Quantized Drums

Funkfingers

The problem is not sequencing. It is lazy composer/performer/recordists. It is so easy to let the DAW chug away at one tempo for the duration of a piece. 

Some classic drum machines do groove even though, in theory, they are not supposed to. The clocking is not one hundred percent accurate. Consequently, the boxes are widely (over)used in electronic dance music.

octatonic said:

As far as humanising midi programmed drums - the best way is to learn to think like a drummer and then edit the part to suit.

I cribbed a bunch of ideas from the Neil Peart DVD, Taking Center Stage. 

Another tip is to grab two drumsticks and air drum the fills that you want to have. If it is physically impossible to simultaneously strike, say, a floor tom and have fancy sticking on the hi-hats, do not program that.

Stuckfast

I don't think perfectly timed drums sound worse.

I often do think that rock bands sound better when they track live, rather than laying down the drums first and then adding the other parts. But that's quite style-dependent, and you couldn't do eg a modern metal track like that.

andy_k

IMHO quantization, if that's the word, is just another tool in the toolbox, nothing new.
I have seen videos of Sylvia Massey saying she quantized the drums on the first Tool album, by hand, on tape, and I am sure she didn't invent that.
As stated above, drum machines had an enormous impact, and once we got ProTools and the grid, the 'mistakes' became easy to see and correct, with beat detective.
Loop based music, and dance stuff is a whole genre built around a rigid beat, live recordings of a band are a different kettle of fish.
I have seen plenty of modern rock music production built around midi drums, with the actual recorded drums added last, Periphery is one example that springs to mind.
I think even now, the idea of strictly quantising, just because, is kind of obsolete, we have elastic audio in our Daws, which makes editing anything much easier.
I do a lot of stuff with drum midi library stuff, and a lot of that seems to be intentionally made to be a bit looser, but is still made to fit to a grid, so it makes composition easy.
It is not so easy to quantise a multi mic drum recording, over say 8 tracks including overhead and room mics, as it is easy to run into phase issues, which have a more drastic effect on the sound than a slightly loose sounding track. Also, if you have any other instrumentation, such as bass or guitar, ie;-a live recording, it is simply not worth the trouble these days-you have to make it work somehow.
We are making music, not seeking perfection, so I wouldn't get too hung up on the subject.

Stuckfast

andy_k said:

It is not so easy to quantise a multi mic drum recording, over say 8 tracks including overhead and room mics, as it is easy to run into phase issues, which have a more drastic effect on the sound than a slightly loose sounding track.

Phase issues only arise if you forget to lock the tracks together into an edit group (or whatever your DAW calls it). In general it's pretty easy to do multitrack stuff in Beat Detective etc.

If you want to have your mind comprehensively blown, try the timing tools in Melodyne 4.

octatonic

Stuckfast said:

andy_k said:

It is not so easy to quantise a multi mic drum recording, over say 8 tracks including overhead and room mics, as it is easy to run into phase issues, which have a more drastic effect on the sound than a slightly loose sounding track.

Phase issues only arise if you forget to lock the tracks together into an edit group (or whatever your DAW calls it). In general it's pretty easy to do multitrack stuff in Beat Detective etc.

If you want to have your mind comprehensively blown, try the timing tools in Melodyne 4.

Yup, it is piss easy, you can learn how to do it with a youtube video.

Stuckfast said:

If you want to have your mind comprehensively blown, try the timing tools in Melodyne 4.

I've been using Melodyne since it was released.
It is such an amazing program.

thegummy

Danny1969 said:

The biggest difference is songs that have drums put on the grid lines, like using beat detective etc are songs where the drums were done first, THEN other instruments added to the corrected drum track to build the song. This means your then hearing a song that's built up part by part ..... your not hearing a band playing together as a band and the extra energy that can come from that. 

That's an interesting point, although the "anecdotal vs. theoretical" question could then be extended to the idea of extra energy coming from tracking together (which of course I've heard countless times and is why it's virtually standard practice in studios to track bands together as much as is practical).

thegummy

octatonic said:

It obviously went too far and sounded robotic in certain cases

Any specific cases of it going too far and sounding robotic come to mind?

thegummy

Stuckfast said:

andy_k said:

It is not so easy to quantise a multi mic drum recording, over say 8 tracks including overhead and room mics, as it is easy to run into phase issues, which have a more drastic effect on the sound than a slightly loose sounding track.

