# Help me with Drum VST's



## domsch1988 (Apr 12, 2017)

Ok, first post in this section of the forum, so take it easy 

I'm a guitarist. I do play in a Band but also write my own stuff for myself. I've acumulated a folder with around 40 different Ideas i'd like to make into Songs somehow. I'm capable of playing guitar and bass on a level that's sufficient for what i want the endproduct to be.
My Problem is Drums. I have no chance of Recording or playing real drums. Apart from "renting" a drummer (which sounds expensive ) i'm stuck with Plugins. I'm getting into midi programming and recorded my ideas with MT Power Drums. They sound decent, but i feel they lack a bit in the "sounds natural" department.

Long Story short: What drum VST would you recommend, that you'd happily put on a track for release to a small'ish audience?


----------



## AngstRiddenDreams (Apr 12, 2017)

Superior Drummer 2.0 with Metal Foundry. Professional albums have been recorded with this software and it's various libraries. It's great to learn how to mix with and you can make it roomy or tight and clinical if you want.


----------



## domsch1988 (Apr 12, 2017)

AngstRiddenDreams said:


> Superior Drummer 2.0 with Metal Foundry. Professional albums have been recorded with this software and it's various libraries. It's great to learn how to mix with and you can make it roomy or tight and clinical if you want.



How big is the difference between EZDrummer and Superior Drummer? I tried the first one 2 years back. It worked quiet well. Is the 150 premium for superior drummer justified?


----------



## Señor Voorhees (Apr 12, 2017)

Yes, very much worth it. You have direct control of bleed, processing, and there are tons more samples. You have very little control over ezdrummer comparitively. 50gb libraries vs 900mb libraries says enough.


----------



## domsch1988 (Apr 12, 2017)

Thank you very much. Time to save some money then. I think i'll keep making the midi's with MT until Superior Drummer is in my range. SD plus Metal Foundry together are around 400. Not exactly affordable 

I haven't found a trial of this. Doesn't Toontrack offer one?


----------



## jerm (Apr 12, 2017)

Metal Foundry has awesome cymbals. Progressive Foundry is supposed to be amazing also.

One of these will definitely be an awesome start to a drum sample library/collection.


----------



## Drezik27 (Apr 12, 2017)

I agree with Metal Foundry, I've seen a lot of folks dog the shells but i've had a lot of success with it and use it for all my songs. 

Really though, since they made GGD an official Kontakt library you can use it with the free player now. It's hard to top that for $99


----------



## schwiz (Apr 12, 2017)

If you're familiar with your DAW and are confident setting up the Get Good Drums routings, I would say go for it. I would buy GGD over Superior or EZD any day of the week.

With that said, I consistently use GGD and EZD. Even if I'm working with real recorded drums, I still use samples to blend tones. No basic bitch drums here.


----------



## Señor Voorhees (Apr 12, 2017)

I actually use a huge mishmash of toontrack samples. I use kicks from MetalHeads mixed with Prog foundry, snares from Prog Foundry mixed with a tiny snare from Claustrophobic... I absolutely adore the toms from Claustrophobic as well. I also use kicks and snares from roots. Another benefit to SD is that you can mix and match SDX pieces/kits with EZX pieces/kits. 

GGD is also a decent budget option, but you're pretty damn limited. You have to REALLY like that one particular sound for everything you do. Ideally you'd want the whole lot of them. GGD really does have some great snare sounds.


----------



## TheDrumEquation (Apr 13, 2017)

Steven Slate Drums are what I use. I prefer the sounds, if you buy the platinum version, you get plenty of great samples for metal, rock, pop, jazz, whatever.
Plus its about half the price!

Only downside for me is the cymbal selection is somewhat limited, but I like using these because some of the superior drummer samples have been used so much on records and demos, everyone recognized the samples and kind of takes away from the music then.


----------



## FIXXXER (Apr 14, 2017)

Señor Voorhees;4729847 said:


> Yes, very much worth it. You have direct control of bleed,
> processing, and there are tons more samples. You have very little control over ezdrummer comparitively. 50gb libraries vs 900mb libraries says enough.



First of all, i might drift into OT a bit, so beware! 

that's right, but at the end this does not help if the engineering is poor.
I have yet to hear a good drum sound made with S2, or any other
drum VST. 

S2 has nice cymbals but the shells are totally miserable. 
Others have great shells but totally crappy sounding cymbals etc.

I am still waiting for the day when some new company will release a
drum plugin that's wort buying and spending time with.

To clear things up, i am not saying this out of bad mood,
i am fighting with drum plugins for more than a decade now
thinking that's it's me and my skills that are not OK but lately i realised
it's the general approach how people think drum plugins should be, 
the way how they record and process the samples, GUI integration etc.
it often lacks common sense.

*Here's a post from another Forum i made:*

Virtual drums are not yet "there" for various reasons.

When I judge virtual drums i divide into three categories, 
interface, sound and realism.

I've owned every major drum plugin that was put to the marked, 
they all have their good things but the bad things are clearly dominant. 

