Programmed Drums for People Who Hate Programmed Drums

[digitaldeath]

If I were in Joey's position, I'd have a good studio kit with enough hardware to cover the different drum & cymbal positioning requirements for his clients. I'd deaden the toms so there's minimal bleed in the overheads.
This kit could be set up prior to his clients arrival with minimal adjustments to be done by the drummer upon arrival at Joey's.
Already we've cut out setup time, tuning time, "tone finding" time etc.
Get the cymbals setup, mics in position and the drummer's ready to go to work.
And at least the drummer can say that he actually played on the record even if his performance has been sample replaced and quantized to hell.

 

[CatharsisStudios]

make shitty program drums to track over, get tracking done in 2 days, go back and program, mix, send off

i am almost done with ep because were programming


programming is defintiely faster than tracking

 

[JeffTD]

You wouldn't really have to tune them well, I'm pretty most metal producers try to get as little drums into the OH as possible, so bad tuning wouldn't be a constraint. I'm going to go ahead and say that it would definitely be faster to go with a regular drummer.

Even without tuning - have you never tracked a drummer? It is most definitely faster to program drums if you're good at doing it realistically.

If I were in Joey's position, I'd have a good studio kit with enough hardware to cover the different drum & cymbal positioning requirements for his clients. I'd deaden the toms so there's minimal bleed in the overheads.
This kit could be set up prior to his clients arrival with minimal adjustments to be done by the drummer upon arrival at Joey's.
Already we've cut out setup time, tuning time, "tone finding" time etc.
Get the cymbals setup, mics in position and the drummer's ready to go to work.
And at least the drummer can say that he actually played on the record even if his performance has been sample replaced and quantized to hell.

Don't see why this is at all being brought up seeing that Joey programs drums on like 1% of his albums.

He's not writing the book for himself - he's writing it for other people who probably can't record drums anyways.

Not to mention the 'tone finding' is in mic placement as well as tuning the drums, so with every new drummer and every new drum setup, you still have to place the mics every time.


I'm not at all saying programming drums will end up better than tracking + editing real drums - it most certainly doesn't if you have a solid drummer with a good kit/cymbals and decent mics. What I'm saying is that programming realistic sounding drums is certainly faster than tracking + editing, and anyone who disagrees is either bad at programming drums or has only worked with the very best of drummers.

 

[digitaldeath]

I brought it up cuz Joey was the one who mentioned programming drums instead of tracking a drummer due to time constraints.

 

[Morgan C]

You wouldn't really have to tune them well, I'm pretty most metal producers try to get as little drums into the OH as possible, so bad tuning wouldn't be a constraint. I'm going to go ahead and say that it would definitely be faster to go with a regular drummer.

o.0

I could realistically program any metal song in under 3 hours, probably around 2 hours. A rock song, maybe an hour, hour and a half.

Takes me 2 hours just to edit a metal song, not even counting setting up the mics and doing a bunch of takes to comp. With some guys' kits, I could program the entire song in the time it would take to set up and tear down their kits. Programming is SO much faster.

 

[006]

Yeah seriously big +1 to programming being faster.

 

[Deadstar]

i'd just buy 1 of the toontrack midi packs and learn from there + Morgan C. tips for programming drums should be put as sticky

 

[AllanD]

Even without tuning - have you never tracked a drummer? It is most definitely faster to program drums if you're good at doing it realistically.

Many times. I don't know how yall are doing your drums, but I can get 4 drum tracks done within a few hours.

 

[Morgan C]

Many times. I don't know how yall are doing your drums, but I can get 4 drum tracks done within a few hours.

So your drummer arrives at 9, sets up his kit, you set up the mics, you tune the whole kit [a process which takes the pros at least a day to get a good sound], do a bunch of takes, comp the best ones, tear down the kit and mics, get the drummer out of there and then edit 4 songs by 1pm?

If its a demo and the sound doesn't matter TOO much and you're not editing, then sure. Otherwise its just not possible.

