MIDI Drum programming --- how long does it take?

[skunkyfunk]

well, assuming that the drummer really has great feel, there's still drumagog, that can offer a solution for drums that were recorded live. i've used it a couple of times.

Drumagog is fine but a lot of clients comment on how their ghost notes disappear.  Well I guess it is everyone's problem even with real triggers. 

Actually, the best is converting the live drums into midi info, and at the same time getting the best miked sound possible. 

But for drum programming, obviously the most human-sounding samples are that of BFD and Drumkit from Hell. 

[starfugger]

Drumagog is fine but a lot of clients comment on how their ghost notes disappear.  Well I guess it is everyone's problem even with real triggers. 

Actually, the best is converting the live drums into midi info, and at the same time getting the best miked sound possible. 

But for drum programming, obviously the most human-sounding samples are that of BFD and Drumkit from Hell. 

 

the ghost notes do disappear with drumagog so you have to make a separate track for that or up the level of your bottom snare.  i have been able to successfully integrate ghost tracks with drumagog, but sometimes i take it out altotgether if the ghost notes are not articulate enough and/or more of a distraction to the song than an asset.  performance issue na yon, and it's probably beside the point.  you are correct though.  it's best to mic up the drums properly and be able to enjoy the best of both worlds. 

[skunkyfunk]

marvs baka umabot pa ng 25 pages pag sinabi kong i can survive without the bleed   

Everyone can survive without the bleed (or should we say maximum separation).  It is easiest to mix drums if every drum track is separated.  It's not like this scenario:

CLIENT:  Can you bring up the snare drum?
ENGINEER: Yeah sure... (increases snare by 3dB.)
CLIENT:  I said the snare only.  Bakit pati hihat nilaksan mo?
ENGINEER:  Sige EQ natin yung snare para humina ng konti yung wash ng hats.
CLIENT:  Teka, ok na yung tunog ng snare, bakit mo pa i-EQ?
ENGINEER:  Kasi ser masyadong magiging malakas ang hihat bleed.
CLIENT:  Hihat bleed?  Akala ko ba naka individual close mics ka?
ENGINEER: Opo, pero napipickup pa rin ng snare mic yung hihat ng kaunti.
CLIENT:  Eh kung hinaan mo pa yung hihat mic?
ENGINEER:  Sobrang hina na po ng hat mics kasi napipickup din ng overheads.
CLIENT:  Eh hinaan mo pa!
ENGINEER:  (mutes the hat mics)
CLIENT:  Parang walang pinagkaiba.  Puwede pa ba itaas ang snare mic?  Gusto ko malakas parang '80s gated sound.
ENGINEER:  (gates the snare at -9dB thresh, puts some reverb) 
CLIENT:  Ayan ayus!
(biglang may passage na puro open hihats plus snare)
CLIENT:  BAKIT GANYAN YUNG SNARE MAY TUNOG NA BSHHHK BSHHHK BSHHHK?
ENGINEER:  Ser kasi may noise gate ang snare mic kaya pati hihat nage-gate din ang tunog.
CLIENT:  Nakupow!  Ano puwede remedyo diyan?
ENGINEER:  Itaas natin ulit ng kaunti hihat mic and Overhead, tapos EQ ulit para di maging obvious yung snare gate.
CLIENT:  Sige. 
ENGINEER: Aprub?
CLIENT:  Teka, sa keyboard na nga lang tayo kumuha ng drum sounds!!!
ENGINEER:  Bakit po ser?  (bulong sa sarili:  Ang hirap i-mix nito tapos sa kb na lang kukuha ng drum sounds....)
CLIENT:  Pang Kasal lang naman na CD souvenir to eh...

[marvinq]

Drumagog is fine but a lot of clients comment on how their ghost notes disappear....

well, actually the ghost notes aren't supposed to disappear. they'll either come from the original snare track and/or the overheads... right now, there's no way to replace those cymbal hits (at least there isn't one that doens't involve torturing one's self)... well, at least not yet.

hey hazel.... 23 pages to go.... haha

...now about that wedding souvenir cd....

[starfugger]

well, actually the ghost notes aren't supposed to disappear. they'll either come from the original snare track and/or the overheads... right now, there's no way to replace those cymbal hits (at least there isn't one that doens't involve torturing one's self)... well, at least not yet.

hey hazel.... 23 pages to go.... haha

...now about that wedding souvenir cd....

i agree marvin. try triggering the hats! haha, oc as i am i haven't gone that far ... although i think i ventured into it but had the good sense to quit right away before losing my sanity.  i do manually place cymbal hits sometimes just to enhance them.

actually, skunk, drumagog could be the solution to that cd souvenir scenario.

[skunkyfunk]

well, actually the ghost notes aren't supposed to disappear. they'll either come from the original snare track and/or the overheads... right now, there's no way to replace those cymbal hits (at least there isn't one that doens't involve torturing one's self)... well, at least not yet.

hey hazel.... 23 pages to go.... haha

...now about that wedding souvenir cd....