Looking at the three categories any drum plugin can score
an 1/3 maybe 2/3 but they never get the full 3/3 due to various reasons.

If the interface is great, either the sound is bad or it sounds very artificial. 
If it sounds realistic, either the interface sucks or the sound in general, i think you get the point...

As for the interface, it has to be god damn simple, stripped down to the basics, 
leaving everything out that is not abslutely necessary.

As for the sound, we have rather totally raw or totaly processed samples, 
that's not working, you need both, raw samples to process on your own but 
also processed samples to blend in if you are not able to process them
to sound any good, best of both worlds.

As for the realism, i always break out in laughter, 
than cry A LOT wehn i see people putting out drum plugins/libraries
that have like only 3hard, 3medium and 3 soft samples. 

This is ridiculous, for ....s sake it's ....ing DRUMS, 
is there any other instrument that has more dynamics?
Doing the complete opposite by offering such a low 
amount of samples is plainly a bad choice!

I've been thinking about this for quite some time and i can not 
understand why all these companies are not able to get it right... 

...the only logical conclusion is, they actually do not want to!

You might ask why and i can tell you. Creating a Drum VST that has
gets all three cathegories right would be extremely time consuming and
god damn expensive.

It's way more effective to concentrate on promotion and fake examples 
to convince the people to buy their products, other companies even recycle 
the same and same sampes again and put out a new "expansion" every few months 
where you can clearly hear that it consists up to 80% of old samples, which indeed is very sad.

Other companies totally rely on presets, the drums sound great when you load them up for the first time 
but using them in a mix will 100% fail, especially when you try to work with the RAW samples without all the 
"preset goodness"

Again others seem to make many things right, the drums are engineered well, 
sound is great and realism is insane but then they make extremely bad desicions 
like putting 5 toms on ONE god damn stereo channel without any possibility to process them seperately 

So, basically it does not matter which plugin the OP will chose, 
they all have their pro's and con's where the negative things are clearly dominating.

There is light at the end of the tunnel though!

Naughty Seal Audio recently released a new drum Plugin called Perfect Drums.
So far it beats everything else out thre, the sound is ready for production where you still
have the chance to form the drums your own way. It's running extremely well and the GUI
is absolutely well designed. The best part is it also has a sampler built in so you can add your own
samples.

Another great thing is that all future updates will be absolutely free which is amazing!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dvobih6r9I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeAo6cwgBJU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUVoq2zBwzU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3bOouJrOiU



cheers
FIXXXER


----------



## domsch1988 (Apr 21, 2017)

FIXXXER said:


> *Lotsoframblingcutoutforreadability*



Thank you so much for your extensive input. That's how i feel too. It's like the early POD days for Amp Modeling. Kind of sounds like drums, but clearly not great.

I saw your post about perfect drums in another thread and already looked at them. It looks to be great. I'll look into the Free Demo kit later today. If it sounds any good, it might be worth the 150$ to me to try it


----------



## Señor Voorhees (Apr 21, 2017)

Dude has quite the boner for perfect drums. It's okay, but still pretty limited. Good sounds "out of the box" aren't ideal. You don't want "mix ready" because every mix is different. Superior gives you the raw samples, which do sound quite ....ty before processing, but they're the sounds you get if you were the engineer. You have to sculpt them to your needs. It's not a one trick pony where you're stuck with what you're given. 

The more the merrier though. I own ez, sd, ad, ggd, and perfect drums. No shortage of inspiration on my end.


----------



## Drew (Apr 21, 2017)

FIXXXER said:


> tl;dr



Man, I couldn't even get through that all.  

On one hand, I don't think anyone would actually argue drum VSTs are "better than the real thing," except in very certain particular situations (i.e - extreme metal, you're often trying to get a human drummer to sound robotic). 

And, your critique on kit libraries with too few samples at differing intensities is ABSOLUTELY spot on. I would stick with the "major" libraries for this reason rather than indie productions, unless you know that they've been extremely well sampled. 

Beyond a certain point, however, I think a lot of the issues with drum VSTs have more to do with the users than it does the actual product. If you sequence all of your drums hits at a velocity of 124, it WILL sound artifical and robotic, no matter how many maximum-velocity samples you have at your disposal. If however you spend some time learning how to "think like a drummer" and get your velocities to the point where they're fairly realistic to what a drummer actually could/likely would do - thinking about how many things could be hit at once, dominant vs secondary hand, getting your fill articulations right, etc, then you can get some fairly convincing results. 

I would never hold myself up as some paragon of drum programming or anything, and this album (my first) was really the first time I'd ever tried to go all in on programming drum parts and actually getting them to be more than just a way of keeping time, but I think I got the Avatar kit to a point where it at least doesn't jump out to you as having been programmed. 




I also spent more time programming fills than I think I did on the actual mixes, so I don't know if this is recommended practice.  Still, if you put the time into it you should be able to get good results with something like Superior. 

