Standard ?? I don't know.. I like Addictive Drums and many like Steven Slater
http://www.xlnaudio.com/addictivedrums
http://www.stevenslatedrums.com/

If your into mixing from scratch yourself, BFD seems like another good choice ;)

They'd probably layering in samples, they've squire over the years, with whatever they record live. I've always thought BFD was the most realistic feeling program from a mixing point of view. The samples are top notch. My cousin and I have been using it as our go since version 1.5. BFD along with the Vienna instruments symphonic collection, will for the foundation of my sample collection, soon enough.

ChrisH, post: 433705, member: 43833 wrote: The majority of major label records released these days are using midi drums but they sound great.

Majority ?? I don't think this is true, a part form dance and electronic music, a lot of accoustic drums are used. But some music styles are reknown for using drum replacement. Like Metal in which, god knows why, the drum sound target is nothing like a real accoustic drum, so it's hard to obtain with one...

What major label do with samples is to treat them like instruments. They usually send each instruments of a kit to seperate tracks to mix them from scratch. If a billboard song was released with an actual untouched easydrummer preset, I'd like to know ;)

So back to the question; for exemple, standard for hiphop would be the sounds from classic drum machine (TR-808 or TR-909),
But I still believe an accoustic drum can be tuned and mixed in so many ways that an accoustic could be used for a majority of styles..
(must come from the fact that I'm a drummer lol)

pcrecord, post: 433711, member: 46460 wrote: Majority ?? I don't think this is true, a part form dance and electronic music, a lot of accoustic drums are used.

Well, I don't know what "majority" is being defined as here... are all current commercial recordings using sample replacement? No, I don't think so... but I'd wager that they are being used a lot more than they were just a few years ago, and, I don't think it's indigenous to just one or two styles, either. I wouldn't be the least surprised to learn that sample replacement is currently being used in Rock, Country, Blues, hell, maybe even Funk and Jazz for that matter...

pcrecord, post: 433711, member: 46460 wrote: But I still believe an accoustic drum can be tuned and mixed in so many ways that an accoustic could be used for a majority of styles..

That's the thing, and a solid point... but I think it applies to both real drums and samples drums. Do you really need an actual 808 anymore? I don't think so, not with all the sonic sculpting tools that we now have at our disposal.
Taking a regular acoustic kick sample, or even a real kick, and sculpting it in tone - EQ, Filters, GR - I'd find it hard to believe that you couldn't get very close to an 808, if you had an 808 to reference, and if you knew what you were doing with sonic sculpting.

I can take a sample of a Slate or Superior Ludwig Black Beauty snare - which both sound totally different, but at the same time, both sound okay to me - certainly useable, but neither really sound anything like my real Black Beauty snare.
Why? Because of the so many variables involved... differences in tuning, head and snare tensions, different heads, playing styles, not to mention the mics used to record it, etc.., so it's probable that no two real BB's would sound alike, and we're talking about real snare drums here... add into this the virtually limitless ways in which to sculpt those recorded tracks - or samples of them - and by the time you're done, through EQ, GR, mic placement, etc., it could end up sounding totally different from the original snare track or sample you started out with.

FWIW
-d.

As soon as I starting layering samples in, it was an aha moment. I think most comercial music 'radio song' use samples. I doubt there are many at all using a purely acoustic drum sound, and a full or partially full performance. I don't think it's possible to get that type of punch and definition otherwise.

It's funny you hear people trying to edit in 'mistakes' or 'feel' into some of these indie recordings and its gross, lol it's stuff they woulda edited even on tape.

I think since about 78' we've been hearing sampled drum sounds on records.

Then there's Nile Rogers in chic who was a dance band who recorded live with no click.

kmetal, post: 433708, member: 37533 wrote: They'd probably layering in samples, they've squire over the years, with whatever they record live. I've always thought BFD was the most realistic feeling program from a mixing point of view. The samples are top notch. My cousin and I have been using it as our go since version 1.5. BFD along with the Vienna instruments symphonic collection, will for the foundation of my sample collection, soon enough.

+1
Plus I include the MPC Renaissance as the controller

Another overlooked aspect of midi controlled drums is the way they've been programmed.
Many try to emulate a human feel and fail. Make a good drummer sit down and play with sticks on a drum with triggers or an electronic drum will give very different results
Quite more natural than fingers on pads or a keyboard...

