Adding more feel and realism?

[weekneez]

Hi

Just after tricks people use to add more feel and realism to my drums. Our drummer has layed down his tracks using vdrums.. but I needed to quantise the performance. What do people do besides randomising velocity? We are using real cymbals…

• This post was modified 5 years, 5 months ago by weekneez.

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[Brick Fist Pow]

I wouldn’t randomize velocity, but I would randomize the timing a little, just so all the drums to fall exactly on the beat. That would humanize the performance. I would manually change the velocity to add accents where needed. I like parallel compression a lot to add more energy.

Superior Drummer 3 version: 3.1.5
Operating system: Windows 10

[Bear-Faced Cow]

If you want to maintain realism, don’t quantize right to the grid. Keep it tight enough that it is in time, but loose enough to sound human. as well, don’t quantize every kit piece. Not everything needs to be brought in. Considering that it was played by a human, I wouldn’t touch the velocities.

jord

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Jordan L. Chilcott

Web Site: https://jordanchilcottmusic.com/

[Mark King]

Make sure the drum module triggering is set up correctly so the velocities reflect real drums. Manually move notes or phrases rather than quantise. I do quantise but only one that moves notes closer and not a hard quantise. Don’t just quantise the lot go through the performance and maybe quantise parts from phrases and move other bits manually. Delete notes that shouldn’t be there even though really quiet the clean up. I try to play a full performance and not do it in parts. If I did a great performance but made a couple of mistakes I will just fix those. SD3 already does random so there should be no machine gunning. I also change velocities if required usually because of a slight miss hit. Triggering edrums is not quite as forgiving as acoustic drums.

SD3 with older sdx,s plus Rooms of Hansa and Death & Darkness. Cubase and wavelab current versions. Roland TD50x using all trigger inputs for triggering SD3 only. Windows 11 computer. Various keyboards and outboard gear as well as VST instruments. Acoustic drums: Yamaha 9000 natural wood and Pearl masters. Various snare drums. RME BabyFace Pro FS and Adam A7X monitors

[peter knight]

It depends on the quality of the original drummer…..

 

In some cases, a hard quantise, then adding randomness to the timing via a kit piece (eg snare pushes or pulls a little) and editing the velocities of say the high hat is actually much quicker and gets a better result.

 

Of course a quality drummer with the modules velocities dialled in may require no editing.

 

[weekneez]

Thanks heaps all xx

[stm113]

I’m doing the same. I don’t quantize every thing but I do correct what needs it. One thing I do make sure that I do is make sure the first beat falls almost exactly on the one in the beginning of sections, or every 8 “beats” or bars.

this helps a lot if you are also using programmed instruments.

[Author]

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