And, if you want to just reply on pre-programmed MIDI, something like EzDrummer 2 with a couple MIDI libraries will leave you a lot less flexibility in controlling what exactly the drum parts are, in your music, but will get you usable results far faster.


----------



## schwiz (Apr 21, 2017)

Wayyyyy off topic:

I just went through YouTube inception, and ended watching a few minutes of your instructional video on 7 string guitar. Your voice... you should do narrations for Planet Earth, or something similar.


----------



## Drew (Apr 21, 2017)

schwiz said:


> Wayyyyy off topic:
> 
> I just went through YouTube inception, and ended watching a few minutes of your instructional video on 7 string guitar. Your voice... you should do narrations for Planet Earth, or something similar.



 I get "you should be on NPR" or "you should do phone sex" a lot, too. 

What I REALLY should do is another Youtube lesson - I keep meaning to put one together on legato playing, but I haven't had the time to really put a "curriculum" of ideas and approaches and then drills to work on them together yet. That and Jimi-style clean toned R&B chord playing with all those little accents and ornamentations. 

What I really NEED to do is just quit my job and play guitar all the time. Anyone got a spare $10 million?


----------



## schwiz (Apr 21, 2017)

I'm right there with you. Who needs a day time job and steady income? Pfffffft.

More voice narrations, less corporate mumbo jumbo!


----------



## Drew (Apr 21, 2017)

schwiz said:


> I'm right there with you. Who needs a day time job and steady income? Pfffffft.
> 
> More voice narrations, less corporate mumbo jumbo!



Sadly, I'll need album sales to pick up in a BIG way before that's realistic.


----------



## SymbolicDeath (Apr 23, 2017)

I'm also struggling on deciding which drum program to use. I wish they weren't so expensive! I'm thinking SD2 with the prog pack might be my first purchase (once I build my recording PC)


----------



## FIXXXER (Apr 23, 2017)

domsch1988 said:


> Thank you so much for your extensive input. That's how i feel too. It's like the early POD days for Amp Modeling. Kind of sounds like drums, but clearly not great.
> 
> I saw your post about perfect drums in another thread and already looked at them. It looks to be great. I'll look into the Free Demo kit later today. If it sounds any good, it might be worth the 150$ to me to try it



yeah there's still a long way to go, even for more elaborate drum VST's like
BFD 3 or Superior Drummer 2. I realy like Perfect drums because it's very easy to get great sounding results within minutes, where Superior Drummer 2 for example does indeed sound more realistic but lacks tonal qualities.
With VST drums it's always a compromise and chosig the "lesser evil" 



Señor Voorhees;4733202 said:


> Dude has quite the boner for perfect drums. It's okay, but still pretty limited. Good sounds "out of the box" aren't ideal. You don't want "mix ready" because every mix is different. Superior gives you the raw samples, which do sound quite ....ty before processing, but they're the sounds you get if you were the engineer. You have to sculpt them to your needs. It's not a one trick pony where you're stuck with what you're given.
> 
> The more the merrier though. I own ez, sd, ad, ggd, and perfect drums. No shortage of inspiration on my end.



IMHO it depends what you are looking for, Perfect Drums has insanely good sounding shells but the cymbals could sound more real, where Superior Drummer 2 sounds pretty good in terms of realism but the shells for example are mostly pure garbage. The "sculpt your own sound" thing is a myth, no matter how you process the drums that certain sound is still very present,
and to be honest i am yet to hear a drums sound made with Superior Drummer 2 that makes me think, wow that sounds really great.




Drew said:


> Man, I couldn't even get through that all.
> 
> On one hand, I don't think anyone would actually argue drum VSTs are "better than the real thing," except in very certain particular situations (i.e - extreme metal, you're often trying to get a human drummer to sound robotic).
> 
> ...




I absolutely agree, setting the velocities correctly and programming the drums in a realistic way where the virtual drummer has only two legs and arms like a real drummer is crucial but it's only half the job.

I've spent quite some time watching real drummers play and learn how certain things are supposed to be played but still, especially the mentiones fills are really hard to programm even if i set the notes and velocities exactly it does not sound the same in terms of "power" or "impact" it's also about the sounds, i think the reason is that velocities do not actually match the real world, it's hard to explain but the difference from a soft hit to a hard hit seems to have a completely different "range" in real life vs. computer drums. Sound confusing i know...

Superior Drummer 2 does that wery well, when programmed accurately it
comes pretty close to real drums, the problem is the sound, i do not know
why it is like it is but everything made with S2 sounds really weak, especially when you are looking for some heavy stuff.

Libraries like Steven Slate Drums or Perfect Drums have a great impact
the sounds are massive but it's very very hard to make them sound realistic in a context where a more "sensitive" 
playing style is needed and that's the main problem i mentioned in my first post, you either have realism or great 
sound but i haven't heard a drum VST so far that can do both.

For example, combining the shells of Perfect drums and the Cymbals from S2 would come very close to what 
i would consider the perfect all mighty drum VST but working with multiple plugins within one project is really
time consuming and can get very frustrating.

