Tips on using quantize / swing in mixcraft?

[Jakeyboy2929]

I tend to just quantize my hats with around 5-10% in a search of getting a human groove to my beats. Anymore ideas or secrets people have on getting that human touch to drums?

Many thanks,

Jake

[7915983]

I personally play them on a keyboard, so that it's actually a human performance.

[Mark Bliss]

Well, I'd suggest that timing isn't the only variable that makes drums sound more "real" ior "human."

Velocity is certainly another basic "human" variable.

[Jakeyboy2929]

Yeah keyboard and velocity are thing i play around with. Can anyone tell me that when i add swing to my drum loop is it changing every note so even the kick, clap etc?

I set up with the usual kick, clap, open hi hats and then start to a add closed hats in 16th triplets on the grid. Then when i add swing it moved all the strat times to the grid which loses the groove i was trying to create. Tried everything but it still does this.

I suppose i could have each individual drum on a seperate channel. It's just nice to see all your drums together in a grid.

Also do you guys put swing on just the hats and claps or on everything including subtle swing on the kick?

Jake

[Mark Bliss]

Hi Jake and welcome!
I'd suggest that you should experiment and find what suits your tastes. But heres a few pointers that might help.

I suppose i could have each individual drum on a separate channel. It's just nice to see all your drums together in a grid.

For editing it is often more convenient to have the drums all on one track. For mixing however..... (If creating from scratch, I often split them off when editing is done)

I set up with the usual kick, clap, open hi hats and then start to a add closed hats in 16th triplets on the grid. Then when i add swing it moved all the strat times to the grid which loses the groove i was trying to create. Tried everything but it still does this.

Not fully clear on what you mean, but maybe the following will clear it up some, let us know.

Also do you guys put swing on just the hats and claps or on everything including subtle swing on the kick?

Varies by style and taste. Again, you might want to experiment. But personally I prefer a pretty tightly timed kick and snare for most styles, and just a bit of human touch on other elements. Human, but professional and not too electronic sounding- (which is fine if that's what you are into.)

Can anyone tell me that when i add swing to my drum loop is it changing every note so even the kick, clap etc?

You can have it your way! Try selecting/highlighting just the MIDI notes you want to be effected by the change, and use the "selection" box as shown here:

Humanize.jpg (22.95 KiB) Viewed 5782 times

Try humanizing the start times by a modest amount, and the velocities a very small amount to start with, noting that prominent elements such as the snare will be very obviously effected by velocity changes, while others may require a little more. Experiment and "undo" until you get desirable results.

And sometimes I just get picky and do some very tedious manual "humanizing" too.....

Try it and keep us posted on your progress!

[martinweeks]

Here's a suggestion. Use the omni sampler (very good drum sampler) Create your own personal presets. The Omni Sampler has it's own internal tones controls ranging from pitch to compression to volume. So you can create exactly the sounds you want for each instrument (snare, kick, hat, and so on.) Save these presets and make your own custom drum rack.

Then what I do (just a suggestion) is record some kind of basic groove (kick, snare and hat), copy that drum track to a new track two or three times depending, and delete out the different parts accordingly. So each copy is just say the snare, next copy just the kick, and so on.

then I can go ahead and add omni sampler specifics as I build the drum sounds as big or elaborate as I wish.

Once done create a submix bus to route the individual drum tracks through.

Now you've got your own unique sounding "Named" drum racks tuned and compressed and panned as you wish. This way you can do after recording mixes and tweaks to individual drum instruments and then route the entire rack through your submix bus for any over all editing you wish to do before going to the main out.

the Omni Sampler is elaborate too. Has a ton of different drum sounds you can make use of from basic kick snare cybals to reverse crash and lots of percussion. It's all easy midi editing in Mixcraft. You can use the (oh crap I can't remember the name) or use the piano midi editor. Whichever is easier for you to work with.

Also I believe the free download of the MTPower drum plugin is still available. It's a beast as well. It also has it's own internal drum mixer console for compression, volume, and pan.

I recently did a just for funL Latin Style percussion type of song using a combination of the Omni Sampler and the MTPwer Drum Kit. I did it using the process I described above. Check it out.
http://linmarproductions.bandzoogle.com ... start=true

[Jakeyboy2929]

Really appreciate the replys. Tried all of them and helped a lot. Can you just tell me the advantage of doing this

"Once done create a submix bus to route the individual drum tracks through."

Jake

[Mark Bliss]

That is a mixing solution, totally irrelevant to your original question. As is most of the rest of that post.
Sorry Marty, but you wandered well off topic.
Another subject entirely.

[martinweeks]

That is a mixing solution, totally irrelevant to your original question. As is most of the rest of that post.
Sorry Marty, but you wandered well off topic.
Another subject entirely.

I guess we have a different "slant" on creating "swing." Quantizing is a good thing, but arranging how the drums are played I think has much more influence on making a drum pattern... "Swing."

...which is really what makes a drum pattern more "humanized."

[Mark Bliss]

None of which has anything whatsoever to do with using a submix bus.