 

[AllanD]

So your drummer arrives at 9, sets up his kit, you set up the mics, you tune the whole kit [a process which takes the pros at least a day to get a good sound], do a bunch of takes, comp the best ones, tear down the kit and mics, get the drummer out of there and then edit 4 songs by 1pm?

If its a demo and the sound doesn't matter TOO much and you're not editing, then sure. Otherwise its just not possible.

I use the Tension Watch, set the mics up, set up the tempo map, and do each tempo as one take. I might be lucky, but the drummer I've worked with numerous times usually gets it in one take. I've never edited drums before, because the drummer was either great enough for me not to catch anything to off, because I didn't use a click, or because I recorded the band before even knowing that most of you metal producers edit drums so brutally.

 

[digitaldeath]

Out of curiosity, how many of you that are replying are able to perform on the drums what you program?
I can perform what I would intend to program much quicker than if I tried to program my own little nuances.

 

[amarshism]

Real ohs and td20. Quantize midi pow!!

 

[digitaldeath]

So your drummer arrives at 9, sets up his kit, you set up the mics, you tune the whole kit [a process which takes the pros at least a day to get a good sound], do a bunch of takes, comp the best ones, tear down the kit and mics, get the drummer out of there and then edit 4 songs by 1pm?

If its a demo and the sound doesn't matter TOO much and you're not editing, then sure. Otherwise its just not possible.

As I stated earlier, Joey could seriously reduce this time by having an in-house kit which wouldn't need to be tuned or miced.

 

[digitaldeath]

Real ohs and td20. Quantize midi pow!!

+1!
I'd love to try this setup sometime, but I feel that my TD-3 just isn't good enough. How do clients find playing the TD-20?

Edit: I just remembered that I did this for a mate before, but I found it awkward when it came to quantizing audio (overheads) and MIDI.
I'd rather keep all of the drums in the same realm.

 

[AllanD]

Out of curiosity, how many of you that are replying are able to perform on the drums what you program?
I can perform what I would intend to program much quicker than if I tried to program my own little nuances.

This may be it. I don't play the drums, but I'd say 80% of the drummers I've recorded were in drum line or band at one point, and just stay pretty much LOCKED into that click. It's a beautiful experience honestly.

 

[JeffTD]

Many times. I don't know how yall are doing your drums, but I can get 4 drum tracks done within a few hours.

I can track 4 songs in 3-4 hours, sure - editing them all will probably triple that time.

 

[AllanD]

I can track 4 songs in 3-4 hours, sure - editing them all will probably triple that time.

Seeing as I've never edited before, I wouldn't know

I like to get it right in the tracking.

 

[JeffTD]

Seeing as I've never edited before, I wouldn't know

I like to get it right in the tracking.

I'd really like to hear your results, tbh - unedited drums tend to be one of biggest weakspots in amatuer recordings when it comes to 'tightness.'

 

[digitaldeath]

Real ohs and td20. Quantize midi pow!!

I'd like to know how you go about quantizing the drums when they're a combination of MIDI and audio.

Edit: Just quickly opened Reaper and tested slip editing on MIDI. It works.
Anyone got a session of MIDI drums and audio overheads laying around?
If not, I'll just program some off-tempo drums, render the overheads, remove them from the MIDI and see how well I can quantize the overheads and the MIDI simultaneously.

 

[Kthulhu]

Out of curiosity, how many of you that are replying are able to perform on the drums what you program?
I can perform what I would intend to program much quicker than if I tried to program my own little nuances.

I was wondering if people who program drums can play a real one...I'm mainly a guitar player but I do play drums decently. it's possible to program drums well if the programmer can't play?

I was asked to program drums for an 'extreme progressive' band, very inspired on watchtower, spastic ink, spiral architect, etx with some death metal stuff thrown into it. I said: I can do it but it'll take a very long time, since the complexity it's too much and I can't play it on real life. I programmed drums for a black/death band and t'was incredibly easy and fast.