By the way, the interface (GUI) is also very important, for example
the 8Dio ZEUS drum library has insanely realistic and great sounding cymbals but it runs in KONTAKT which in general is very tricky to work with,
my plan was to use ZEUS in a multi out and then use Slate TRIGGER to
replace the "pretty meh" sounding ZEUS shells with Perfect Drums samples but then comes another hurdle. 
ZEUS has all 5 toms on one stereo channel which makes it impossible to replace them.

I'll check out the videos later, need to get some sleep now, god damn night shift


----------



## niffnoff (Apr 23, 2017)

I like Superior 2 sound wise, maybe that's just a sound I appreciate that I have and have spent the most time with. I've never heard it sound weak, really. If you program it well, velocity it correctly (not 127 all ham all the time) you can get it natural. 

The problem with SD2 in itself is... well everyone and their mother uses it nowadays that maybe the sounds can get boring. I use the Prog foundry exclusively with TMF cymbals.I find it. Well not so stale.


----------



## Drew (Apr 24, 2017)

FIXXXER said:


> Lots o' stuff, but with may more readable formatting this time



Oh, I absolutely agree, man - a real drummer on a good kit in a good room mic'd up well and captured on a great signal path will outperform Superior 99 times out of 100, and that 100th time would be like extreme death metal when you want a robotic sound anyway.  

It's just, heck, I have a pretty choice recording rig, and even *I* don't have the ability to do the above. I don't have a kit, a drummer, or a good enough room, and while I'm actually only a couple MD421s from having a good enough mic locker to really get an ideal drum recording down, I'd still need to do some investment there. So, as a "real world" solution, slaving away on S2.3 and getting the programming as life-like and I can has been the best option available to me. And, at the end of the day, it's a pretty convincing one.


----------



## FIXXXER (Apr 24, 2017)

Haha, in my defense i must say that the forum kind of ....s up the formatting every time!

That's the exact point why plugins like Superior Drummer 2 etc. are even allowed to exist, even if some people like you and me are really close to being able to record drums from a technical standpoint there are still things that will make it impossible.

In my case it would be the place and the actual drummer, oh and my ego that wants me to do everything by myself not allowing anyone to participiate in my music


----------



## duffbeer33 (Apr 25, 2017)

To me it really depends on the ultimate goal. You said you have 40 different ideas sitting around to make into songs, which makes me think you'd benefit more from EZ Drummer 2 because it would allow you to quickly build out your ideas into songs. Sure, it isn't going to sound perfect, but would be suitable for a demo. I use EZD for drums because I know I'm just making demos, and while I want the drums to sound better, there becomes a point where you have to decide if you like the songwriting part or the engineering part better. I'd rather spend time writing than meticulously tweaking drum sounds.


----------



## EmaDaCuz (Apr 28, 2017)

I have been using drum samples, drum machines, and VSTs for 20 years now. Like Duffbeer said, it is all about what you want to get. 

I set on EZ Drummer for demos, it simply gets the job done and that's fine. I gave up on programming drums. I came to the conclusion that it is probably less time consuming, not to say easier, to learn how to play real drums. It is not about the sound, it is about the feel. A badly played drum kit sounds better than a good/excellent VST/library.


----------



## Drew (Apr 28, 2017)

EmaDaCuz said:


> I have been using drum samples, drum machines, and VSTs for 20 years now. Like Duffbeer said, it is all about what you want to get.
> 
> I set on EZ Drummer for demos, it simply gets the job done and that's fine. I gave up on programming drums. I came to the conclusion that it is probably less time consuming, not to say easier, to learn how to play real drums. It is not about the sound, it is about the feel. A badly played drum kit sounds better than a good/excellent VST/library.



While in the long run I want to buy a set and learn how to play too, this is absolutely NOT the case. Boring programmed drums don't really call attention to themselves. A badly played, uneven, sloppy, out of time drum performance ALWAYS does. Unless you're at least a competent drummer capable of making a decent recording, EzDrummer is going to get you better results.


----------



## EmaDaCuz (Apr 30, 2017)

I do agree if we talk about technical or hyper fast metal stuff, but rock rhythms and beats, in particular the slower ones, are "easy" to play and feel much better.

Again, just my opinion so there is no need to continue.


----------



## Señor Voorhees (Apr 30, 2017)

Nothing ruins a song quite like sloppy drum playing. Even for simple beats, if you're not tight at playing drums, you will make the track sound amateur. Guitarists and bassists can afford a bit of inaccuracy, but the second the drummer slips up, you know it. 

Real drums are always preferable, but only if they're played well. I'll take poor dynamics/lazy midi programming over a mediocre drummer any day. The same way that I'd take a mediocre recording of a good drummer over samples any day.


----------



## Drew (May 1, 2017)

EmaDaCuz said:


> I do agree if we talk about technical or hyper fast metal stuff, but rock rhythms and beats, in particular the slower ones, are "easy" to play and feel much better.
> 
> Again, just my opinion so there is no need to continue.