You have to really have a solid handle on programming if you want to grab the feel or essence of a real drummer... it also helps a lot if you're a drummer - things like stick drags, phantom taps and slides, rolls, flams, variations in velocities, and a lot of other nuances, that on their own can be subtle, but can add up to making the track more realistic - or less, as the case may be.

It's certainly not impossible to program "feel", I've done it plenty of times myself - but, even though I'm a drummer, and well-versed in Midi, it still takes quite a bit of time to get it to sound "right". It's not even so much about the drum sounds... it's how you program them that counts.

If given a choice, I'd much rather replace a well-performed but bad sounding/ poorly recorded drum track with good sounding samples, than I would to have to program the track from scratch.

And, sample replacement isn't an "instant" fix, either - it still takes tweaking; sometimes a little, sometimes a lot - but it's still faster than programming from scratch; unless of course you're doing the tracks for something like Word Up or She Drives Me Crazy, where the drum pattern remains exactly the same from start to finish, and which is nothing more than Kick/Snare/Hat - and where the drum tracks weren't really meant to sound like real drums, anyway.

Nothing beats real musicians. I mean, who wants to look at a DJ?
But this question is subjective and really about midi.

Most commercial music, Pop rock can all be done using drum samples and drum machines. The only time drum programming becomes a challenge is when you are into more progressive music.

The best produced pop music is always a simple drum track "less is more". Busy drums including home studio recorded drums generally destroy the sale ability of pop music.
I could name 10,000 songs that have been or can be all be done using drum samples triggered by drum machines. The only people who would see that as a negative would be the recordist who wasted endless hours trying to get the drums to sound big... and the drummer who was all bent out of shape because his kit wasn't in the song.
The public does not care. In fact, they like that sound.

Tom Petty, The Cult , ZZ Top, Lenny Kravitz, MJ, Collective Soul, Billy Idol, Def Leppard, Don Henley, Peter Gabriel and this list goes on and on and on.... . But, again, vocal strong, pop arrangements.
In fact, the sound of sampled drums sound much better than anything you can get in most studios for a reason. That's why drum machines have become main stream, 40 years and counting. Well, at least as far back as I go ;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhythmicon

[GALLERY=media, 420]Rhythmicon demonstration - YouTube by audiokid posted Nov 8, 2015 at 9:59 AM[/GALLERY]

audiokid, post: 433718, member: 1 wrote: Busy drums including home studio recorded drums generally destroy the sale ability of pop music.

Yup. And the other thing about those home-recorded drum tracks, is that there are so many crucial factors that need to be there; I refer to them as being "mission critical"... LOL.

The drums, heads, the room, tuning, cymbals, the room, the player and their style, the room, the mics, mic placement, the pre's, and oh ... wait ... did I mention the room?...
Along with the skill of the engineer miking the kit, and recording all of those things...

Of course, if you have all of those things working for you, then sure, use live drum tracks. Most certainly, if you have all of those prerequisites in play, then you should absolutely go for it.
But ... that's generally not the average scenario in home studios. Honestly, you probably have more going against you than you do working for you.
Home studios just don't have those things to their advantage - and neither do some mid-level studios, for that matter.

There's an art to recording a live drum kit, and there's a lot more to it than simply throwing a D112 on the kick, a 57 on the snare, a couple 58's or 421's on the toms, and a pair of XY, A-B, M-S or ORTF OH's and then hitting the "R" button on your DAW.

It's my feeling that the majority of those people who nay-say sample replacement haven't really used it, or they haven't really explored it enough to hear what's available these days - or, they're biased, from basing the new technology on the sound of something they heard or worked with years ago; something ancient, like an 808, or an old Linn or something.
(Not that the 808 and the Linn haven't been used on countless hits... but they never really sounded like "real" drums do... certainly not to the extent of the samples we have today).
Even the Alesis D4, and the follow-up D5, which broke new ground in the early 90's with its stunning 16 bit samples LOL ( they did sound pretty good at the time, though) was also used on plenty of hit records; but it too sounds pretty dated now, compared to what we're hearing these days.

Roger Nichols was using sample replacement back in the 70's with his Wendel Computer when he was working on both Steely Dan's Gaucho and Fagan's Nightfly... and if you think that Fagan ( and Becker) aren't both sticklers for fidelity... LOL... I guess what I'm suggesting is that if cats like Fagan ( and Nichols) were okay with it - along with an audiophile community who still raves about the sound of those albums - then I can't see why anyone else wouldn't be okay with it too, especially by today's standards in drum sample fidelity.