The ghost notes in the performance do not disappear, but what some drummers look for is the crack of the snare, especially with rimshots.  Granting that there is no need for snare drum replacement, there is no problem.  But once a drummer wants to get that Adrian Young 13x7 snare drum sound, but uses a standard 14x5.5, I always tell the drummer we should get the snare to the right pitch first before we track.  And tuning a 14" snare tightly versus a 13" snare tuned quite tightly sound humongously different.  And if there is no 13" snare around, we're in trouble.  (At least that is what OC drummers say.)

Anyway, the keyword is anticipation. It is better to know from the beginning if the production calls for a drum sample to be used for the recording, than use drum replacement as a "curative" measure.  Which is why old drum modules still have their place because you can use them for trigger I/O purposes, if you want to use drum sample-based software.

Finally, another thing... some drummers are very anal about engineers who replace their drum sounds without their permission. 

[skunkyfunk]

actually, skunk, drumagog could be the solution to that cd souvenir scenario.

Oh yeah. It is also a great tool for those metalheads who do blast beats.

[marvinq]

actually, the drumagog libraries are pretty good. i'm just wondering why they included cymbals.

hey, i'm wondering...

would
kit
get
mad
if
i
typed
this
way
to
reach
25
pages
more
quickly?

[KitC]

Not
really.
I
DO
have
a
sense
of
humor.
Now
go
take
your
meds.

[BALDO]

aba ang mga bampira e gising pa pala hehehe  ..sabagay ako ganun din..mamaya naman ang time ko para magpuyat hehehe.. OT na ito hehehe..
pero sa drums.. marami pa akong aaralin lalo na sa roland td10.. hayyy too many toys too little time..
PS
KIT..pwede bang mairecord as midi yung pinalo sa v drum pad ( pd 10/12 at kd 85) thru TD10?
MARVIN: nakita ko na gumagamit ka ng kontakt..ok ba ito? compared sa gigasampler?

[BALDO]

MARVIN , just saw the drum shootout and BFD looks nice.. how does it compare to gigasampler or kontakt.. review naman pls..

[KitC]

KIT..pwede bang mairecord as midi yung pinalo sa v drum pad ( pd 10/12 at kd 85) thru TD10?

Yes, just connect the TD-10 midi out to any midi interface input and create a midi track in Cubase. Set the midi input to your interface, arm the track and record. You can simultaneously record audio and midi.

[xjepoyx]

eto napapala ng tumatambay sa classified sections eh!

di
ko
man
lang
nalaman
na
nagkakasayahan
na
dito
para
umabot
ng
25
pages
hehehe

[micr0chimp]

 

kakagat
ako.
so...
kamusta
naman
kayong
lahat?

[marvinq]

aba ang mga bampira e gising pa pala hehehe  ..sabagay ako ganun din..mamaya naman ang time ko para magpuyat hehehe.. OT na ito hehehe..
pero sa drums.. marami pa akong aaralin lalo na sa roland td10.. hayyy too many toys too little time..
PS
KIT..pwede bang mairecord as midi yung pinalo sa v drum pad ( pd 10/12 at kd 85) thru TD10?
MARVIN: nakita ko na gumagamit ka ng kontakt..ok ba ito? compared sa gigasampler?

yes, baldo, bfd has been one of the best vsti's i've bought in a very long time, and i've got my eyes set on the platinumsamples libraries and bfd percussion. dfh superior and dfh vintage and custom sound great too, but i'm happy with bfd already. i guess if you're still trying to decide which one to get, they're also worth looking into. xln's addictive drums is also pretty good, and it's library is so much smaller, but the sound wouldn't suggest that. it has built in compressors and eq's for each drum, it has built it patterns too.

well, kontakt is more convenient coz it's a plug-in. well, if you want a gigastudio plug-in then go for GVI, but you still don't have as much control over the samples and presets and kontakt. you have to use the editor which is a separate application which comes with the gigastudio application, not the plug-in. so you see, it's a bit trickier. with kontakt 2, you can do scripting, and so much more. the included orchestral library is actually from the vienna symphonic library (and it's hell of an upgrade from edirol orchestral -- oh by the way, there's an orchestral library that comes with gigastudio as well). i like the steinway piano patch too, and in my opinion, it's way better than any of the gigapianos(oops, i just realized this is a midi drum programming thread).

native instrument's battery 3 has an impressive library too. it has a couple of patches that has multiple samples per hit, pretty much like dfhs and bfd. it tries its best to be the jack of all trades as far as drums is concerned, and it's doing a pretty good job. i like the drum chorus kit. it's pretty much the sound of the elements of a marching band. you'll dig this kit if you're a fan of the movie, drumline.

as far as the td-10 is concerned, yes you can do that, but the hi hat triggering is faulty, according to some forums i've visited. actually, anything that's not a td-20, has problems with the hi-hat triggering. the good thing with midi is you can always edit it later. just take out the faulty triggers when you're done recording the midi drum track.

hey....
i
should
have
typed
the
entire
post
this
way.