Yeah, I gotta agree with the guy before me - I've played drums a bit, well enough to hold down a simple 4/4 rock beat, and I would NOT record myself on a good kit in a good room over sequenced drums. 

To get to the point of enough proficiency to cut it on a "pro" sounding recording, even on a simple part, is an investment of a lot of practice time. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to own a kit and have a good room to record it in, and if I had a kit and somewhere to practice, I'd guess that within a couple years I'd be good enough that I could play the stuff I wanted live, and if so I'd absolutely prefer the real kit (because, if nothing else, it'd probably be faster than sequencing ). 

But, let's not underestimate the amount of work it takes to get proficcient enough to play even a relatively straightforward drum part to a click with enough of that "groove" or "mojo" or "feeling" to differentiate yourself from programmed drums - we're here because we're all musicians and have spent a lot of time practicing our chosen instrument. Let's not discount the amount of effort it takes to get good at another one. Heck, I feel like I shouldn't even be playing _bass_ on my stuff, sometimes, because while a lot of the technique carries over pretty well, the vocabulary and thought process is totally different, and I can't help wondering if someone else could do it better.


----------



## tender_insanity (May 2, 2017)

What about playing the drums with a keyboard? With MIDI you can do it half speed and whatever you want. There'll be differences in velocities and in timing too. Not as good as a real drummer but certainly better than mechanical in-grid drums.

I've thought about playing the drum track while using input quantizing. Sure it puts all notes in place but if you draw the tempo line by hand so it ain't even. The tempo changing constantly between, say 120 and 128. Would be interesting to do something like that, huh?

I used to have an M-Audio Trigger Finger Pro and I played some drum tracks with it. Was fun. Had to do 'em in a few takes. First bass drums and snare. Then all the cymbals and last the fills.


----------



## FIXXXER (May 2, 2017)

imho timing is not as crucial as velocities and realistic programming.
especially when it comes to metal music recorded drums are cut up and
aligned to the grid!

of course there are drummers who can perform greatly but most of 
the time even these perfect takes will be edited at some point.

the problem with VST drums is that the samples do not match a real performance.
for example the kick drum is very rarely played at full force but every drum library 
has extremely hard bass drum kicks that are very unnatural. you can use softer kicks 
of course but for what ever reason these do not fit also most of the time, 
especially with libraries that have fewer samples recorded.

same goes for open hihats, these are either too hard or too soft and there is nothing in between, 
even if the amount of samples is higher. i do not know why VST drums behave this way but i think 
that it has soething to do how samples are recorded.

i guess it is very unnatural even for a drummer to to hit a snare and not "performing"
on the drums, every hit is isolated and not connected to anything, so the drummer 
can only imagine where and how hard to hit but exactly this might be completely wrong in a context.

i've been thinking a lot about this and i think the solution for natural and realistic drums is...here it comes...

a mechanical drummer!

sounds weird but a mechanical drummer can be 100% precise, this way you could record up to 127 
perfectly scaled velocity layers where the stick always hits the same spot. you might think that this 
would make it unnatural even more but adding round robin samples where the stick hits the drum in a 
slightly different place and repeating this process until you have extreme variation would lead to a natural sound.

the problem is the effort and amount of data. imagine a snare with 127 velocity layers and 8 or better 16 round robin samples. 
this would be 2032 samples for the top mic only. add a bottim mic and you'll have 4064 samples. add OH and room samples and 
you'll end up with 8128 samples for ONE snare only. now do the kick, 3 toms, hi hat and cymbals and you'll 3end up with a library 
that contains 1000GB of data but it would be a good representation of a drumkit and remember that MIDI is limited to 127
velocity layers MAX

you could of course use less velocity layers and less round robin samples but it would still be a huge amount of samples/data.

i could go on and on but i have to get some sleep!

btw. if you steal this idea and make the most realistic drum plugin ever i claim
10% of whatever you earn!


----------



## TonyFlyingSquirrel (May 2, 2017)

I recently created a custom kit in SPARK by Arturia using samples from the Beta Monkey Double Bass Mania library that I've had for nearly a decade. I used to use their loops as they have thousands at multiple tempos, time meters, and styles, but all on the same kit.

In SPARK, I ventured into the one shots & single samples folders and found that many if not most of these samples have anywhere between 8 & 11 velocities to use to build a dynamic kit. I used this kit to replace the GM kit that I have defaulted to, and with a slight re-map of a few notes/samples, my recordings have so much more realism to them. Their mixer allows for individual treatment of each sample, so I can eq/comp + effects send them all individually & discretely. Currently, I have them all contained within the app with a stereo sub mixed signal going out into Pro Tools, but I can send all 16 of them to Pro Tools individually if I want to. That may come later.


----------



## Drew (May 2, 2017)

FIXXXER said:


> the problem with VST drums is that the samples do not match a real performance.
> for example the kick drum is very rarely played at full force but every drum library
> has extremely hard bass drum kicks that are very unnatural. you can use softer kicks
> of course but for what ever reason these do not fit also most of the time,
> ...



