and most are marked so you know if its close) the feel will be pretty on.

If you have the Toontrack EZPLAYER PRO then you can take MIDI loops in any format (Addictive, EZdrummer, Kontakt, General MIDI) and convert one to the other. As well as adjust velocities etc easily.

Most of the "realness" I find comes from

1) choosing an appropriate kit for the song in question
2) choosing the closest mixer template for the song in question
3) making a nicely leveled basic mix
4) making small tweaks to the drum mixer preset

If you output your drums to different outputs and like effecting them in your DAW more power to you, but I have done that extensively in the past, and found in the end that it was a time suck.

As far as splitting the midi onto tracks in Pro Tools to effect each one differently with Real Time Midi properties or Quantize see this screen shot:

easily done. note inputs and outputs of the MIDI tracks and the software instrument track.

Pro Tools Drum MIDI Separation.jpg (229.27 KiB) Viewed 3173 times

[pike]

Hey Andy, I'm with you I don't want to spend a lot of time manipulating drum tracks, but in some cases I'll get a stiff drum track. Some of my midi drum loops don't have a tempo range listed for them (which is the case here). I should do more searching in my midi catalog for better sounding grooves for this particular track.

Just curious did you have to use the range of each midi drum to split it out to the individual midi track?

Thanks for your input!

Thanks to Edmond and Allen also for your inputs!

Kevin

[Russell Landwehr]

Hi Kevin, when I want to split a MIDI drum track, I duplicate the track as many times as needed and then delete notes. For instance, if I want a kick only track, then I delete all the notes that aren't kick... In the snare track I delete everything that isn't snare... etc.

As far as that stiff un-human feel of MIDI drum tracks you import, I would think that any MIDI Loops you acquire should be properly "grooved". I don't know how Pro Tools works, but in Ableton Live, I can "extract" the groove from a different track and apply it to the MIDI drum tracks. Ableton also has a TON of "groove templates" that can impose that human feel on any track, audio or MIDI. But, I'm not sure if Pro Tools has the equivalent feature.

Russell

[andygabrys]

Hi Kevin, when I want to split a MIDI drum track, I duplicate the track as many times as needed and then delete notes. For instance, if I want a kick only track, then I delete all the notes that aren't kick... In the snare track I delete everything that isn't snare... etc.

As far as that stiff un-human feel of MIDI drum tracks you import, I would think that any MIDI Loops you acquire should be properly "grooved". I don't know how Pro Tools works, but in Ableton Live, I can "extract" the groove from a different track and apply it to the MIDI drum tracks. Ableton also has a TON of "groove templates" that can impose that human feel on any track, audio or MIDI. But, I'm not sure if Pro Tools has the equivalent feature.

Russell

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Just curious did you have to use the range of each midi drum to split it out to the individual midi track?

You are right - having more loops = having more options.

Like Russell said - its quickest just to make multiple copies of the midi (option click drag on the mac in Pro Tools right? ctrl-option on PC) and delete the notes that you don't want on that one. Its pretty easy to find your way around the Piano roll editor and after a while its like lightning. Plus in just about every DAW clicking on the "piano key" on the LH side selects all the notes on that particular key. So its easy to select all the bass drum and snare hits and delete them in a hurry.

You can also use the MIDI functions in Pro Tools (apple numeric keypad 0 on mac - and I can't remember the PC equivalent) to select certain notes, but that is the slowest way to do it.

For all its advances in general, Pro Tools still has the most time intensive MIDI editing tools.

Like Russell also said - you can "regroove" anything in Pro Tools - there are a bunch of templates (like the MPC grooves) and you can analyze your own audio or MIDI and apply that groove to MIDI or elastic audio regions. I once had a nice mid tempo beat that Shawn Pelton played on a Sheryl Crow song that I was using as a groove template.