[marvinq]

oh, by the way, regarding kontakt, i think GERARD would be the power-user. he's the one who got me to switch to it, when i was happily using gigastudio and halion.

[BALDO]

Yes, just connect the TD-10 midi out to any midi interface input and create a midi track in Cubase. Set the midi input to your interface, arm the track and record. You can simultaneously record audio and midi.

actually sa Nuendo ko gagamitin yun.. pareho lang yun ng Cubase di ba? Cubendo di ba?
i see thanks.. iniisip ko kasi ikabit sa midi timepiece yun..me mas mura na midi express eh..pero naiisip ko kung mahilig ako sa VIDEO?? alam ko me AV na yung timepiece eh..hmmm talagang too little time hehehe..

[BALDO]

sorry bosing KitC.. kakabasa ko lang ng Rules dito..hehehe..
pero OT pa din ito..
Marvin..i remember sa post mo me nabanggit kang Ensoniq kybrd mo noon, ( then came EMAX na super galing nung time niya) na sabi mo ok yung tunog kasi lately nakalikot ko yung EPS 16 plus ko at " umandar bigla" hehehe.. how does the drum samples on the Ensoniq compare doon sa kontakt sa pandinig mo? alam ko 16 bit drum samples yata ng Alesis HR 16 yun eh.. . sa Kontakt yata 32 bit na eh.. sorry LAST ng pangungulit ito hehehe..

[marvinq]

ensoniq used to have an incredible sample library, and quite frankly i don't know what happened to it ever since e-mu bought ensoniq, then e-mu got sold to creative labs. it's a good thing there's chicken systems' translator that could read my ensoniq library. the samples sound artificial by today's standards, but if you're looking for good power hits for your snares and toms -- perhaps to use with drumagog -- (and i could recognize some of asr-10's drums as having the sound of bob clearmountain's drum samples), then you're bound to find some very useful samples.

the emulator 4 got a lot of use for drums and percussion. when i got it, streaming samples from disk was unheard of, and it was totally hip to have a sampler that had 128MB of ram (and now my pen drive has 4gb, and it's about 1/100th of the size of the emulator).

the eps16+'s downsampling algorithms are great. you might wanna use them to add some grit and grunge to your drum samples. yun nga lang 2mb lang ang maximum memory...

then again, you'll be able to imagine how much music was made by a sampler that had 2mb of memory...

[BALDO]

thanks pare ko..  now back to regular programming hehehe..

[marvinq]

that'd be...

back
to
regular
programming.

haha.
ha.

[abyssinianson]

hmmm...good question. i guess it depends on how detailed I want to make a drum track sound. I've used a lot of tools in the past to make my MIDI drums but I usually rely on an MPC or something similar to get things down quickly. I also use V-Drums if they are around when I can't mic up my set.

[Jim Ayson]

Allow me a bit of a drummer's perspective

I used to program drum machines, back in the day. I started with a LinnDrum (used to borrow this from my friend Dixie Mabanta), then when I bought my own drum machine, it was an Alesis HR-16 (for the princely sum of $450, grrr).  I liked the fact that the buttons on the Alesis were extremely velocity sensitive.

Drum machines have their own pattern based sequencer, which makes perfect sense for drummers, because in most pop/rock, you play a distinct pattern for intros, verses, choruses. You are playing "poste" for these patterns most of the time, and do fills or cymbal crashes now and then.

So it's really a matter of programming a pattern for each part, and then chaining the patterns together. For a live feel, play a fill on toms and end with a crash cymbal. Or introduce a ride cymbal on the choruses, because that's what a real drummer would do. The Alesis drum machines had touch sensitive pads, and I would play the fills on the two rows of buttons as if i was playing a kit (it helped they were laid out like a real kit)

When I graduated to MIDI drum programming on a sequencer (Cakewalk 2.0 for Windows, woo hoo), it was still just chaining patterns and then adding unquantized fills played live on the controller for "realism". You can lay out a drum track really fast this way.

Nowadays I suppose you would just loop drum loop samples for the "poste" patterns but you'd still want to play the fills live.

It always help to think like a real percussionist, and that's the key to realistic sounding drum tracks. Don't do impossible things, like playing ride patterns on 10 different cymbals all at once

Of course, I don't do much programming nowadays, and the last time I attempted a drum track I just looped a sampled pattern over and over with no variation... posteng poste

[KitC]

It always help to think like a real percussionist, and that's the key to realistic sounding drum tracks. Don't do impossible things, like playing ride patterns on 10 different cymbals all at once

Yup! That's the tell between an inexperienced programmer and one who has been doing it for some time now. All too often, we sometimes forget that a drummer has 4 limbs (it sometimes helps to 'air drum' during programming)... and then somebody like Akira Jimbo suddenly comes along and screws up that perception.

[CrippledLucifer]

I'll just post my inquiry here since I think it is somehow related Can anyone suggest a "bang for the buck" USB-MIDI keyboard? budget would be around 3k? (if there is any)
Thanks in advance!