And, the fact that you can still preserve the original performance - the feel, the groove and pocket, the little nuances that real drummers use as part of their own style of playing, grace notes, phantom sticking, etc., all of those things can be preserved.
You're not replacing the performance, you're simply replacing the sounds.

Like it or not ( I happen to like it, and I say that as being both an engineer and a drummer), sample replacement isn't going away, and it's not just a "fad", either. Artists and Studios have been using drum machines, drum sounds, and triggering for a long time now. So, unless you have all those things that are absolutely necessary to getting a great live drum sound on your recordings - and I mean to really do it well - you're much better off using samples than you are using a live drum track that sounds weak, or empty, or dead, or, as so often happens, ends up being a mish-mash of all kinds of frequency and potential phase problems.

IMHO of course. ;)

Drums, aren't the hardest part about programming. And a good drummer is going to be fairly consistent, and his feel will often relate to grove and pocket, rather than nuance or fill playing ability. Especially in comercial pop rock where the drums and bass are the basic driving pulse or rythmic backbone, or the 'motor' as Phil calls it. Because of good arrangement, the percussion and the like, will fill in the rythmic accents, not the drummer, or bass player or guitarist lol.

Cymbals are the hardest part about authentic drum programming, imho. They are difficult to record live too. That is one area where current digital mediums don't 'quite get it right' yet. A place where super high sample rates will hopefully fill in those 'nano gaps' which I believe err a sesnse of hollow.

I'd rather go w rock preset 7 lol get to laying the riff down and structuring the song, then pay a drummer some beer at a later time, and track the final takes to the drummer.

Strings and bass, and guitars, are much more difficult to program imo.

I think a lot of home studio people start becoming the bass player, singer, engineer, and it's too many hats. A demo is one thing. I have heard enough of my own recordings to know how much I can fake it. It's absurd to think that just because I play guitar, I can play bass, well enough to really hold down a grove at a comercial level. Or sing. Need me too slap a shreddy solo at the bridge off the cuff? That's my department lol.

Whatever floats your boat. These are all tools and colors on a pallete. A demo is a demo, and I think of people knew what to expect out of their own gear, they would not be striving for unrealistic levels of quality, and perhaps get creative.

Old tricks like overdubbing the cymbals, and putting a speaker on a snare drum, playing a programmed snare thru the speaker, and micing the live drum, have been around since before I learned them in my beloved, (lol) 'using your portable studio' book.

As soon as I reached a certain experience level, and recorded a pro drummer in a pro room, it clicked. Recording all these regional cover bands quick demos, schooled me on pop arrangement.

When you hear a platinum mixer on the same mid level gear, you are using, you get a feel for where skills meet facility.

Learning acoustics and basic electronics has changed my thoughts drastically, on what a great room is, what's necessary and what's not. Understanding how and why gear sounds a certain way, might save you some coin, by avoiding the 'name brand' nostalgia.

The bottom line, is your translation is as good as your skills and the room. There will always be deficiencies in the product, directly related to deficiencies in gear and acoustic enviornment. In essence some are just not their, physically or audibly.

Authentic, or good sounding or not, I can't argue that the amazingly large pallet available to take the sounds in our minds, and make them a reality, are better here than not.

How are you guys triggering? I use drums gig at the studio, but am unsure if it's worth the purchase at home. I'd like something to trigger BFD, and the ability to easily load in my own samples either purchased, or recorded.

kmetal, post: 433721, member: 37533 wrote: How are you guys triggering? I use drums gig at the studio, but am unsure if it's worth the purchase at home. I'd like something to trigger BFD, and the ability to easily load in my own samples either purchased, or recorded.

I use and love the MPC Renaissance most but I also use a Nord Lead 4. Any touch sensitive keyboard will do.

So you perform the programmed drum parts?

I got a Roland TD9 which made most sens to use for me ;)

kmetal, post: 433723, member: 37533 wrote: So you perform the programmed drum parts?

Yes,
The MPC pads are amazing. And it interfaces with a DAW really well. The samples that come with the MPC are stellar. The MPC is the most incredible sequencer I have ever owned. I go nowhere without one. Without exaggeration, an MPC has made me hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years.