But, even here, kick replacement is so pervasive in metal that often times it IS just a couple samples being recycled on a kick performance in a heavily-edited final mix (rock is often a different story, but even then it's not such a sure thing).

On hi-hats, I think the single biggest challenge for realism here is velocity - spending some time on the velocities and trying to get them to vary in intensity over the course of a measure to accent the groove a little bit can make a HUGE difference in perceived realism.


----------



## domsch1988 (May 2, 2017)

Drew said:


> But, even here, kick replacement is so pervasive in metal that often times it IS just a couple samples being recycled on a kick performance in a heavily-edited final mix (rock is often a different story, but even then it's not such a sure thing).
> 
> On hi-hats, I think the single biggest challenge for realism here is velocity - spending some time on the velocities and trying to get them to vary in intensity over the course of a measure to accent the groove a little bit can make a HUGE difference in perceived realism.



I think the question with velocity "programming" is: What time reference does a listener recognize as repetitive?
So, say you have a basic Drum groove for your Refrain. Say, 8 Measures. If you tailor your velocities to vary over one Measure, and just repeat that for 8 measures, will the listener pick the repetition out? What about half a measure? Or, if we're subdividing 16th notes, quarter of a measure?

And, since humans are especially bad at making things random (numbers wise for velocity) but exceptionally good at making randomly strong hits, isn't the "randomize velocity" feature the way to go? After that, add some accents. 
I admit that programming midi drums is getting quite a bit more involved than i would have initially thought


----------



## FIXXXER (May 3, 2017)

Drew said:


> But, even here, kick replacement is so pervasive in metal that often times it IS just a couple samples being recycled on a kick performance in a heavily-edited final mix (rock is often a different story, but even then it's not such a sure thing).
> 
> On hi-hats, I think the single biggest challenge for realism here is velocity - spending some time on the velocities and trying to get them to vary in intensity over the course of a measure to accent the groove a little bit can make a HUGE difference in perceived realism.



that's right, the kick is kind of unique in this case, it works well with fewer samples as most metal producers are rahter going for consistency than realism. the kick is also easier to sample as there is no other variation than the velocity as the beater always hits the same spot there is no need for
round robin samples.

with the hi hats, the problem is, if there are not enough/properly recorded samples you can play with the velocities as long as you want, it will always sound fake and odd. programming the drums correctly is absolutely necessary but if the drum sampler does not support realistic programming
there is no way to avoid a "bad sound"




domsch1988 said:


> I think the question with velocity "programming" is: What time reference does a listener recognize as repetitive?
> So, say you have a basic Drum groove for your Refrain. Say, 8 Measures. If you tailor your velocities to vary over one Measure, and just repeat that for 8 measures, will the listener pick the repetition out? What about half a measure? Or, if we're subdividing 16th notes, quarter of a measure?
> 
> And, since humans are especially bad at making things random (numbers wise for velocity) but exceptionally good at making randomly strong hits, isn't the "randomize velocity" feature the way to go? After that, add some accents.
> I admit that programming midi drums is getting quite a bit more involved than i would have initially thought



good point, i always copy parts and then refine them, for example,
i a verse i start "soft" and then go harder on the drums when the 
verse is ending and the chorus is beginning.

randomizing velocities does not work to me it sound worse than having everything set to 127. accentuation is highly important and it has to be done al the way from the beginnig to the end of the drum track.

as for timing, it surely depends on the gener but for metal the kick
should always be spot on. the snare can have some slight variation in timing but it can sound "wrong" very fast. same for the cymbals if these are
off the grid the beat starts to jolt which is highly undesirable.

the real benefit of slight timing inconsistencies is when things are played simultaneously. for example if you play left/right crash together, having them axactly play at the same time sounds very weak but moving one cymbal slightly forward/back sound much more natural.

same goes for toms that are played simulateneously, adding a slight offset
exctremely improves the feel and the sound.

i'll see if i can find some time and post some examples!


----------



## Tisca (May 3, 2017)

What about someone like me who doesn't know how to drum, could I create usable drum tracks with any of these?


----------



## schwiz (May 3, 2017)

FIXXXER said:


> randomizing velocities does not work to me it sound worse than having everything set to 127. accentuation is highly important and it has to be done al the way from the beginnig to the end of the drum track.



I've had some really good results using Logical Editor in Cubase to randomize values on hi-hats to create that "swing". I have a preset that will randomize values between 114 and 127, unless the first note is on a downbeat, then Cubase will set those values between 120 and 127, because what drummer hits the hi-hat softer on the first hit? 

I like this discussion.


----------



## Drew (May 3, 2017)

domsch1988 said:


> I think the question with velocity "programming" is: What time reference does a listener recognize as repetitive?
> So, say you have a basic Drum groove for your Refrain. Say, 8 Measures. If you tailor your velocities to vary over one Measure, and just repeat that for 8 measures, will the listener pick the repetition out? What about half a measure? Or, if we're subdividing 16th notes, quarter of a measure?
> 
> And, since humans are especially bad at making things random (numbers wise for velocity) but exceptionally good at making randomly strong hits, isn't the "randomize velocity" feature the way to go? After that, add some accents.
> I admit that programming midi drums is getting quite a bit more involved than i would have initially thought



Good question. 

