# General tips for getting the most out of EZdrummer?



## breadtruck (Aug 12, 2012)

Hey all.

I'm wondering if anyone here who has experience with EZdrummer has picked up any general tips/tricks to make the drums sound as good as possible. I'm pretty noobish when it comes to recording anything other than guitars, so I find it hard to make my drums sound that good. I'm currently using the Drumkit From Hell expansion, and it sounds okay, but the drums are still pretty weak and thin.

Things i'm currently doing:
Basic compression on each section (snare, toms, overheads etc)
Bit of reverb and a gate on the toms
Bit of EQ to add more low end to the snare
Bit of EQ on the overheads to add more low end and reduce high end

I don't know if any of that stuff is making much difference but it sounds marginally better at least to me. I don't really have any mixes to share at the moment, but if it turns out no one can really answer me without hearing something then i'll see what I can do.

tl;dr, do any EZdrummer users have some standard FX they like to use on their drums, to fix some problems they feel the default kit has? anything you've learnt over time that's made you go "wow this sounds so much better with X effect"


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## AliceLG (Aug 13, 2012)

My DFH setup is not awesome, it has plenty of room for improvement, but I like it how it is right now, it does the job. That being said, here I go:

EQ for every single track. I see you are using the Multitrack mode, that's a good start. If you haven't yet, use separate tracks for the snare top and bottom, that way you can compress the top and use the bottom to add some rattle, makes the snare punchier/tastier. I sacrificed the Comp Mix, I took that one off directly from the mixer within DFH. That way I can also separate rack toms and floor toms.

You shouldn't need to compress every single track, usually the kick and the snare are good enough.

Peruse the overhead and the room mics, these ones have all the character. But beware, the more room you let through the crappier your kick drum will sound.

Use some sort of "short" room reverb on the whole kit. In Logic I have a so called "1.4s Nice Room" that works great for that.

And now to the most time-consuming-yet-crucial part, you'll need to humanize your MIDI. From what you're already doing I'd assume all your MIDI hits have the same velocity and are supertight when it comes to timing. That's an ideal drummer, but a real one is quite the opposite. In that sense you can alter the velocity and timing for each MIDI event (namely, each drum and cymbal) for each section to taste. This is a very tediuos task but maybe your DAW can help you out. What I usually do is I set all hits to a common velocity, say 100, and then start grouping hits to alter them. All snare hits for example, or all toms. I'd go randomizing (Logic has a great function for it) both velocity, duration and accuracy for each group. For the snare I can go +/- 15 on the velocities with a 5-10% variation in duration and accuracy for the hits. It sounds way too much work but trust me, it works wonders with the feel you get from the drums afterwards. After you do that for all hits, then it's back to the mixer to compensate a little for all the randomizing, might be that you need a couple more dBs on the overhead, depends on how aggressively you alter the velocities.

Hope that helps.


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## breadtruck (Aug 13, 2012)

Thanks man for the detailed response. I have got the snare seperated into top and bottom. I'll remove the little seperate bits of reverb I have for now and add a small one to the whole kit just like you suggested.

I understand what you mean about the humanization. Small dynamics make all the difference in making it sound less fake. I had the humanization thing selected in EZdrummer, but does that only count for the pre-set groves? If so then yeah, I need to make my custom ones more "believable" if you will.


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## iceythe (Aug 13, 2012)

Humanization works in the way that the sampler will pick a random velocity sample within a reasonable velocity range. When the sampler registers a trigger at (say) 127 velocity, i.e a hard hit, it will alternate between samples in the 120-127 (or samples classed as hard hits) velocity range, so you don't have to alternate the velocity of drum triggers yourself. This alternates samples, giving it a more natural sound, since no hits are exactly identical. This works for both pre-made grooves and your own drum programming.


AliceLG pretty much summed up what I'd say as well. Get a nice separation using multi-outs. Processing are easier to control.

On my EZD setup I use a lot of EQ, compression and envelope shaping on kick and snare tracks, just to get the sound that I want.

My snare track is an outright mess with EQ, compressor, envelope shaper, GClip, compressor, EQ, EQ, reverb. They all serve a purpose like adding more ring, prolonging the body, lower the transients, clip the excess peaks and adding a bit of width to it.


A tip though, when altering the dynamics of snares; always play something with lots of velocity changes. Hard hits, ghost hits, everything in between etc. It's too easy to get an awesome hard hitting snare that sounds like crap on ghost hits because of some crazy compression applied.


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## Thep (Aug 13, 2012)

Its all preference, but I never use drum kit from hell. I don't record metal too often, but even if I did, I wouldn't use it because I just think it sounds pretty awful. 

I always completely turn off ambient/room mic. A multiband compressor on the snare can get surprisingly versatile results. It easily allows me to dial in a crack or girth. 

I gate the toms as well, but also compress them afterwards.


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## AliceLG (Aug 14, 2012)

EZDrummer's humanization, if I got it right, works by slighty varying the velocity for a given hit, just like iceythe says, but it gives you no control on said variation. You can try just playing a little with the timing of the hits then, setting them a little behind the beat for certain grooves, just enough to notice that there's something different about how the drums feel in context with the song but so much as to say that the "drummer" is behind the beat.


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## aB_EXT (Aug 14, 2012)

Everyone has more or less nailed the basics here, so it'd be great if you could post a mix (even if it's just drums), so we could be more specific in what advice tailors best to your current situation.


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## TaylorMacPhail (Aug 15, 2012)

> Everyone has more or less nailed the basics here, so it'd be great if you could post a mix (even if it's just drums), so we could be more specific in what advice tailors best to your current situation.



+1, great idea.


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## breadtruck (Aug 15, 2012)

Thep said:


> Its all preference, but I never use drum kit from hell. I don't record metal too often, but even if I did, I wouldn't use it because I just think it sounds pretty awful.




Wow, I just used the pop/rock default kit and it sounds a lot better than my DFH setup did. That's surprised me a lot. Let me work on tweaking it a little bit and then I'll post a sample up so people can give me a bit of input in what sounds good and doesn't.


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## breadtruck (Aug 15, 2012)

Alright here's a basic test I threw together for what I'm using right at the moment. I tried to use all the bits of the kit. Let me know what you think.

Basic Drums Test by Lewis Hay on SoundCloud - Create, record and share your sounds for free


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## breadtruck (Aug 18, 2012)




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