Emu XL-7 & MP-7 User's Group

Realistic as in a real drummer? Or realistic as in classic break-beats?

There are many tips and tricks to making something feel like a real drummer, I
believe that Electronic Musician has run several articles on it and probably
Keyboard magazine, if you check their websites they might have the old articles
online. I would ask the list and one of the sampler lists, I bet there are some
grand masters out there.

Here are some basic rules for "Realistic" drums:
1) play with the timing slightly for each hit.  If you play four hits on a snare
drum, I sincerely doubt you can make it happen with the precision of a computer,
and it will sound dead.  You can easily fix this by adding a little swing or
shuffle to your piece (I'll get into that in a second) or better yet adding a
little swing then adding a little randomness.  In a typical sequencer like Sonar
or Cubase you can just quantize the notes with a swing feel, and then go in and
tweak notes individually or in the case of Sonar use it's scripting language to
do the work for you adding random timing changes.  Most packages also allow you
to extract timing from a sample with a groove you like and then quantize your
patterns with it.  It will move your notes to closely match the groove of the
sample.

2) Modify the volumes of hits.  Each hit in a real drum line will be slightly
louder or softer.  You should try to make patterns longer so that you don't
notice the repeating volume changes, as that will definitely show signs of it
being fake.  8 bars or longer is usually fine.  Also make sure to use dynamics
for quieter sections, if the music is supposed to be more dramatic a real
drummer will be really quiet then really loud. Don't forget to bring the overall
volumes down for the drums for key sections.

3) Play with the filters or EQ of hits.  This is especially noticeable with
hihats and snares.  A heavy hit will be fully bright but a light hit will be
much duller sounding.  You will want to tweak the filtering for each note, once
again keeping the bars longer to keep from being noticeable.

4) Think of how a real drummer would play it.  A real drummer can only (usually)
hit a maximum of four things at the same time.  You obviously can't be playing
the snare, closed hi-hat lines and tom lines at the same time, especially while
hitting the crash.  A kick and closing hi-hat or opening hi-hat while hitting a
snare and crash at the same time yes.  Running a complex hi-hat line with a
complex snare line is very unlikely.  Make sure the hits aren't overlapping each
other too much or it will sound machine-like.

5) Get multiple drum samples and EQ them.  Sometimes a drum can be played
radically differently and create a radically different sound.  Snares can be hit
on the edge, rim, or in the dead center and each has it's own tone.  EQing
different samples to keep the same overall feel will allow you to use variations
in your playing.

6) Use reverb lightly to set your location.  A real drum kit sampled will
usually have a certain amount of room feel in it, and it will be reflected in
all aspects of your samples.  Putting a light reverb on it sets the space for
the drums and makes the entire kit sound like it's part of the same kit.  Some
things will be more noticeable with reverb, so you may want multiple reverb
sends, more for the snare and hihats than say the low tom or kick.

7) Use samples with natural decay.  Most crash sample out there are ludicrous,
they cut off way to short and adding reverb may help disguise it but when it
comes right down to it it won't sound right.  Same thing with a ride or
practically any cymbal.

8) make a lot of variations and change-ups.  Adding the occasional fill helps
but switching hihat rhythms or keeping the loop length long enough will make it
more organic sounding as well, sometimes adding a drum hook in the normal line
will make you want the hook more adding that little bit of anticipation.

9) Use ghost hits for your snares.  Ghost hits are those hits that bounce on a
snare when it's played that are very quiet but add a fuller sound overall.
Usually they'll be at 16ths or 32nds and sound like a light delay.  Duplicate a
snare track, strip out any hits you don't want ghosted and put a delay on the
new track with the filtering cutting off a lot of the higher frequencies in the
repeating lines.  This allows you to quickly add the feel of light rolls.  Go
through the original track and remove duplicates.  Changing the velocities of
some notes to below 64 will make a ghost hit as well, adding a certain
variation.

10)  Take a sample of live drums, EQ out the kick and low tom then play this
over your drum lines.  This will add a live drum sound without clobbering your
original feel.  Make sure you add this to the ambient reverb to make it sound in
place with the rest of the kit.

Woohoo!  Those are all the ones I can think of, I'm sure everyone has their own
tricks and are willing to share...  Hope that helped!

Andre