I've been programming drums since 1980. I've never used pre programmed loops. I do it all bar by bar however, I will replace drums so at that point, the replacement ( as Donny described above so well) is the performance, just not the sound.
When replacing, more often than not, I still end up correcting all the timing and volume level inconsistencies. POP music and Bass G needs to be dead center and in phase. That's what this brings to the table.

The MPC's have always been the most realistic/ ultimate drum controller made. There are others, but the MPC is a drummers kind of controller.
Whats so ironic about all the real drums vs an MPC . The guy playing the MPC is simply a drummer using tiny pads. The guy playing skins is simply using a different kind of drum set. In the end, its still drums making a beat performed by a human.
An MPC is every bit of an electronic instrument as a keyboard. Anyone producing music should own one. Every studio should have at least one.

pcrecord, post: 433724, member: 46460 wrote: I got a Roland TD9 which made most sens to use for me ;)

cool,

why is that? What do you like about it most?

audiokid, post: 433725, member: 1 wrote: Yes,
The MPC pads are amazing. And it interfaces with a DAW really well. The samples that come with the MPC are stellar. The MPC is the most incredible sequencer I have ever owned. I go nowhere without one. Without exaggeration, an MPC has made me hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years.

I've been programming drums since 1980. I've never used pre programmed loops. I do it all bar by bar however, I will replace drums so at that point, the replacement ( as Donny described above so well) is the performance, just not the sound.
When replacing, more often than not, I still end up correcting all the timing and volume level inconsistencies. POP music and Bass G needs to be dead center and in phase. That's what this brings to the table.

The MPC's have always been the most realistic/ ultimate drum controller made. There are others, but the MPC is a drummers kind of controller.
Whats so ironic about all the real drums vs an MPC . The guy playing the MPC is simply a drummer using tiny pads. The guy playing skins is simply using a different kind of drum set. In the end, its still drums making a beat performed by a human.
An MPC is every bit of an electronic instrument as a keyboard. Anyone producing music should own one. Every studio should have at least one.

Sold ;)
Interesting perspective.

DonnyThompson, post: 433717, member: 46114 wrote:

If given a choice, I'd much rather replace a well-performed but bad sounding/ poorly recorded drum track with good sounding samples, than I would to have to program the track from scratch.

Like.

audiokid, post: 433726, member: 1 wrote: cool,

why is that? What do you like about it most?

Of course I prefer my acoustic drum. But when the project calls for drum programming, I just prefer playing it like I would with an acoustic...
I like the progressive hihat controler and the velocity sensitive pads. Playing drums with sticks is just more natural to me than using a keyboard.
Also, using an electronic drum kit is the best way to avoid playing things that can't be played on a drum.
One exemple ; I often hear full sixteen notes on the hihat but in reality, a drummer would skip a hihat to play the snare. It's pretty basic, but I still hear it often.

A thing that programmed drums rarely do is having hihat presure variation. Even if the hihat is closed, a drummer will vary his foot presure while playing.. Oh and will also vary the stick hits between the tip and the body of the stick...

Anyway, I get that for some music styles, this is irrelevant :rolleyes:

audiokid, post: 433725, member: 1 wrote: Yes,
The MPC pads are amazing. And it interfaces with a DAW really well. The samples that come with the MPC are stellar. The MPC is the most incredible sequencer I have ever owned. I go nowhere without one. Without exaggeration, an MPC has made me hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years.

I've been programming drums since 1980. I've never used pre programmed loops. I do it all bar by bar however, I will replace drums so at that point, the replacement ( as Donny described above so well) is the performance, just not the sound.
When replacing, more often than not, I still end up correcting all the timing and volume level inconsistencies. POP music and Bass G needs to be dead center and in phase. That's what this brings to the table.

The MPC's have always been the most realistic/ ultimate drum controller made. There are others, but the MPC is a drummers kind of controller.
Whats so ironic about all the real drums vs an MPC . The guy playing the MPC is simply a drummer using tiny pads. The guy playing skins is simply using a different kind of drum set. In the end, its still drums making a beat performed by a human.
An MPC is every bit of an electronic instrument as a keyboard. Anyone producing music should own one. Every studio should have at least one.

