Realistic SSD programming?

Vinny

Vinny

Member
Jun 4, 2009
866
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New Braunfels, Texas
For some reason, even with ALL of the humanized features in SSD on, and a pretty 20+ variation in velocities on the humanizations, I can never get to it sound "humanized". I have tried "messing" up the timing of the MIDI notes and manually changing the velocities, and doesnt do anything except make it sound sloppy (I am putting a 1/96-1/64th note timing variation, nothing too extreme)
any suggestions? It's starting to drive me nuts.
 
no matter how hard you try, syntisized drums will NEVER sound like the real thing. and why is that? because it's not!

there are subtle differsences in the drummer's playing style you can never imitate, thing you can't ever think about like one hand hitting weaker than the other, one leg bieng weaker\slower on the double bass, the 2nd and 4th querters and 1\16 being weaker and less tight and endless variations that a computer cannot imitate.

get a live drummer, acoustic drums are not an option than record electronic drums (midi) it should sound great
 
Vinny said:
For some reason, even with ALL of the humanized features in SSD on, and a pretty 20+ variation in velocities on the humanizations, I can never get to it sound "humanized". I have tried "messing" up the timing of the MIDI notes and manually changing the velocities, and doesnt do anything except make it sound sloppy (I am putting a 1/96-1/64th note timing variation, nothing too extreme)
any suggestions? It's starting to drive me nuts.
Click to expand...

In Logic if you open Piano roll you can select all notes and then have it vary the velocity. I normally do a range of 105 - 120 and I'm happy with the results. I'd think there is a similar function in other daws?
 
Arsenu said:
no matter how hard you try, syntisized drums will NEVER sound like the real thing. and why is that? because it's not!

there are subtle differsences in the drummer's playing style you can never imitate, thing you can't ever think about like one hand hitting weaker than the other, one leg bieng weakerslower on the double bass, the 2nd and 4th querters and 116 being weaker and less tight and endless variations that a computer cannot imitate.

get a live drummer, acoustic drums are not an option than record electronic drums (midi) it should sound great
Click to expand...

What? EVERYTHING you just mentioned can be imitated by software drums. You don't think you can adjust velocities or timings? The only thing software drums might struggle to imitate is the somewhat 'off' hits, because only the 'perfect' hits make it into the final product. You're not going to be able to do a hit where he doesn't hit it quite right. Apart from that, as long as the software is good and realistic, you can imitate real drummers REALLY well.

That said, Slate is good but not realistic. At all. You will NEVER get a 'realistic' drum sound from it. The best you can hope for is a drum sound that's been obviously sample replaced, with subpar cymbals. :/
 
wutzington said:
Well, software drums may be able to imitate the sound of real drums, but they don't sound like them at all. Mainly because when you put up mics you record much more than just single hits. You record a performance. The sum of thousands of little imperfections and inconsistencies. You'd have to simulate an entire human being to be able to actually get the same sound from programmed drums.

But you can get pretty close. Here's the closest I got: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/982221/Sunken%20Cathedral%20Drums.wav

cheers,
mario
Click to expand...

Honestly, you can argue about stuff like that, but if you're using software to play drums for jazz or something where this stuff actually contributes to the music, you're setting out for failure. For rock or metal, which is like 99% of the music on this forum, you can get programmed drums to be indistinguishable from real drums within a mix. With your mix, you need to work on the rolls. Softer + more variation, if you're going for realism.

As for tips on actually programming the drums, I did a few posts in this subsection, in someone else's thread that a lot of people have found really useful. My internet is playing up atm so I can't find it but you can search. I think Soultrash or someone with a similar name started the thread.

edit: found it: http://www.ultimatemetal.com/forum/production-tips/568604-programmed-drums-need-some-tips.html
 
Not to mention that 99% of everybody else on the planet can't distinguish real drums from programmed ones anyway. I've not ever been asked if the drum sounds I use are fake or programmed (even by other musicians), even though I use SSD and to me it's a long way from natural sounding. Particularly the cymbals, as mentioned before, which I find myself hiding low in the mix as much as possible or leaving out completely.

