# How do you make midi drums sound realistic?



## uhhmike (Aug 23, 2013)

I use SSD4 in reaper . i do velocities and such but they still sound fake if anybody could help me out or give me some tips it would be appreciated


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## K3V1N SHR3DZ (Aug 23, 2013)

http://www.sevenstring.org/forum/drums-percussion/104336-bring-your-programmed-drums-life.html


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## r134 (Aug 23, 2013)

Ive never been a fan of MIDI drums.. I just record real drums


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## abandonist (Aug 25, 2013)

You don't. That's the nature of the beast.


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## Winspear (Aug 25, 2013)

abandonist said:


> You don't. That's the nature of the beast.





Check out my thread linked


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## AxeHappy (Aug 25, 2013)

What amuses me is that people alway want to make midi drums sound real. 

But real drums are always as compressed as shit and quantised right to a grid. Exceptions exist of course but in general...


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## xfilth (Aug 25, 2013)

Good velocity editing is the king


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## abandonist (Aug 25, 2013)

EtherealEntity said:


> Check out my thread linked



Oh that's all well and cute of you to try making them sound better, but they never will match a real kit. Ever.


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## Señor Voorhees (Aug 25, 2013)

What's with all the shit talking programmed drums? Like it or not, you can get decent enough (read: not perfect, but good enough) results with samples. It just takes a lot of time and effort. Real drums are ideal, but some folks don't have the option. So instead of getting snarky and telling the guy to get the real thing, maybe offer some sound advice.

Velocity editing is indeed key, as is proper EQ and compression. All of this I have very little experience on so I can't be of much direct help, but there are tutorials on youtube I'm sure. Dig around in this guy's tutorial videos, he goes pretty in depth and gets pretty good results:

ED - YouTube

You don't need the exact software or samples to understand what he goes on about.

That said, OP only has one post so he's probably not coming back. Especially considering instead of advice, for the most part all he got was basically being told to .... off and get the real thing. Way to stamp out a little bit of the guy's musical soul. It was totally helpful.


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## nhfaudio (Aug 25, 2013)

A cool trick is to highlight all the midi notes that AREN'T already dynamic in some way. (fills, snare rolls, etc) and randomize the velocities of them by a margin of like 5 up and down. It's super subtle, but having all the velocities not be exact makes a huge difference in perceiving it as realistic!


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## xfilth (Aug 25, 2013)

I'm really not a fan of randomization. In my experience, it doesn't help anything but give a too random feel to the notes, even if done very softly. Instead, I like to go in and edit accents manually. A drummer will usually accent on the "strongest" beats and leave offbeat hits naturally softer. 
For example, on a simple pattern of 8th hihat notes in a 4/4 bar, I will have the 1st hit the hardest, have the 5th a bit softer, the 3rd and 7th a bit softer than that and finally the 2nd, 4th, 6th and 8th the softest. 
Of course this will vary greatly, depending on what the music calls for, but it's nice way to get a natural feel instead of relying on randomization. Especially on cymbals that play subdivisions.


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## svenlk (Aug 25, 2013)

compression, eq's, velocities and reverb man. the best thing to do tho is ofcourse record a real drummer, nothing beats that.


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## Winspear (Aug 26, 2013)

abandonist said:


> Oh that's all well and cute of you to try making them sound better, but they never will match a real kit. Ever.



For metal, considering what producers make real drums sound like these days, that's absolutely not true. 
I've even heard absolutely fantastically realistic programmed drums for more delicate styles. 
I am talking like, up to 10 minutes per bar of programming here for more complex stuff like fills etc.

Check out this record programmed by my friend Voyager EP | Agora


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## tedtan (Aug 26, 2013)

Señor Voorhees;3700817 said:


> What's with all the shit talking programmed drums?


 


EtherealEntity said:


> For metal, considering what producers make real drums sound like these days, that's absolutely not true.


 
That's just abandonist being abandonist - I don't know even know if he's serious. For better or worse that's just his shtick.


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## tedtan (Aug 26, 2013)

xfilth said:


> I'm really not a fan of randomization. In my experience, it doesn't help anything but give a too random feel to the notes, even if done very softly. Instead, I like to go in and edit accents manually. A drummer will usually accent on the "strongest" beats and leave offbeat hits naturally softer.


 
I agree. Doing it this way takes more time and effort than randomizing, but placing the accents where a real drummer would place them definitely helps make the feel more realistic.


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## Konfyouzd (Aug 26, 2013)




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## GunpointMetal (Aug 26, 2013)

on the subject...anyone know of any DAWs or sequencer with "intelligent" randomization? I would think it would be pretty easy for MIDI software to detect time signatures an accent things in a logical order.