You like the MPC better than the Machines?

kmetal, post: 433714, member: 37533 wrote: I doubt there are many at all using a purely acoustic drum sound, and a full or partially full performance. I don't think it's possible to get that type of punch and definition otherwise.
.

audiokid, post: 433718, member: 1 wrote:

In fact, the sound of sampled drums sound much better than anything you can get in most studios for a reason. That's why drum machines have become main stream, 40 years and counting. Well, at least as far back as I go

Spot on, guys.

ChrisH, post: 433779, member: 43833 wrote: You like the MPC better than the Machines?

I suspect they are compatible in regards to the ability to program drums and build sequences. I grew up with the Akai MPC 60 so I'm biased to how Akai designs the software and how the pads feel.
I used my MPC 60 for 18 years on the road and it never once let me down. I continued to use it long after I finished my touring days and it still kept going until a few year ago when it finally wore out.
Last year I upgraded to the MPC Renaissance and just love it. Its so FAST! I mean, it connects to my DAW via USB and its like lightning. And, the ability to to create a midi track that can instantly turn the midi into samples blows my mind. Its a very good drum sampling editor, sequencer and outboard controller.

audiokid, post: 433792, member: 1 wrote: I used my MPC 60 for 18 years on the road and it never once let me down.

I normally use an old Roland Octa-Pad that I have, ( I've had it for years)... it mounts on a mic stand, has 8 pads built-in, assignable to any midi sample I want.... as well as a connection for a kick-trigger device, so I can actually "play" patterns and fills and such. It's ancient, but ot works great - it's velocity sensitive, and fast; I can do press-rolls with it and it tracks them without a hitch.

I will say though, after working with BFD, Superior, EZ Drummer and Slate, that there's still something "not quite right" with Cymbal samples. They've gotten a lot better over time, but there's still something - to my ears anyway - that is not quite "real' about them. In most cases, this is why I will still normally record a real ride and crashes - using various Zildjian and Paiste rides and crash cymbals that I have, with a couple condensers X-Y'd.

The cymbal samples may sound just fine for some projects, and to some people - but there's just "something" about them that sounds fake to me.

IMHO of course.

kmetal, post: 433714, member: 37533 wrote:
It's funny you hear people trying to edit in 'mistakes' or 'feel' into some of these indie recordings and its gross, lol it's stuff they woulda edited even on tape.
.

pcrecord, post: 433716, member: 46460 wrote: Another overlooked aspect of midi controlled drums is the way they've been programmed.
Many try to emulate a human feel and fail. Make a good drummer sit down and play with sticks on a drum with triggers or an electronic drum will give very different results
Quite more natural than fingers on pads or a keyboard...

Yes! FEEL is paramount, I believe.
Also, I completely agree with the fact you should have a real drummer sit in front of a midi pad kit IF you're looking to get a natural feel to the drum track.

Correct me if I'm wrong..
In my experience if you're trying to put drums to a well wrote song, say that already has a guitar/piano rhythm track and the vocal, then making a beat with your fingers and editing the midi notes to be exactly lined up with the grid never works.. I've tried to do this many times with my own music and then sometimes after building the "drum track" I re-record the guitar/piano, and vocal to the new drum track but then it's a completely different song with a very rigid basic hip hop feel.
Which brings me back to Kmetal's point in quote, sure you might be able to simulate "feel" after hours of editing groove and pocket in but I personally despise doing that and I've never been able to have it turn out the same.

For allot of people the "feel/rhythm" of the song is what gets people into a song and brings em back to it.

Yup. The beauty of drum replacement. Can't wait to get into groove extraction it PT 12. It will map the transients on an audio drum track, and map it to the sessions tempo. That becomes your new grid.

It's also not an easy order, to ask a drummer to play w feel, when all the other background tracks are grid locked. It usually ends up just sounding sloppy, becasue everything else is tight and quatized.

ChrisH, post: 433811, member: 43833 wrote: In my experience if you're trying to put drums to a well wrote song, say that already has a guitar/piano rhythm track and the vocal, then making a beat with your fingers and editing the midi notes to be exactly lined up with the grid never works.. I've tried to do this many times with my own music and then sometimes after building the "drum track" I re-record the guitar/piano, and vocal to the new drum track but then it's a completely different song with a very rigid basic hip hop feel.

Well you can create a tempomap of the song and quantise the midi drum track to it

ChrisH, post: 433811, member: 43833 wrote: Yes! FEEL is paramount, I believe.
Also, I completely agree with the fact you should have a real drummer sit in front of a midi pad kit IF you're looking to get a natural feel to the drum track.

