I know nothing of logic, but there should be a way of selecting all midi notes and changing their value to say 127. Sure you may not want to keep them all the same, but starting at full volume is going to get you closer to the desired sound than 95. Usually something like Ctrl+A will do the trick.
I still don't quite get why people say to randomize velocities and not to snap notes to a grid when programming... then we go and quantize real drums to grid and trigger to get a consistent velocity.
Yes there is. This is what I do.
First of all. I write my songs in guitar pro. Why? Because it is a program to write music and I write complex drums with different time signatures, so, editing this in my DAW's piano roll (Cubase) is pretty much useless and it would be a pain in the ass. I prefer to have a partiture (I actually use the tablature Guitar Pro uses for drums). So, in Guitar Pro most of the notes have fixed velocities except for parts where I edit it, but still, those are fix (for example forte fortissimo = 127, fortissimo = 120, forte = 110).
When I am done doing my drums I export the midi file from guitar pro and import it to Cubase. Then I go on each part of the drumset and edit the velocities. To randomize it a little what I do is zoom out the view quite a lot, like this:
And I would just hold the left mouse button and go over the velocities I want that part of the drumset to be. I go from left to right and from right to left pretty fast, so that my hand is not accurate and some notes get different velocities. Of course it will happen that a note might get 124 and the next one 90, but then you can fix those notes individually.
Before:
After:
(not:, I did it pretty fast and I didn't care that a lot of notes have the same velocity because it is not a fast song, they won't sound machine-gunned and Superior Drummer has a randomize function that prevents this pretty well)
Ok, let's say I did this and most of the notes are between 110 and 116 and you want them to be 120-126. Then you can select all the velocities for that part of the drum set (e.g. kick) with the Object Selection tool and you go to Midi > functions > velocity. And there you can add/subtract, compress/expand, and limit velocities easily
Then, if there's something that still sounds like a machine-gun, you could try what JoshuaLogan said about getting some notes slightly out of sync, but I would only do that if it is really bugged me in the mix. If it is not noticeable I wouldn't mind having all notes sync'ed, no one will notice that, and the ones that will are those "oh, no, you sampled your drums!! SACRILEGE" guys, and you couldn't care less about them
Oh, by the way. I remember reading in this forum that some people liked to have ALL velocities at 127 in Superior Drummer. Well, I don't really like that. I think that sounds even more unnatural than having everything sync'ed. Sounds like if the drummer who recorded those drums had just broken with his girlfriend. I would save 127 velocities for parts that are supposed to be EXTREMELY loud (there is a big difference between 126 and 127 in Superior Drummer)
You can always use a midi controller to get more natural velocities. I own one but didn't have time to try it with SD and I don't think I will for the next 4 months (damn Med. School).