Seriously, although I like SSD and use it as my base for all my drum tracks, I still think 'death by Slate splash' would have to be the cruellest form of punishment imaginable.
 
I think the problem with the Slate cymballs is that they've been processed to sound like cymbals already on albums, if you listen to good hard rock albums you can hear they're actually pretty similar, but the fact that they're just samples makes them sound a bit odd and fake/plastic when you use them with programming drums.
 
grubbavitch said:
I still think 'death by Slate splash' would have to be the cruellest form of punishment imaginable.
Click to expand...

))) realy well said.
I can also say that SSD cymbals are pretty unusable. IT would be even better not to have them at all I managed to edit every single preset removing cymbals from them. The point with SSD is to add it to your live drum tracks to achieve desired sound, when blended with a real kit it sound great. So taking that in mynd I had a great success combining SSD with Superior or Addictive. The last two are great and could be programmed to sound realistic enough and could serve as a "real recorded" drums, then just add SSD to augument tracks as if you were working with the real recorded drum kit.
 
Jamstix (which can be remapped to run into SSD) actually tries to simulate a real human - timing and velocity variations, how fast each limb can get from A to B, and so forth.

It does a decent job, once you go through and take out the odd tom fill or cymbal splash that just doesn't fit at all. Certainly better than I could ever do myself, at any rate.
 
Arsenu said:
no matter how hard you try, syntisized drums will NEVER sound like the real thing. and why is that? because it's not!

there are subtle differsences in the drummer's playing style you can never imitate, thing you can't ever think about like one hand hitting weaker than the other, one leg bieng weakerslower on the double bass, the 2nd and 4th querters and 116 being weaker and less tight and endless variations that a computer cannot imitate.

get a live drummer, acoustic drums are not an option than record electronic drums (midi) it should sound great
Click to expand...

+ 1 It is all in the overheads.. even if you quantize real drums you get a feeling to it because it is an actually human playing and different cymbals ringing into eachother and the rest of the kit vibrates etc
 
Jarkko Mattheiszen said:
Bear in mind the weak point in SSD are the cymbals. It's really, really hard to get them sound somewhat realistic.
Click to expand...

depends...
create a parallel bus, send ALL drums to that (including room and cymbals),squash that and mix that in.
then send all the drums (again includingroom and cymbals) to a room reverb.
the cymbals need even more of the reverb (say if the snare etc are at -9 on the send I'm having the cymbals at zero).
usually I don't use reverb on cymbals/overheads, but with slates stuff it realy helps glueing the cymbals together and making them sound more like "overhead mics" than "spot mics".

anyways...it needs some trickery, but I'm just using SSD in a BM mix and it works out quite nicely.

STILL, programmed drums will NEVER sound exactly like real drums...I actually hate working with programmed drums
 
obviously i'm biased, but we get records sent here all the time with 100% SSD kits and they sound real as hell.. to me its all about some tweaking and overall compression, they like some overall glue. After I posted the animal demo when doing the VCC stuff, I got flooded with PMs about the drum micing, and it was 100% SSD via Vdrums.

Here's that:
www.stevenslate.com/demos/AnimalMIX1.wav

Here's another one we just got sent..
www.myspace.com/stealingheather check out "Your Mistake"..all SSD.. sounds top notch.. The mixer Josh said he gets compliments on the drums quite a bit.

Not to mention, I've heard dozens of full SSD productions from members of this very forum that sounded fantastic. I think with the right programming and mixing, SSD can do the trick.

Grubbavitch, post something and I'd be glad to give some recommendations.

Having said that.. in January, virtual drums go to the next level.. Slate style!!! :)
 
digitaldeath said:
Where's this info?
Click to expand...

It's really spread out, you might find some browsing the slate forums. There are stereo overheads for drums this time round (no idea why this wasn't in there from the beginning o.0), and the cymbals are pre-placed as in every other drum software, so no more panning manually. I'm hoping this will make them sound better and more realistic. I'm digging what I've heard from the samples that came with Trigger though, very promising, and they don't have that Slate aesthetic imprinted onto them.
 
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