My general workflow for "humanization" is a two stage process. First, I think you need to start with the observation that "randomize velocity" or "humanize" is a way to inject _random_ variation into a performance, but that the variation in a drum performance, while it has an element of randomness to it, is NOT random. To hone in on a high hat track as an example, the variation from hit to hit in a measure of drums is not totally chhaoticm, but is a matter of the drummer slightly emphasising hits to create a sense of groove and to support the beat. Like, on a quarter note beat, the one may be the hardest hit and the three slightly behind it, with the two and four a little weaker. The drummer may also do stuff like start to build up the intensity in the high hats a little bit at the end of a verse before coming into the chorus, etc. So, I'll start by creating loops for the "main beat" for the verses, choruses, bridges, etc, and then spending some time getting the dynamics right on the various parts of those beats, so even with zero humanization or randomness added in, there's at least an apppropriate ebb and flow to the drum performance and the overall thing has a degree of variation in it that's appropriate for the performance. I'll then slowly drive myself insanne and turn to booze (I've found a half bottle of wine is about the magic amount) while I go in and then program in fiills and one off variations (like, the aforementioned example of gradually picking up the intensity and maybe starting to open up the hihat at the end of the last measure of a verse leading into the choruys) to put together an actual fully fleshed out performance, cutting and editing little sections of the previously programmed loops as needed. 

That gives you a pretty realistic drum performance, but it's still 100% meter perfect and a little too velocity-consistent. So, then I'll glue the whole thing back together to a single MIDI file, and then in reaper apply a SMALL amount of timing randomization (no more than 1-2%, depending on the tempo) and slightly more velocity randomization (though still not all that much). I'll then take THAT performance, and let Superior do it's own thing with humanization to it. The results aren't quite a real drummer, but if you put your work into it are pretty decent.



FIXXXER said:


> with the hi hats, the problem is, if there are not enough/properly recorded samples you can play with the velocities as long as you want, it will always sound fake and odd. programming the drums correctly is absolutely necessary but if the drum sampler does not support realistic programming
> there is no way to avoid a "bad sound"



The answer here, I think, is you simply cannot use a sample pack that doesn't have adequate sampling velocity depth. You need a wide range of velocities, and preferably a couple hits per velocity, if you're going to get good results. Any set that doesn't offer this is going to give you bad results. 



schwiz said:


> I've had some really good results using Logical Editor in Cubase to randomize values on hi-hats to create that "swing". I have a preset that will randomize values between 114 and 127, unless the first note is on a downbeat, then Cubase will set those values between 120 and 127, because what drummer hits the hi-hat softer on the first hit?
> 
> I like this discussion.



This is effectively what I do, but by hand since Reaper doesn't have that sort of feature. One Reaper tip - if you select just the samples you want to adjust in the Piano Roll (here, the hihats) and then go down to the velocuuty map below it which plots out velocity as a vertical scale, if you click empty space between the vertical bars and drag, the velocities of just your selected notes will snap to the mouse crossing as you drag. It's a really fast way to draw in a bit of "contour" to the velocities, to quickly sketch out some variation that you want in a part.


----------



## domsch1988 (May 3, 2017)

Tisca said:


> What about someone like me who doesn't know how to drum, could I create usable drum tracks with any of these?



That's much less of an issue of VST in my experience. I don't play drums that well really (i can get a basic 8 beat going with some fills...).
Programming convincing drums is rather involved. You need to think about the fact a real drummer can do 4 hits at the same time at most. Some movements between toms or crashes are really unnatural in the real world (depending on speed). If you're thinking of double base (some drummers can get reealy fast with just one pedal ) you only have three hits at once (loosing the high hat close to some degree).
To be honest, most of my ideas start out with assembling predone midi loops. After that i throw in accents or fills where needed and start tuning the base and snare to what the track needs. I struggle with creating something completely from scratch


----------



## jerm (May 3, 2017)

In reaper you could also select a bunch of notes, hit H (for humanize) and then select the amount of timing and velocity % variations you want.


----------



## Drew (May 3, 2017)

jerm said:


> In reaper you could also select a bunch of notes, hit H (for humanize) and then select the amount of timing and velocity % variations you want.



I've actually thought about doing that vs my normal approach, and putting comparatively little tempo variation on most of the track, but, say, adding more during fills, etc, when a drummer would likely be a little more rushed and focused on simply executing the part rather than perfect groove.


----------



## FIXXXER (May 3, 2017)

schwiz said:


> I've had some really good results using Logical Editor in Cubase to randomize values on hi-hats to create that "swing". I have a preset that will randomize values between 114 and 127, unless the first note is on a downbeat, then Cubase will set those values between 120 and 127, because what drummer hits the hi-hat softer on the first hit?
> 
> I like this discussion.



yeah

btw Drew actually already answered for me...