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## Winspear (Aug 26, 2013)

I have noticed that Sibelius does that to my drums. I knew something was up when composing - importing a MIDI to my DAW after basic programming is done and I see that the beats are higher in velocity. Probably a setting somewhere.
Not sure on a DAW feature for that but I know some DAWs have a MIDI event filter which could perhaps offer beat locations as an option.
Typically I use that filter for velocity before rhythmic randomization. I.e do all my velocities, then use a filter to select everything under X velocity (which is offbeat stuff / in between cymbals etc) and randomize it's rhythm slightly.


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## K3V1N SHR3DZ (Aug 26, 2013)

EtherealEntity said:


> For metal, considering what producers make real drums sound like these days, that's absolutely not true.
> I've even heard absolutely fantastically realistic programmed drums for more delicate styles.
> I am talking like, up to 10 minutes per bar of programming here for more complex stuff like fills etc.
> 
> Check out this record programmed by my friend Voyager EP | Agora



Holy shit. Those are probably the most "actually played by a person" sounding programmed drums I've ever heard. Music is pretty good too, lol.


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## Winspear (Aug 27, 2013)

Yup. The dudes work blows me away. He's a real drummer, does a lot for various projects (including one with me which is kinda on hiatus)


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## Drew (Aug 27, 2013)

GunpointMetal said:


> on the subject...anyone know of any DAWs or sequencer with "intelligent" randomization? I would think it would be pretty easy for MIDI software to detect time signatures an accent things in a logical order.



None that I'm aware of, and actually I'd think this would be relatively hard to do. 

That thread linked above is actually rather excellent - I've learned most of that by trial and error working on drums for my album. There's only a couple things I'd add: 

If there's any way you can sit down behind a real drum kit and have a drummer teach you a basic 4/4 rock beat, having some sense of the actual mechanics of how a drummer plays will go a LONG way towards helping your sequencing.
When programming velocity, both listen with your ear to see if something sounds "natural," but also think logically about, "if a drummer was playing this, what hits would likely be harder than the others and are there any combinations that would be unrealistically hard to pull off? 
Replicating existing drum beats in midi with a sequencer can help a LOT into teaching you how to "think like a drummer."
For Reaper users, the "humanize midi" function is awesome. For convenience I program with "snap to grid" enabled, but then going back and "gluing" all my midi pieces together and Humanizing with arounf 10% for velocity and 4% for timing for the whole thing seemed to really help the realism. 

My drums aren't jawdropping or anything and anyone who's paying attention carefully will probably be able to tell they're samples if they know what to listen to, but on a casual listen they don't jump out as being fake, and for instrumental rock as a genre with its notoriously bland drumming, drums that don't jump out at you are kind of a success, I think.


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## tyler_faith_08 (Aug 29, 2013)

abandonist said:


> You don't. That's the nature of the beast.


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## morethan6 (Aug 29, 2013)

Guys, every single record you like has so much beat detective and sample replacement on the drums that they might as well be digital in the first place - trust me, you can make software sound pretty damn realistic these days.

The thing you get with a real drummer is the feel of the playing - the problem is that most of the people programming drums are not drummers, and drummers don't play MIDI keyboard, they play drums.

I feel like I've siad the word 'drums' a lot in the post. Drums.


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## Kaickul (Aug 29, 2013)

Humanize and velocities. Two of the most important aspects of making midi sound real. Then the other stuff comes in like eq, compression and reverb.


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## celticelk (Aug 29, 2013)

morethan6 said:


> Guys, every single record you like has so much beat detective and sample replacement on the drums that they might as well be digital in the first place



That assumes an awful lot about what your fellow SSO players are listening to. Some of us still listen to substantially more humanized forms of music. I can guarantee that the doom records that hit me so hard in 2012 didn't use any of that tech.


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## TylerRay (Aug 29, 2013)

I've hook up and electric drum to kit sequence my MIDI drums. It's pretty legit. Velocity is pretty accurate too, as long as the your sensitivity thresholds are set right, and you have a MIDI drum program with a ton of velocitty samples for each kit piece. And you'd best have as fast low-latency system beings it's a live performance kinda deal.


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## Narrillnezzurh (Sep 6, 2013)

In my experience proper mic bleed settings make programmed drums more real sounding than any amount of humanization.


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## fwd0120 (Sep 6, 2013)

Narrillnezzurh said:


> In my experience proper mic bleed settings make programmed drums more real sounding than any amount of humanization.



I came here to post something similar to this.

