Programming the Hats

[NicholasDWolfwood]

Hey guys, I have a question about drum programming that could potentially get complicated.

My band is programming the drums for our second EP as opposed to hiring a session drummer. We're not the best at making them sound realistic - I'm just fiddling with velocities and trying to make it sound as humanistic as possible, in regards to hit strength (especially on blasts and rolls.)

The hat (and the ride too, really), however, is/are the dead giveaway that it's programmed. I was wondering how you guys would deal with this? We used GP to program the drums, so every hit is at a stock velocity of 95. What sort of variations would you use in the velocities, especially during blast sections? Randomizing from 70/75 to 95/100? Reaper's humanizing engine doesn't work that well imo, so I'm doing all of this by hand.

I know that drum programming is an extremely tricky thing and isn't an exact science, by any means, but a point in the right direction would be helpful (and would definitely help anyone else who had this question.)

A reply from Joey in particular would be cool, I know he wanted to write a book on programming drums for us folk who don't actually play.

 

[alan1990]

a few basic things to start with for cymbal programing

1. the faster the part the softer the hits

2. cymbals usually sound better when hit softer unlike the drums that need to be hit hard and consistent just like on a real kit

3. hits that are landing on 1 and 3 are generally a bit harder

4. any cymbal is generally hit harder when the snare is hit at the same time(exception would be during blasts)

5. left handed hits are never as hard as right handed hits (for a right handed drummer)

6. drum hits drop in velocity over the course of a fill. for example a snare roll velocity might look something like this for a 16th note roll with accents on beats 1 and 3


100 95 97 92 94 89 91 86 100 95 97 92 94 89 91 86

every number standing for a note and the pattern starting over for every accent

 

[visceral]

try searching for some free midi drum beats/fills. Im not sure wha you'll find for guitar pro, but Im sure there are some available somewhere. It will help tons!

What I do is record acoustic drums and use the audiosnap feature in sonar to convert the audio peaks into midi hits. It works perfect! Sounds very realistic. There is a post (i belive on this forum) that describes how to use reaper as a multi velocity drum trigger. Search for it! you could record a few drum rolls (on a cardboard box if u want) & convert the hits to midi and have a very realistic drum roll. Then you can examine the velocities & such.