Drew said:


> Good question.
> 
> My general workflow for "humanization" is a two stage process. First, I think you need to start with the observation that "randomize velocity" or "humanize" is a way to inject _random_ variation into a performance, but that the variation in a drum performance, while it has an element of randomness to it, is NOT random. To hone in on a high hat track as an example, the variation from hit to hit in a measure of drums is not totally chhaoticm, but is a matter of the drummer slightly emphasising hits to create a sense of groove and to support the beat. Like, on a quarter note beat, the one may be the hardest hit and the three slightly behind it, with the two and four a little weaker. The drummer may also do stuff like start to build up the intensity in the high hats a little bit at the end of a verse before coming into the chorus, etc. So, I'll start by creating loops for the "main beat" for the verses, choruses, bridges, etc, and then spending some time getting the dynamics right on the various parts of those beats, so even with zero humanization or randomness added in, there's at least an apppropriate ebb and flow to the drum performance and the overall thing has a degree of variation in it that's appropriate for the performance.



that's really scary man, this is exactly what i would have replied with 


here's a very simple and short test showing where timing inconsistencies are really important,
it's not as obvious on the cymbals but imho night and day difference on the toms.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ceefqgyvh8icnla/drums_example.rar?dl=0


----------



## Drew (May 4, 2017)

FIXXXER said:


> yeah
> 
> btw Drew actually already answered for me...
> 
> ...



Jesus.  Good to know, though - this makes me feel a little more validated that I'm going about it the right way. 

I actually like the idea of a "smart randomizer" and I wish Reaper had something like that which allowed me to randomize while maintaining a sense of groove, but I think the approach I worked out is probably a better way of getting there.


----------



## domsch1988 (May 4, 2017)

And again, today, i realized the limits are my ability to program drums, not the VST 
Details: I came up with a guitar riff thats a little wonky. 16 8th Notes divided in groups of 5-4-5-2... This makes two measures. I've been trying to get a basic groove going that somehow emphasizes the guitar part without blatantly following along. It's still counted 4/4 measures. Do i emphasize the 1 and 3 like a "normal" groove, do i follow the groups (basically arpeggiated chords) the guitar plays.
Where do i place base and hihat for proper accents  Nothing i came up with sounded correct


----------



## EmaDaCuz (May 8, 2017)

domsch1988 said:


> Where do i place base and hihat for proper accents  Nothing i came up with sounded correct



There is no rule, and it is all about finding the right combination. Even a classic 4/4 rock beat may sound good while being off...

Anyway, start with the kick on 1-6-10-15 and see where you like the snare. Maybe a 3-7-12-15.5-16, maybe something else. Once you get the pattern you like, start filling the gaps with HH and ride. Eventually, complete with some tom rolls/fills, and polish it up with the overheads.


----------



## FIXXXER (May 8, 2017)

Drew said:


> Jesus.  Good to know, though - this makes me feel a little more validated that I'm going about it the right way.
> 
> I actually like the idea of a "smart randomizer" and I wish Reaper had something like that which allowed me to randomize while maintaining a sense of groove, but I think the approach I worked out is probably a better way of getting there.



absolutely, i think it would be even possible to write a code for a 
"real virtual drummer" that can adjust velocities on it's own by 
analysing and interpreting the MIDI data. 

for example when there are quick bassdrum notes the "code" could recognize that the user is trying to create a double bass pattern and then automatically adjust the velocities in a realistic way. this should be possible but as i said the market is tending towards beginners who do not (yet) have any advanced
ambitions so the products the companies are offering at this moment are more enough for them to make some quick cash.




domsch1988 said:


> And again, today, i realized the limits are my ability to program drums, not the VST
> Details: I came up with a guitar riff thats a little wonky. 16 8th Notes divided in groups of 5-4-5-2... This makes two measures. I've been trying to get a basic groove going that somehow emphasizes the guitar part without blatantly following along. It's still counted 4/4 measures. Do i emphasize the 1 and 3 like a "normal" groove, do i follow the groups (basically arpeggiated chords) the guitar plays.
> Where do i place base and hihat for proper accents  Nothing i came up with sounded correct



you do this with the bassdrum and snare but mostly with the bassdrum.
the hitats should be somewhat "even" keeping the tempo and beat.
i've seen a video on this recently but can't remember what it exactly was,
think it was one of matt halpern's videos about programming drums, or was it nolly.




EmaDaCuz said:


> There is no rule, and it is all about finding the right combination. Even a classic 4/4 rock beat may sound good while being off...
> 
> Anyway, start with the kick on 1-6-10-15 and see where you like the snare. Maybe a 3-7-12-15.5-16, maybe something else. Once you get the pattern you like, start filling the gaps with HH and ride. Eventually, complete with some tom rolls/fills, and polish it up with the overheads.



off in sense of no folliwing the 4/4 beat exactly is right but being off in terms of "being off the grid/not in time" is something everybody should highly avoid. i do not know maybe it's me but i can instantly tell if somethig is off grid and it's extremely annoying, even disturbing


----------

