Editing Drums
Contents
Drum Editors
Many DAWs have drum editor views for MIDI data, similar to a piano roll, with the keyboard displayed vertically, and a timeline grid displayed horizontally. Each hit is displayed as a diamond or some other marking that helps clearly see the timing aligning to the grid, with no length or size indicating the note duration, since drums don't traditionally have variation in length. Additionally, there is a rectangular area with a vertical bar for each hit representing the velocity that can be quickly edited.
Humanizing Drums
Programmed drums can sometimes sound a bit stiff or "too perfect". Here are some techniques to help humanize them.
Tempo
Drummers often have a tendency to push the tempo a little bit when it comes to parts with more energy. Even further, you can slow the tempo maybe just a few bpm here or there when there's a tough part.
Velocity
Instead of playing all the drums at the same velocity, they can be varied based upon several parameters.
- Make one "hand" weaker than the other
- Make fills or quick runs gradually decrease in velocity
- Make the downbeat a little stronger than the other hits
Limiting the Programming
A real drummer can't play 5 or 6 drums at the same time with a different time signature and/or tempo every measure while playing 32nd notes. Try to limit the programming to something realistic, although it can still be technically demanding for a real drummer.
Randomizing
Most DAWs feature the ability to randomize the velocity and timing of MIDI information. A touch of this can sound good, but you still have to realign the important hits, so the playing doesn't seem simply sloppy. You can select the ones you want to randomize, adding more randomization in some places than others. With good multi-sampled drumming software, velocity affects way more than volume, which is particularly evident on cymbals, snare, and bass drums.
Reverb
A bit of reverb adds an in-the-room feel. A lot of reverb can fill the mix with a simple groove better than some crazy technical madness with no reverb.
Many drum plugins feature a room microphone, designed to get a more ambient, in-the-room sound. You can play with using less room mic in the mix, instead using a reverb plugin where you have more control over the tone, decay, etc.
Software Assistance
There are dedicated drumming VSTi's that will automatically vary the samples based on consecutive hits and such to help make them less stiff.
Drum Mapping
Every MIDI device or plugin that accepts or outputs MIDI, expecting it to align with other devices/software, must map certain drums to certain notes. This includes:
- Electronic Drum Kit Modules
- Drum Machines
- Keyboards/MIDI Controllers
- Drum-centric Virtual Instruments
- General MIDI Drum Kits
Many will allow you to set up the MIDI mapping for each drum inside its setup parameters, and many will conform to some General MIDI Kit mapping. But some unfortunately do not do either. Also, you may not want to alter a device's global drum mapping just to conform to a certain virtual drum software that you may not use all the time. These situations can be solved by using MIDI Maps that allow you to transform the MIDI message to remap some (or all) keys to others. MIDI maps consume very little storage and can be quickly loaded, so it's low-cost to make maps for your preferred way of using your devices for some or many virtual kits.
GM Drum Mapping
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