Phase issues only arise if you forget to lock the tracks together into an edit group (or whatever your DAW calls it). In general it's pretty easy to do multitrack stuff in Beat Detective etc.

If you want to have your mind comprehensively blown, try the timing tools in Melodyne 4.

Melodyne really is mind blowing.

The fact it can process the different notes of a chord individually - it sounds like something a school kid would lie about existing but you'd know they're lying cause it's so obviously impossible... except it is actually possible in Melodyne

PolarityMan

octatonic said:

As far as humanising midi programmed drums- the best way is to learn to think like a drummer and then edit the part to suit.
I no longer use electronic kits, they all suck-
If I need to program some drums and can't record an acoustic kit then I work out my parts on the drum kit, which are recorded, transcribe the parts and input them into Logic or Pro Tools.
It is a bit more labour intensive but it yields a better result.

Or just hire a drummer to record for you- it really isn't that expensive.

Programming drums is great, its actually way faster than tracking a drummer in most caess unless you are lucky to have access to a really decent drummer.

For my money though focussing on humanising velocity is way more important than timing.

octatonic

thegummy said:

octatonic said:

It obviously went too far and sounded robotic in certain cases

Any specific cases of it going too far and sounding robotic come to mind?

Hard rock and metal from 00's, especially Nu Metal.
Watch the Rick Beato videos above- it should be pretty clear.

PolarityMan

octatonic said:

thegummy said:

octatonic said:

It obviously went too far and sounded robotic in certain cases

Any specific cases of it going too far and sounding robotic come to mind?

Hard rock and metal from 00's, especially Nu Metal.
Watch the Rick Beato videos above- it should be pretty clear.

When I think over zealous with the editing I think djent..I know this is guitar but this kind of nonsense

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmUJqOvYBLM

Stuckfast

PolarityMan said:Programming drums is great, its actually way faster than tracking a drummer in most caess unless you are lucky to have access to a really decent drummer.

This isn't really my experience. Programming drums is tedious and coming up with a really convincing part is quite time-consuming. A good session drummer will learn and track an album's worth of songs in a day and it'll cost you what, a few hundred quid?

Danny1969

thegummy said:

Danny1969 said:

The biggest difference is songs that have drums put on the grid lines, like using beat detective etc are songs where the drums were done first, THEN other instruments added to the corrected drum track to build the song. This means your then hearing a song that's built up part by part ..... your not hearing a band playing together as a band and the extra energy that can come from that. 

That's an interesting point, although the "anecdotal vs. theoretical" question could then be extended to the idea of extra energy coming from tracking together (which of course I've heard countless times and is why it's virtually standard practice in studios to track bands together as much as is practical).

It's actually not standard to track bands playing together anymore, having a big enough space to do so without excessive bleed is expensive .... 2020 studios live room one and two were big enough but these days studios tend to spend more on the gear and less on the space. I have worked on projects recorded in the US where space is cheaper but certainly where I am and London the studio live rooms are pretty small. Very talented people though who get great results. 

Here's an example of a band who just came in and played live, no editing and natural timing and all the better for it. This is basically the raw tracks, just pushing up the faders . Dave Baker on drums is now Ward Thomas's drummer now, excellent player  
I did a lot of live recordings like that but a lot of recordings were done with drums then  beat detective then bass - fix timing - then guitar - fix timing etc. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2XLNCOvKtE


I have no fond memories for any of it except the  live stuff. We had a producer in studio 2 who was amazing at making shit metal bands sound like Tool, he used to basically cut everything to bits and manually move it by hand and he recorded drums by snare or kick its only ... not together as he needed the isolation to move things .... awesome guy called Jack Stevens working freelance at his own space now. 

Basically whether you record as a band or do it bit by bit depends on how good your drummer is 

Musicwolf

PolarityMan said:

For my money though focussing on humanising velocity is way more important than timing.

Certainly if you start with a very mechanical pattern (everything tightly quantised, uniform velocity) then this is by far the quickest way to humanise it.  These days I work with Superior Drummer 3 which comes with a huge library of grooves.  The biggest problem is actually that it's too big.  I don't know whether these were recorded by real drummers using electronic kits, programmed or a combination of the two but they sound good.  They're certainly not 'on the grid' but it's the range of velocity which surprised me most.