Besides careful velocity and timing manipulations, the most important thing for me is getting the overhead to sound realistic and balanced (as well as the room mic, but most styles prefer OH). Actually, in the real world, you generally build your drum mix around the overheads (or room, which ever gives the most accurate image of what you are going for). In other words, start with the OH, and then add the other direct mics to complement it. 
It makes them much more natural that way. 
Not to say you can't make it polished that way. You can process it the same way with compression and EQ as you normally would. Sometimes the OH sounds so good, I will leave the cymbals and hat mic low or even off. Sometimes even the Toms' direct mics can be left low or off. 
Also, make sure that the panning matches the OH. Overheads are almost always stereo, and already have a good image (except sometimes the snare is to the side, you can adjust the phase to correct that). So you will make sure that the floor tom is panned left in the OH, don't pan the direct to the right, etc.
Another finishing touch - and this will vary a lot for your situation - is bus compression. If you get the attack and release right, with 1-3db of gain reduction, you can get the drums to breath a lot. This can be done on your master track, too, and helps you stay dynamic sounding for when you add the final limiter in mastering (limiters don't breath, a good attack/release setting on a comp will).


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## HollowmanPL (Sep 16, 2013)

listen to drummers, watch them play, look at the studio reports and remember that the faster drummer plays the lower velocity should there be


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## Andromalia (Sep 17, 2013)

Some songs you just can't replicate with computer drums. Or any kind of mechanical device, really. Most infamously, say, Orion: the tempo is actually varying around 140 and wobbling during the whole song. 
Discovered that when I wanted to record a cover. Something was off and I discovered this. Tempo varies by 3 or 4 during the whole song, falls behind, catches up...


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## Winspear (Sep 18, 2013)

Andromalia said:


> Some songs you just can't replicate with computer drums. Or any kind of mechanical device, really. Most infamously, say, Orion: the tempo is actually varying around 140 and wobbling during the whole song.
> Discovered that when I wanted to record a cover. Something was off and I discovered this. Tempo varies by 3 or 4 during the whole song, falls behind, catches up...



This is one of the things I said you should do in my programming guide  Not entirely necessary of course given that many modern songs with real drums are click tracked without tempo changes - but they would certainly have more energy were that not the case.


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## GunpointMetal (Sep 18, 2013)

I just got done recording and editing drums played by a real drummer and we're doing hit replacement on the kick and tom shells, so we triggered them and created a MIDI track. After doing this same process for another band this spring and now with my group, I've noticed some things about drummers that may be helpful in "humanizing" programmed drums. 
Drummers like to jump the gun by like 1/128th note during fills-rush to the end and get that ONE an RCH ahead of the grid
Drummers vary rarely fill on their toms as hard as most records sound like-almost every fill from both guys starts out softer than it finishes, especially for whole-bar rolls and fills

One thing I've been considering is using a keyboard/drum pad to hand-punch the basics of a beat, then program to that instead of the grid as I'm filling things in, cause I will naturally be slightly ahead or behind in parts.


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## Drew (Sep 18, 2013)

GunpointMetal said:


> I just got done recording and editing drums played by a real drummer and we're doing hit replacement on the kick and tom shells, so we triggered them and created a MIDI track. After doing this same process for another band this spring and now with my group, I've noticed some things about drummers that may be helpful in "humanizing" programmed drums.
> Drummers like to jump the gun by like 1/128th note during fills-rush to the end and get that ONE an RCH ahead of the grid
> Drummers vary rarely fill on their toms as hard as most records sound like-almost every fill from both guys starts out softer than it finishes, especially for whole-bar rolls and fills
> 
> One thing I've been considering is using a keyboard/drum pad to hand-punch the basics of a beat, then program to that instead of the grid as I'm filling things in, cause I will naturally be slightly ahead or behind in parts.



I doubt it's _exactly_ a 128th note, but per the comment in the OP about fills - I don't think it's they play them a few BPM faster exactly (certainly not if they're tracking to a click, which IMO is certainly a very good idea) so much as drummers do tend to rush the beat a little bit on fills. Replicating this by getting out of the pocket and a little in front of the beat on particularly the start of a fill could certainly help a performance sound more "human."


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## GunpointMetal (Sep 18, 2013)

yeah...that's why its "like 1/128th"...but that's exactly my point. Live drummers are people and they get excited!


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## DavePiatek (Sep 18, 2013)

In my experience, getting the shells to sound natural isn't all that hard. The cymbals take a bit more time to get right. In both cases, it's pretty much required that you know how a drummer plays (i.e. hi hat strikes on the 2 and 4 are harder than 1 and 3, hand dominance, etc.).


