how to better mix the drums

[drumzalicious]

You'd have to program the drums yourself. I have yet to find some default grooves that sound anything remotely close to a real drummer. They all sound to stiff.

Of course I'm heavily biased seeing as how I am a drummer myself.

[creation25]

Originally Posted by drumzalicious

You'd have to program the drums yourself. I have yet to find some default grooves that sound anything remotely close to a real drummer. They all sound to stiff.

Of course I'm heavily biased seeing as how I am a drummer myself.

Thanks, I totally understand what you mean there. Maybe changing some velocity and add some dynamics to it. Add eq and compressor too, but that doesn't to work quite well. Maybe I just do it wrong? Or need better sample? Anyway thanks for your comment.

[fastlanestoner]

I use AD as well and I make rock tracks, a genre where programmed drums will ALWAYS be apparent.

Your song actually sounds great, and programs like AD are perfect for those kind of genres where all you need is a beat.

As for humanizing the drum parts, here's some tips I've found useful:

Velocities matter! Here's what I like in AD:

Kick - 110-ish
Snare - 115-ish
Cymbals - 100 or below
Toms - 95 or so

Velocities are the biggest aspect of making drum parts sound human and AD especially starts to sound bad when every hit is maxed out.

I also send the tracks to individual ones in my DAW (Reaper) and mix it as if I recorded a real drummer. The FX that AD adds automatically really color the sound and kill you with volume. After all, presets are pretty much useless in the real world.

Here's a good article for you:

20 Tips On Creating Realistic Sequenced Drum Parts

[JohnRick]

You need to do like I do - or hire something to do it for you (which is where my clients come from):

PLAY the samples. MIDI-packs does not groove as you are very well aware of.
And even if you program the stuff well it is sort of impossible to guess that a ghost
note on 01.02.341 with MIDI velocity 31 is what makes the track gel at that particular point in time. If you want your sampledrums (SDX/SSD/OWD/whatever) to sound human, you need to have a human to play them. I do it on my new DTX900 with OWD. Brilliant actually.

[BillSimpkins]

The best way to learn how to program drums is to learn how to play drums first. I've tricked a lot of drummers with my programming. I've even tricked myself after forgetting which sections of songs I programmed or played.
By learning how to play, you learn which drums are played together, what is humanly possible, stokes etc....
Get a cheap used electronic kit and bang on it and learn beats for half an hour a day.

[HermanV]

What I do in addictive is play the drums like a real performance. Meaning that I will actually learn and play the drum part on the midi controller and I will not quantize. after I am happy with my performance I will print them to audio and start compression things with outboard gear (I do it with plug-ins at home). maybe super compress the "room" track and blend it in with another copy of the room. EQ the overheads, kick, and snare. Add some ambient reverb to certain things. parallel compress. treat them like real drums. the hi hat is probably the hardest thing to make sound somewhat real.

[Beanboy]

Hi, I have an answer!

I used to be terrible at programming drums and it made my tracks sound very amateur. Even having Addictive Drums didn't really help as I was rubbish with loops too.

I found a product called Jamstix and it's been the best $100 I've spent in terms of impact on my songs. It automatically produces drum tracks that are humanized and original depending on the structure of the song and the "drummer" and "style" you select (and can tweak). Even better, you can make it use the Additive Drums samples, or many other drum packages, rather than their own samples.

It even works out "limb movements" so it won't play something that a human wouldn't be able to!

It's a little tricky to get into but is well worth sticking with. As a happy customer, I can't recommend it enough.

www.rayzoon.com