PolarityMan

Danny1969 said:

and he recorded drums by snare or kick its only ... not together as he needed the isolation to move things .... awesome guy called Jack Stevens working freelance at his own space now. 

That's not unheard of even for great drummers in metal.  Chris Adler tracked that way in Lamb of God and he's a complete beast.

I think metal is kinda an outlier though as there is typically a need for very tight coupling between the drums / tuned instruments, sample replacing / blending is very much standard practice and obviously in sheer number of hits there's probably more drums in a single song of metal than in an entire album of other genres.

thegummy

PolarityMan said:

octatonic said:

thegummy said:

octatonic said:

It obviously went too far and sounded robotic in certain cases

Any specific cases of it going too far and sounding robotic come to mind?

Hard rock and metal from 00's, especially Nu Metal.
Watch the Rick Beato videos above- it should be pretty clear.

When I think over zealous with the editing I think djent..I know this is guitar but this kind of nonsense

lol I was expecting it to sound like that at the start then he does something that radically changes it to sound totally different but it just stays sounding like that.

I'm big time 100% all for that kind of thing if it gets you a sound you like though.

The sound in that video is dreadful in my personal humble opinion but chopping up strings, organs, pianos etc. to give them that choppy feel we hear in hiphop can sound amazing.

thegummy

PolarityMan said:

Danny1969 said:

and he recorded drums by snare or kick its only ... not together as he needed the isolation to move things .... awesome guy called Jack Stevens working freelance at his own space now. 

That's not unheard of even for great drummers in metal.  Chris Adler tracked that way in Lamb of God and he's a complete beast.

I think metal is kinda an outlier though as there is typically a need for very tight coupling between the drums / tuned instruments, sample replacing / blending is very much standard practice and obviously in sheer number of hits there's probably more drums in a single song of metal than in an entire album of other genres.

Isn't that getting to the point - especially if it's recorded like that and then even sample replaced - where it's redundant having the drummer even show up for the session?

Kind of seems like the producer is just programming the drums but in a convoluted  way that allows them to almost pretend the drummer from the band was involved.

stratman3142

octatonic said:

...I mixed an album that Darby Todd played on a few years ago- I did not need to correct a single note because the playing was brilliant.

Great drummer. I was fortunate to play with him quite a few times when he depped in cover/function bands that I was in years back.

PolarityMan

thegummy said:

PolarityMan said:

Danny1969 said:

and he recorded drums by snare or kick its only ... not together as he needed the isolation to move things .... awesome guy called Jack Stevens working freelance at his own space now. 

That's not unheard of even for great drummers in metal.  Chris Adler tracked that way in Lamb of God and he's a complete beast.

I think metal is kinda an outlier though as there is typically a need for very tight coupling between the drums / tuned instruments, sample replacing / blending is very much standard practice and obviously in sheer number of hits there's probably more drums in a single song of metal than in an entire album of other genres.

Isn't that getting to the point - especially if it's recorded like that and then even sample replaced - where it's redundant having the drummer even show up for the session?

Kind of seems like the producer is just programming the drums but in a convoluted  way that allows them to almost pretend the drummer from the band was involved.

I think when it comes to fills and the cymbals though the drummers feel is still fairly vital. For stuff like lamb of god the drums are edited and sample reinforced but not completely on the grid so having that intial human performance to build on is probably still worth doing.

Im obviously working at the complete other end of the spectrum though and using these techniques allows me to get more professional results with having a smaller budget (and therefore less time to record the drums) and a player that isn't in like the top 5% of drummers worldwide.

WiresDreamDisasters

Modern humanisation algorithms are usually based on gaussian white noise. IE:

Take a note at beat 3.0.0.0 and add a small amount of white noise to it's positioning, and it'll be put at 3.0.0.379, and the next one might be 4.0.0.237, etc.

This isn't musical and does not reflect what we actually hear in music, or what is actually performed.

There are long-range correlations in music that describe the "grooviness" of a drummer in a non-random fashion. They've been observed and listeners respond better to LRC's than they do pure white noise randomisation.

See this link:
https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/PT.3.1650