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## bobbyprayogo (Sep 20, 2013)

Nowadays, midi drum IS INDEED real drum sound.

First of all, you need to make sure that the drum beat you create is playable by real drummer (remember human only has 2 arms and 2 legs, so don't create something impossible to play). Thus a knowledge of drumming is a huge factor whether your midi drum sound "real" or not (I think the goal to achieve is to sound good). 

After you have a decent beat which suit the song, randomize the velocity and the note position a little bit(the mentioned humanize function). And while humanizing is great, but it isn't enough. It's also important to give some crescendo or decrescendo (ex: crescendo when going from verse to chorus).


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## ducer (Sep 23, 2013)

Velocity, proper samples, proper mixing technique and eq/compression. Plus you can't play 3 crashes at once


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## Diet Kirk (Sep 26, 2013)

There's another neat thing that sets drummers apart from one another. I'm a drummer and I've just started getting into writing songs and playing the guitar, hence my appearance here.

I used to have a list of these examples as ideas to try but I can't find it at the moment.

A drummer may play on the beat with the kick, slightly behind with the hats/ride (pulse), and ahead of the beat with the snare.

Or basically any combination of those. It can sound really nice being bang on the beat with the kick and snare, but laying back a fraction with the hats to imply a slightly groovier relaxed pulse.

We are talking small fractions here though!


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## wilch (Sep 26, 2013)

ducer said:


> Plus you can't play 3 crashes at once



The drummer from Def Leppard can, and he's only got one arm!


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## russmuller (Oct 31, 2013)

Lots of good thoughts in this thread. I'm going to echo a lot of what's been said already, but I'm generally pretty happy with my fake drums.

For one, I always play the MIDI notes into Pro Tools to approximate the right feel rather than using a pre-programmed pattern. Triggers, a MIDI controller, whatever works for you.

A lot of times I'm starting with scratch recordings of guitar and then building the drums around that. I like to make a tempo map for the song as well. Sometimes bumping the tempo by 2 BPM in the chorus, or slowing down a little in the bridge section, or whatever, can really bring a track to life. It requires experimentation to see what feels right. That means I do a lot of back and forth re-doing the scratch guitars just to conform to the new tempo changes.

Once I have the drum parts mostly in place, I'll re-record the guitars and bass to the drums because the rest of the band should be following the drummer. Even though the original guitar was recorded to a click, my timing isn't perfect and it usually sounds bad when you try to force the drums to conform.

At this point (or anywhere in this process, really), there can be a lot of painstaking editing taking place. Mostly with timing. For this stage, as long as the velocity is in the ballpark you can keep moving forward. But adjust the hell out of the timing of those notes. If a section feels off from my input timing, I'll quantize. If that sounds mechanical, I'll randomize by 1-2%. For fills I usually am editing individual notes zoomed in to the piano roll. As Gunpoint and Drew covered, real drummers will often come in a tad early or fast on fills. Don't worry about the notes not being on the grid lines, just worry that it feels and sounds natural.

Then I'll try to address the mix and get things balanced to where it sounds like a real drum kit. Like fwd0120 said, you want to (in most cases) get a good OH and room sound. Blending these things in with the close-mic'ed samples makes the kit sound more cohesive.

Then once the mix is mostly together, that's when I worry about editing velocity. If I have a section where I'm pegging my kick or snare at 127, I'll do a 1-2% randomize to avoid sounding robotic. It just takes a lot of critical listening. I'll usually keep a notepad in my car so I can jot down any particular sections or hits where it sounds un-natural. Go back into Pro Tools, edit those, bounce, and repeat.

Also, cymbals are a problem. A real drummer can give you a wide range of sounds from each cymbal. With sample libraries, you don't have much in the way of touch or finesse. You're lucky to get more than one type of hit. While a real drummer would probably play with a modest assortment of cymbals and it would sound perfectly natural, I've found that I usually wind up with 10 or more to avoid them sounding monotonous.

I know I'm a little late to this discussion, but I hope there was anything useful in this for anyone.


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## TimothyLeary (Oct 31, 2013)

Nowadays I hear more often natural drums sounding like programmed drums. People are killing the drums sound.


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## GunpointMetal (Nov 1, 2013)

yeah, that's why most people just go ahead and either program or replace them....they're just gonna compress, EQ, transient effect, limit, recompress, EQ, gate, sidechain compress, EQ, parallel compress, EQ, and hand quantize each hit of a "normally recorded" acoustic drummer to sound like SD2.0 anyways, might as well skip all the bullshit...I think for our next record, we'll program all of the shells to what our drummer plays and just record cymbals. Fake cymbals sound fake to me, always.