Correct me if I'm wrong..
In my experience if you're trying to put drums to a well wrote song, say that already has a guitar/piano rhythm track and the vocal, then making a beat with your fingers and editing the midi notes to be exactly lined up with the grid never works.. I've tried to do this many times with my own music and then sometimes after building the "drum track" I re-record the guitar/piano, and vocal to the new drum track but then it's a completely different song with a very rigid basic hip hop feel.
Which brings me back to Kmetal's point in quote, sure you might be able to simulate "feel" after hours of editing groove and pocket in but I personally despise doing that and I've never been able to have it turn out the same.

For allot of people the "feel/rhythm" of the song is what gets people into a song and brings em back to it.

This is subjective to the song and style.

I've heard people say they never quantize for years but I only share part of that POV. A tight kick and snare for pop and rock sounds great to me. There should be no different to a metronome or a great drummer who plays like one (dead locked on time). I think dynamics are the greater focus.
A musician who hold his own like a clock is my kind of musician. I cannot play with anyone who drifts even slightly. But, those who can play solid around the beat (behind, on top or ahead) of the beat are what makes me smile.
The feel I get comes from dynamic music,. Give me a dead locked kick and snare any time.
If the kick or snare tempo is random, then a programmed anything is going to sound mechanical.
Hats are what create the machine feel. Which is why I prefer MPC. They have a 3 stage "closed to open" which is also dynamic. I also share pcrecord. I avoid putting the hat on every beat, especially if its impossible for a real drummer to do. Hats are the thing that effect a song the most. Too loud and ticky hats kill a song .

audiokid, post: 433814, member: 1 wrote:
Hats are what create the machine feel. Which is why I prefer MPC. They have a 3 stage "closed to open" which is also dynamic. I also share pcrecord. I avoid putting the hat on every beat, especially if its impossible for a real drummer to do. Hats are the thing that effect a song the most. Too loud and ticky hats kill a song .

That's a great point.
So if creating a drum beat/groove to an existing rhythm guitar track, would you start with the high hat dynamic/rhythm/groove?

pcrecord, post: 433813, member: 46460 wrote: Well you can create a tempomap of the song and quantise the midi drum track to it

I have not had good luck with quantizing :(

ChrisH, post: 433818, member: 43833 wrote: That's a great point.
So if creating a drum beat/groove to an existing rhythm guitar track, would you start with the high hat dynamic/rhythm/groove?

Not necessarily in any order, its an evolving process for me.
I definitely go back to hi hats throughout a production and build it. I generally do all the fills at the end of a song. I start with simple beats and end live but I always quantize a song in the end.

ChrisH, post: 433818, member: 43833 wrote: I have not had good luck with quantizing :(

If the quantizing effects the feel, this is an indication that we don't have an efficient sequencer or the right time signature set. If you can't quantize it, you are out somewhere. That's how I hear it. Again, not to keep going on with the Akai but the MPC series are most realistic when it comes to feel and quantizing a beat. They are a drummers sequencer first..

The drum programming vs real drums reminds me of cheap converter vs high end. People claim all the time that converters sound the same. Or that digital music sounds tinny in comparison to tape. I say... really . What are you using or doing.

Most of what we do is operator today. Other than the obvious classical performance .. Digital audio for most applications is as good as the programmer.

This isn't not directed at anyone here. Those here in this post, get it. For fun...
I learned a long time ago... Not everyone is good at the time staking programming that goes along with digital audio marvel. The key is to be aware of it rather than be the conundrum who says it all sucks and that there is only one way to make music.
We only notice the mistakes. What those are, are generally things that don't belong with the other. The glue factor.

ChrisH, post: 433818, member: 43833 wrote: I have not had good luck with quantizing :(

Quantizing act on notes by pushing or pulling them to the nearest time. Of course, quantizing fonctions need some degree of accuracy to work. If a note is too far from the expected time it'll go to the nearest.. The best results are achieved when the midi is played to a click track. Quantising to a tempo improvisation is harder but not undoable.
In sonar, we can do a beat detect on the main track to create a tempo map even if the original content was not played to a click. Then you can play the midi notes to this click/tempo map and then use quantize..

