KVR Audio

Jim333 · Post by **Jim333** » Fri Sep 08, 2006 10:31 am

Not sure if this is the right area for this post, so forgive me if i am wrong!!

I program my drums with BFD within cubase, a mix of playing via keyboard, and entering the notes via mouse.

I'm quite pleased with the results but was wondering if there was a plugin/Effect that would "read" through the drum track and make it more human, eg... Velocity note changing instead of manually doing it myself, changing the quantize for a more human feel.

Any ideas???

morelia · Post by **morelia** » Fri Sep 08, 2006 10:54 am

Great idea but I think Jamstix might be the closest thing. You could get a drum track with a human feel, export to a midi file and then edit from there. I have BFD but in an effort to cut down on the tedium of trying to program realistic drum tracks, I got Jamstix and I can see it being my new drummer. And as a bonus you can run BFD (or any other vst drum machine) within Jamstix as the sampler. Or like I said you can export to midi.

beej · Post by **beej** » Fri Sep 08, 2006 11:10 am

And I'd like a plugin that would "read" through my mix settings for my stuff and make it sound like Bob Clearmountain mixed it...

"Human" != "random"

Good drummers don't play necessarily exactly tight, but they groove the beats, and this is not a random thing, it's a human thing. The best way to improve this kind of thing is learn to play and think like a drummer, and translat that into your playing/programming.

Having pads helps as well, because there is a physicality you need to breathe life into drums, but if keys is all you've got, that'll have to do. Learn to playmore live from the keyboard, and turn quantization off - you results will probably sound sucky at first, but force yourself to pay more atention to playing tighter, and you'll find that your drum tracks really start improve, are still tight but also still have some life in them, which is squeezed out by quantising.

You'll get much better results that way than running some randomisers through your hihat tracks etc. And pay attention to accents as well, acccents are key to getting something that sounds drummer-ish.

Jim333 · Post by **Jim333** » Fri Sep 08, 2006 11:14 am

Thanks for the quick reply,

Does Jamstix create the rhythm for you? As the music i play is kinda technical death metal, polyrhythm stuff. Would it work for this?

Jim333 · Post by **Jim333** » Fri Sep 08, 2006 11:18 am

Not being funny beej, but have you tried blast beating at 160-180 bpm via midi keyboard?? Not easy i can tell you, Simple Rhythms are easy and natural to play but when it comes to serious technical stuff, playing straight from the keyboard isn't!!!

ludwig · Post by **ludwig** » Fri Sep 08, 2006 11:55 am

Jim333 wrote:Not being funny beej, but have you tried blast beating at 160-180 bpm via midi keyboard?? Not easy i can tell you, Simple Rhythms are easy and natural to play but when it comes to serious technical stuff, playing straight from the keyboard isn't!!!

That's easy: you can put your sequencer bmp way more lower (lets say at 80- 100) while recording the drums via midi-keyboard and put it on 160-180 for playback...

beej wrote:think like a drummer

Euh, since when can drummers think

beej · Post by **beej** » Fri Sep 08, 2006 11:58 am

Jim333 wrote:Not being funny beej, but have you tried blast beating at 160-180 bpm via midi keyboard?? Not easy i can tell you, Simple Rhythms are easy and natural to play but when it comes to serious technical stuff, playing straight from the keyboard isn't!!!

Well, you didn't mention that, did you?

Yes, at that tempo, simple stuff is okay to play, but anything else will be difficult without slowing the tempo down, but again, it's the same for a real drummer - they'll be doing far less technical stuff at those tempo anyway...

ludwig wrote:Euh, since when can drummers think

Ah, the good ones can. They are the ones who are working and earning good money though...

cimoc · Post by **cimoc** » Fri Sep 08, 2006 11:59 am

Jamstix is good. You can use your own samples. You can determine the style eg ballad or reqqae, and variations of the main beat, plus various parameters, such as complexity, funkiness, ghost notes, hihat/ride and A LOT more. Or you can arrange the track bar by bar from beginning to end so that you determine what groove it plays when, when it does fills etc. Or you can import midi files. There is a steepish learning curve, though (the price you pay for such a complete program). You must try the demo.

Having said that, beej does have a point. After all, you can record in layers, first kicks, then snares and so on, or use BFD or Jamstix and record only one element live, say the hihats. Like one finger playing. It does make a difference to the feeling. Anyway, you can edit it afterwards, to fix the odd hickup.

hifiboom · Post by **hifiboom** » Fri Sep 08, 2006 12:07 pm

Ey we come more and more closer to the self-producing sequencers....

play one c3 note and the sequencer pulls out a fine mastered mix....

morelia · Post by **morelia** » Fri Sep 08, 2006 12:18 pm

Jim333 wrote:Thanks for the quick reply,

Does Jamstix create the rhythm for you? As the music i play is kinda technical death metal, polyrhythm stuff. Would it work for this?

Yes it does the drumming for you. There are several modes. Among them are Free Jam or Key Word Jam. Key Word jamming works by sticking to the styles you select. Free Jam works within a style but you setup features like how often fills happen, the level of complexity and "funkiness", hihat complexity, velocity and timing accuracy etc. Free Jam also responds to your playing by monitoring audio or midi input but you can set it up to play a drum track of a certain style, determine the level of complexity among other things. There may be some things missing but any more options and I probably wouldn't get my head around it all. On first trial I didn't think much of it but once I gave it a decent second try I bought it pretty quickly. Try the demo would be my advice. But really give it a good demo as you may have to mess with a few settings to get what you are after.

wrench45us · Post by **wrench45us** » Fri Sep 08, 2006 12:23 pm

Groove Monkee's midi patterns and specialty packs for BFD etc. have a druumer groove feel to them 'cause I assume he plays them in
the're not quantized, they have a played velocity feel
they're not expensive
every pattern comes as a set with variations and fills
he's a hard woring nice guy
he has a new website

http://www.groovemonkee.com/home/

t-willy · Post by **t-willy** » Fri Sep 08, 2006 12:27 pm

Jim333 wrote:Not being funny beej, but have you tried blast beating at 160-180 bpm via midi keyboard?? Not easy i can tell you, Simple Rhythms are easy and natural to play but when it comes to serious technical stuff, playing straight from the keyboard isn't!!!

i got fed up and bought a roland v-kit (not the solution for everyone i know). i can definitely say playing metal drums on a keyboard sucks!

lates

t-willy

Johnny B · Post by **Johnny B** » Fri Sep 08, 2006 2:30 pm

beej wrote:Yes, at that tempo, simple stuff is okay to play, but anything else will be difficult without slowing the tempo down, but again, it's the same for a real drummer - they'll be doing far less technical stuff at those tempo anyway...

Unless they're Mick Harris, that is.

Another thing to try is to play in the whole part if you don't want it to sound looped. Obviously, you don't have to play in the whole part at once. But if you do each verse and chorus separately, then the slight mistakes and deviations will make it sound more human and less programmed.

None of this will work, of course, if you've got the quantization on quarter notes. (I used to use 32nd notes most of the time).

Drum Realism???