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## imgarrett (Nov 7, 2013)

Hey can anyone help me out? I'm running superior 2.0 and all of my cymbals are choking/muting I've ran up and down my keyboard making sure the chokes weren't just on a certain keys but every crash chokes it self out randomly when triggered whether it's in 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 presses.


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## The Reverend (Nov 7, 2013)

This is like the drum version of "Can you tell the difference between an Axe-Fx and a 5150?"

I have nothing to add that hasn't been covered here already. Listen to bands noted for having good drummers - note that good doesn't always mean fast - and see what they do. Listen to what they're playing in relation to what the rest of the band is doing. A blast beat can do things to a chunky riff that a slower, groovier beat can't, and vice versa. Same with fills and such. 

Don't forget that the average listener can't tell the difference unless you're f--king up.


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## Orgalmer (Nov 7, 2013)

A lot of this has already been covered but if you learn about writing drums as opposed to worrying about them sounding right I think you'll have more success - I think the biggest giveaway is when someone writes drum parts in a programmer and they just don't make sense or couldn't be played IRL.

I use Battery 3 for all my programming and as far as I'm concerned what comes out my speakers is pretty much exactly what I hear my drummer do live. I put some effort into velocities (in Guitar Pro) but other than that I leave it alone - I set the kicks high and add a groove velocity in the cymbals, and I also add harder hits on the snare and velocity-map my fills. That's about it.

You could use a bunch of samples for everything but I actually use one or two samples for most of my hits. I wouldn't mind having more but I don't think it's necessary to produce a realistic sound.

Just my two cents.


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## russmuller (Nov 8, 2013)

imgarrett said:


> Hey can anyone help me out? I'm running superior 2.0 and all of my cymbals are choking/muting I've ran up and down my keyboard making sure the chokes weren't just on a certain keys but every crash chokes it self out randomly when triggered whether it's in 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 presses.



I can't help but wonder if maybe you've somehow got it configured for aftertouch and that's what's making it choke? Is it like a cymbal catch (hitting a cymbal, then grabbing it to mute it quickly) or like the sample playback itself gets interrupted? That could be the difference between a MIDI mapping issue and some other setting on the computer.


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## ducer (Nov 8, 2013)

Also check this guys Youtube channel - it is basically about mixing metal at home but he has a point when it comes to drums sound.

https://www.youtube.com/user/Jamesmsv?feature=watch


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## imgarrett (Nov 8, 2013)

russmuller said:


> I can't help but wonder if maybe you've somehow got it configured for aftertouch and that's what's making it choke? Is it like a cymbal catch (hitting a cymbal, then grabbing it to mute it quickly) or like the sample playback itself gets interrupted? That could be the difference between a MIDI mapping issue and some other setting on the computer.



I thought about that, but I haven't really dicked around with superiors settings. It's all default cause I just freshly installed it.


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## cgabb (Nov 10, 2013)

Would you be kind enough to tell me what program was used on your friend's recording ? It's the first time programmed drums sound good to me. (granted he worked his ass off to get this sound but still)


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## Poltergeist (Nov 10, 2013)

This is an excellent thread. I'm just getting into programming midi drums and it sure is a tedious thing that I couldn't manage to do without a midi controller. What about options like in Pro Tools like midi merge, couldn't you just lay down you bass and snare hits and then fill in your crashes and rides ect with a second recording pass for more of a realistic feel? It is very difficult to keep the timing correct while playing all of the hits on a keyboard like you would a real drum kit... but hell it'd be way harder for me with my note duration fluency/knowledge programming them individually.


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## russmuller (Nov 11, 2013)

Poltergeist said:


> This is an excellent thread. I'm just getting into programming midi drums and it sure is a tedious thing that I couldn't manage to do without a midi controller. What about options like in Pro Tools like midi merge, couldn't you just lay down you bass and snare hits and then fill in your crashes and rides ect with a second recording pass for more of a realistic feel? It is very difficult to keep the timing correct while playing all of the hits on a keyboard like you would a real drum kit... but hell it'd be way harder for me with my note duration fluency/knowledge programming them individually.



That's exactly what I do. First pass is usually whatever is keeping time, second pass is kick/snare, next pass is toms/fills, then crashes/cymbals. It's a slow process because I'm no badass like Paul from Chimp Spanner.


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## hikizume976 (Nov 11, 2013)

a little late to the party as well. Just thought I'd leave this here for anyone looking for help in making programmed drums sound more realistic.

creativeLIVE: Digital Drums with EZDrummer with Eyal Levi


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