What I usually do is to isolate fills and quantise the rest of the track to the smallest note value.. ex: if the fastest notes are sixteen notes, I'd quantise to sixteens. If it's eight notes I'll quantise to eights. . . But what I always do is quantize with a Ratio, ex: 95% or 97% What this does is, it keeps a degree of derivation/life to the track.
And the fills ?? I usually ask the drummer to play many fills at the end of the song.. so I can have spare if some are too far off

Just my two cents ;)

pcrecord, post: 433823, member: 46460 wrote: Quantizing act on notes by pushing or pulling them to the nearest time. Of course, quantizing fonctions need some degree of accuracy to work. If a note is too far from the expected time it'll go to the nearest.. The best results are achieved when the midi is played to a click track. Quantising to a tempo improvisation is harder but not undoable.
In sonar, we can do a beat detect on the main track to create a tempo map even if the original content was not played to a click. Then you can play the midi notes to this click/tempo map and then use quantize..

What I usually do is to isolate fills and quantise the rest of the track to the smallest note value.. ex: if the fastest notes are sixteen notes, I'd quantise to sixteens. If it's eight notes I'll quantise to eights. . . But what I always do is quantize with a Ratio, ex: 95% or 97% What this does is, it keeps a degree of derivation/life to the track.
And the fills ?? I usually ask the drummer to play many fills at the end of the song.. so I can have spare if some are too far off

Just my two cents ;)

exactly.

The problem is the old chicken and the egg. If your programming to a scratch guitar track then your working off the guitars feel. This may not be ideal. If you start with the drums then you have to imagine the guitar. I dunno, I'm one of those with no patience. I've never had to program a track that was for a finished product, that needed to sound authentic either. I respect the art of programming, because it's a skill of subtlety.

kmetal, post: 433825, member: 37533 wrote: I've never had to program a track that was for a finished product, that needed to sound authentic either. I respect the art of programming, because it's a skill of subtlety.

I had to do that a couple of time. A drummer which was not tight enough (or should I say consistant) was forced to record on my midi drum to let us easy fixing possibilities. He did a good enough job so I can work with quantizing and some manual changes.. but at the end of the album he wasn't available.. so the band played with a generic drum track (from Addictive drums) and I tracked the drum to the full band definitive tracks. That was all good because to me the mood was already installed and I just had to support it..

DonnyThompson, post: 433803, member: 46114 wrote:
I will say though, after working with BFD, Superior, EZ Drummer and Slate, that there's still something "not quite right" with Cymbal samples.

I believe you are referring to crash cymbals?
A hi-hat is technically a cymbal and everyone uses hi-hat samples to great success, all of the time.
Ride samples can work exceptionally well, too.
But yes, crash cymbal samples (thumbs down)

For me, it's all about picking the mix/blend of samples, most of the time each element of the kit is coming from a different "drum kit" in my experience, I've NEVER picked a midi kit and have thought "great kick, snare, hats, toms, i'm done" it's always a case of "the kick is good, scrap everything else".

However...
These opinions of mine are based on my experience with Groove Agent One and SE, solely.
Which is what led me to asking what vst I should go for next

DonnyThompson, post: 433803, member: 46114 wrote: I will say though, after working with BFD, Superior, EZ Drummer and Slate, that there's still something "not quite right" with Cymbal samples.

Strange you say this. I think BFD cymbals sound absolutely stellar.

I should clarify... I don't hate them. (Any of them) Obviously, I just don't like them as much as you do. ;)

It's also entirely possible that I'm basing my opinion on hearing different "kits" within the programs than what you have worked with.

could be.
I just think the stock BFD is absolutely stellar. I never hear cymbals recorded by anyone better than what is stock in that library. They are so in phase and so true, it was the sole reason I actually bought BFD. The guy the recorded them knows what he's doing lol.

They are so true that I don't see the point of building a studio for drums lol. I mean why... (duck)! hehe

When I build my new studio, it will be a tracking studio for replacing all the drums 100% of the time lol. I'm talking drums that are pop and rock. That how much I love them.

But, I'm not saying you are wrong, I just don't dislike them as much as you ;)

:D

I'm basing my perception on these - which are just a few of several BFD cymbal samples I've heard:

[MEDIA=soundcloud]fxpansion/pop02?in=fxpansion/sets/bfd-eco-audio-examples

[MEDIA=soundcloud]fxpansion/big-room?in=fxpansion/sets/bfd-eco-audio-examples