Is there a drummer in the room?

[AlanB]

Hi Ezy

Making realistic drum tracks is hard, but your drums sound pretty good to me.

I would suggest replacing a few of the snare beats with toms. It's what a real drummer might do.

AlanB

[pekadan]

Ezy, you've already received a lot of really good suggestions. A few of my thoughts...

I too think your beat sounds much too "straight and static". What's already been said: Experiment more with all sorts of variations - rhythmic, velocity, accents, pauses, ghost hits etc. You'll find that even the slightest variation will make a great difference to the groove! Even straight pop/rock beats need to "breath" to sound interesting.

Think "feeling" and "energy" and, again, experiment a lot. Try to imagine the sound of the beat before you record it. Sing it! Notice how you'll for example go "um-chi du-KA bada upmf-chi-du-KA-uh" rather than "bom-ti-ka-ti bom-ti-ka-ti". Try to get the drums to sound like you've imagined. See what I mean or are you going at this point? .

If you don't have pads, at least play the drums on the keyboard. I think it helps greatly to record with at least some live feeling (even if you do one drum/cymbal at a time). I could never create a good "natural" beat using the piano roll.

[herodotus]

I wanted to try some of your suggestions tonight, thanks for them, but Tracktion corrupted my project
I guess I'll put my synth/samples buying on hold and start shopping for a better sequencer

No offense, but in many, many projects involving between 5 and 20 plugins, on a pc with laughably small amounts of RAM, Tracktion has NEVER corrupted anything.

In other words, your sequencer might not be the problem.

[nuisance sonore]

Problem fixed , now I can get back to work (and I think this place is great )

[herodotus]

Problem fixed , now I can get back to work (and I think this place is great )

Isn't it though???

[donkey tugger]

Ere's another wee tip - your ride sounds a tad metronomic; as well as varying velocity /volume a bit, try doing another couple of copies of the sound and detune them up and down ever so slightly. Then substitute these for the original at random, makes it sound a lot more realistic.

[nuisance sonore]

I started messing about with velocity layering and new samples, not very easy when your sampler doesn't seem to support it, I had to map different velocity to different key. Here's the result newstuuf_44_16_take3. Not really sure how it sound I can't listen to it anymore, need a rest.

I haven't tried all the trick and tips mentionned here yet but I will (music is time consuming, no?), and I'm very gratefull for them.

Now about using pads, I can't afford them so why are you putting this thought into my head

jk

[herodotus]

Try this if you want to use velocity layers:
http://www.kvraudio.com/get/769.html

Its free and it supports Sf2 as well as .wav files.

And it works just fine in Tracktion.

[John Vulich]

Try this if you want to use velocity layers:
http://www.kvraudio.com/get/769.html

Its free and it supports Sf2 as well as .wav files.

And it works just fine in Tracktion.

You'll need sfZed to do any editing of the sfz format. Or I suppose you could use one of the soundfont editors that are available... all of which, IMO, SUCK!

[nuisance sonore]

@SynDrone
I bought 1001 Drum Grooves a about week ago from Amazon, still waiting delivery (is it good? I was told so)


@seldom
On your first point, I have a very limited choice as far as samples goes, mostly free stuff from the web. I'll probably invest in more when I'm better at it and know what I really need, not to mention Tracktion2 is supposed to come with RM IV so that should broaden my choices (that's if T2 ever comes out). And about the robotic ride, I tried lot's of different things to try to liven it but it just went from bad to worse, so I just buried the whole thing in the mix for now as you can ear in the new one .

@JohnVulich
Apparently

@thornemaelstro
Pads seems to me like a major investement, not just money like my previous comments but in time also; this is a complete new skill to master and I'm figuring it would take me years just to play them to an accepteble level; the thing is, I'm old and don't have that many years left... But I admire your dedication.

@corialgates
Ok, that's one aspect of mixing and music that I don't get: phaser, flanger and the like. I tried the one from Kjaerhus but couldn't get what I wanted from it, the presets just mangled the sound beyond recognition and for tweaking the buttons I don't understand what they do so in turning them I just made more of a mess. Maybe I should ask my guitar player of a friend how to use one, I'm sure he knows.

@AlanB
Hey, Hello again Alan. Thank's for the comments, means a lot to me. Did you mean to use the toms instead of the snare, or more like a counter beat?

@pekadan
If that's crazy, then I'm crazy because that's what I do now (the "um-chi du-KA bada upmf-chi-du-KA-uh" part). the problem is getting it to sound like I ear it, I'm not there yet...

@donkey tugger
That idea is interesting, I haven't tried it yet but I tried everything else on that #%*&#@! ride part. Might even try it on the crash also, I hate it as it is but I can't get it to sound like I want. Thank's for an inventive idea.

@herodotus
I have sfz, but I didn't know one could load and map multilayered wav samples in it, I thought it was just a player. Come to think of it, how do you mapp multilayered sample in it? Don't you need an external editor like JohnVulich is proposing?

[herodotus]

@herodotus
I have sfz, but I didn't know one could load and map multilayered wav samples in it, I thought it was just a player...?

The experts can correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that an sf2 file is just such a multilayered wav sample.

What Mr. Vulich was referring to (again, correct me if I'm wrong) I think, is making your own sf2 files from your own wav files.

And so, you can still use sfz to employ readymade soundfonts (of which there are many).




Correct me if I'm wrong.

[nuisance sonore]

That's what I thought too, herodotus; but what I have to work with at the moment is just a bunch of wave file as samples.

New take where I tried donkey tugger method. Still needs refining I think newstuuf_44_16_take4