cubase question: quantitizing/grooves

[(val)Liam]

one of my biggest problems right now with music production is that certain melodies sound too mechnical... like there is no flow or groove... I know a lot of it is because everything is exactly on... an exact quarter note, or 8th note, or 16th note, etc. etc... there are no slight offbeats in the right places...

so how does one program their melodies in the right spots making them sound human and not mechnical?

[tvmann]

Here's another question, probably trivial but I'll throw it in while you're waiting for your answer.

What is done to make the downbeat sound distinctive or different from the other beats? Lots of times I can't really say what makes it sound different and the difference is so subtle I can't actually say the downbeat sounds different, but I can always pick out the downbeat.

(This is mostly related to house but same thing applies in other genres)

[ill-esha]

ahh Liam, that is an art my friend, that is an art. I have learned a lot from my partner who is a drummer AND an engineer.. a lot of it involves turning OFF your snap-to and manually moving your beats to the left or right of the grid line. It depends whether you want your beats to be ahead or behind the time. Think of the way a real drummer plays.

Here's a good trick to learn... import a wav file of a SICK live break (hey, although the Funky Drummer is overused, use that if you want) and then "trace" it with MIDI.. draw a blank piece of MIDI to line up with it and then put your kicks and snares in the exact same place.. then play around with the hats. You'll learn a lot from "tracing".

Another trick is to really vary the velocity of your hits. A really good "live" hi-hat, for instance, is going to have varying velocities because a real drummer hits them differently. Try using the pencil tool and drawing waves and zigzags in the velocities. You can have the velocity increase for three notes then start again.. this is a triplet effect.

tvmann: i think this answers your question too.. the key beats are programmed with harder velocities than other ones.. THUMP-thump-thump-thump....

[Royal_Phunk]

within Pro Tools and Cubase are files that are midi groove templates, a cubase style groove template is like emphasis on 1 and 4 or at the beginning of a phrase. I find those templates are dope for putting a swing on stuff and tryin to make hits sound less "drum machiney". Also some drum samplers have a built in humanize functions sometimes called randomize.

[(val)Liam]

thank you both... I tried experimenting with some of the other quantize functions in cubase... the Ts and the Ds... the "Ds" seem to help a bit... still though... probably going to take a long time to get used to... I've thought about "tracing" by recording a small midi sample of how I want the rhythm to be... hopefully that'll work...

also... I think its important to give a special thanks to ill-esha and royal phunk because I always see them answering cubase questions, not just my own, and I think its worthy of a special thanks from all the new aspiring producers... thank you :)

edit: figured out the problem was more because of my release times as opposed to the swing... still trying to work on swing... but the melodies sound a lot more realistic...

[mikefasssy]

for a melodic bit just record from your keyboard in midi so it comes out however you think it best suits the tune.

Has beat slicing been mentioned? It's done a lot with drum and bass. You take a break and load it into recycle... speed it up... layer some more hits over it... add some distortion.... compress it, rearrange etc. This way, all the mistakes and imperfections of the drummer are already sequenced for you.

You can apply grooves or zoom in and move stuff around and alter velocities, but this takes a lot of time. There seem to be lots of purists who believe that you should not use existing breaks and should do everything from scratch by using single hits. I used to think this way, but I'm finding the recycling method gives me much much better drums.

[ill-esha]

It's good to do a combination of those things.... we program the main breaks usually from scratch but then put in samples of live breaks as well. A good trick is to program your own kick and snare (giving it a more clean, modern sound) and then just put in samples of a live drummer playing what happens in between the kick and snare (hi hats, rides, even just the ringing of their snare..). Then you get the live aspect of it, but with complete control over your main beat.

in between the kick and snare

Hmm interesting. Im going to give this a try. One thing I can never seem to get right is the "chiki-chiki" (boom-boom tiss chiki-chiki boomtisss) part of the amen break

[oddmud]

Originally Posted by ill-esha

Another trick is to really vary the velocity of your hits. A really good "live" hi-hat, for instance, is going to have varying velocities because a real drummer hits them differently. Try using the pencil tool and drawing waves and zigzags in the velocities. You can have the velocity increase for three notes then start again.. this is a triplet effect.

....

This is probably the best answer. Velocity changes on the hits always give it a very live feel.

Also might suggest using different samples for the kicks. Using two kicks for one bar, or two snares. Just variate what you're doing.

Here's Mutiny's view on it:

programming rolling drumsSubmitted by: DJ MutinyDate: 14 October 2004a lot of people say that to get that 'human' feel you have to use quantisation based on live breaks. i disagree! the main thing for giving breaks that live energy is to put the effort in with the hit velocities. you can very easily make fresh ghost snares and kicks by using the same kick and snare sounds but with a tiny velocity and shorter length... this is one of the main faults in most demos that i hear - people just using their drum samples 'as is'. that works fine for electro, but to get proper rolling beats you gotta do a bit more.

[Code]

when you do get it right, or stumble on something you might like for later, remember to save it as a groove in Cubase. The dissolve feature is awesome too, it can pull apart any midi file you may want to use as the groove setting.

@CODE

Respect for that avatar!!!

programming rolling drumsSubmitted by: DJ MutinyDate: 14 October 2004a lot of people say that to get that 'human' feel you have to use quantisation based on live breaks. i disagree! the main thing for giving breaks that live energy is to put the effort in with the hit velocities. you can very easily make fresh ghost snares and kicks by using the same kick and snare sounds but with a tiny velocity and shorter length... this is one of the main faults in most demos that i hear - people just using their drum samples 'as is'. that works fine for electro, but to get proper rolling beats you gotta do a bit more.

Interesting!

[Goodfellow]

get a midi keyboard controller like i'm doin , then you just tap out a kick snare beat on the keys and it doesnt sound so exact

[Code]

Originally Posted by H-LAB

@CODE

Respect for that avatar!!!

Haha, I found this pic a while back. Wish it was my rig, but no....it's not. If I remember correctly they were talking about how hot it got in there, I can believe it.

[Van Tek]

play with the shuffle knob on Reason and then right click on your drum machine and click 'Copy Pattern to Track' so that you can edit your drum hits on the Piano Roll... then highlight the notes and use the Snap to Shuffle button while moving the shuffle knob around so you can see what happens when you change the amount of shuffle... that way you can learn how it all works together in a natural way, while still sounding professional

and definately, definately use the velocity and length of each hit to your advantage!

also you can use slight variations in the pitch of certain hits to make them sound more realistic, because when you hit a snare drum harder the pitch of the hit goes up a slight bit!