"Zeros and Ones" is the new official Mixcraft blog site!

[SoundSquire]

Digging the drum article.

Mitchell, Would like to see your take on making the Acoustica Studio drums sound more human. I have used the Humanize feature but always open for some other perspectives.

[Mark Bliss]

Hey Sam! Where ya been?
I was beginning to think we would have to add you to the list of regular members of the Mixcraft brain trust that had gone AWOL!

[TrevsAudio]

Yeah, thought you'd defected to ProFools or something...

[Acoustica Mitchell]

@Tom- I'm forever cranking up highs on snares to get them to cut through mixes. As I mentioned in the blog, I always start with something that sounds good soloed, but by the time I have the entire mix put together, I find myself cranking the highs like mad (and it usually sounds pretty funky when you solo it).

BTW, I'm pretty sure the clicky Metallica kick isn't even a real kick. I think he was triggering a sample (as a lot of metal bands of that era did).

@Mike D- re signature sounds, I agree. It's a fine line, because you don't want to box yourself in to the point where everything sounds the same. But with the vast array of sounds and samples available today, it's easy to drown in it. When I did my record a couple years back, outside of live drums on a couple songs, I used standard vintage Linn Drum samples for almost everything. When you hear them dry and unprocessed, they're pretty underwhelming by today's standards. But if you do all processing I talk about in the post, you can make them sound great… and believe me, those Linn samples became a key component of my sound. But the important thing isn't so much those particular samples, it's that I chose one thing and chose to exploit it.

@Sam- Thanks! Here are some drum humanizing tricks:

- I have a bit of a nasty habit of overquantizing things, but if I want the feel of my drum parts to be more "real", I set quantize strength to around 70% (this varies depending on how good you are at finger drumming and how complex the part is). It's in the quantize menu in the MIDI piano roll editor window:



- Use a drum sample set with multiple variations of each hit and alternate them randomly.

- Vary velocities slightly- for example, make the kicks hit a little harder on the one. 


- I mentioned this one in the blog, but it's a biggie for me… delete the high-hat notes when fills are happening. I'll often "air drum" to figure out exactly which high hat notes to cut.

- Not sure this qualifies as a "humanizing" trick, but I often pump up the volume of snare or tom fills with automation (listen to Roy Thomas Baker's productions on early Cars records for plenty of borderline ridiculous examples of this).

- Again, not sure if this qualifies, and I sort of mentioned it in the blog, but I like to send all drums (except kick) from a kit into the same main snare reverb send channel to varying degrees. Most reverb on the snare (of course), a little less on toms, and the least on cymbals, but this still has the effect of combining the kit in the same "space'.

- If the kit still isn't congealed enough, sometimes I make a send channel with smallish room "personality" reverb followed by a compressor set to really crush things, then send all drums in the kit to that. Now mix it in to taste with the normal kit.

[bbdrmz]

When I did my record a couple years back, outside of live drums on a couple songs, I used standard vintage Linn Drum samples for almost everything. When you hear them dry and unprocessed, they're pretty underwhelming by today's standards. But if you do all processing I talk about in the post, you can make them sound great… and believe me, those Linn samples became a key component of my sound. But the important thing isn't so much those particular samples, it's that I chose one thing.
.

Very interesting. I happen to have an old Linn machine. Because of having way too many samples to choose from I have never thought to try any of the factory sound's out. I got it on a trade and barely use it for the pads. But, it was top of the line in the 80's. I may have to try them out! Thanks for the tip.

[Acoustica Mitchell]

I used samples of one for my record, and after that I was hot to trot to get a real Linn, but I realized it was pretty much more trouble than it was worth. It didn't really sound any different from my samples and was a lot more work to program, so I ended up selling it. As mentioned, the factory sounds aren't so impressive by today's standards, but can sound great with the right processing (as many eighties records can attest to- all the big Prince hits, Don Henley's "Boys of Summer", Pat Benetar's "Love Is A Battlefield", almost the entire Human League "Dare" record. The list is huge.)