Lessons

Lesson Info

General Q&A

One teo open the floor up to some questions if anybody here's got anything about gru's or anything left about easy dryer based on what we've covered bleed, construct extra arms layers any of it we have some a few question people have asked a few variations of what is the typical velocity for a death metal snare so why don't you answer that question by talking about what is the typical velocity for any instrument on the drum kit? There is no typical velocity for a death metal stare or any instrument on the drum kit had not one twenty seven not well sometimes one twenty seven there's some samples that sound the best at one twenty seven more than looking for some standardized velocity what you're looking for is the sweet spot for that sample and you're looking for a dynamic that matches what a drummer does in real life so if you're hard hits are right here say that's one twenty seven no drummer is then going to start blasting I can't even do it because there's yeah just like that that doe...

sn't happen that it's more like that that's more like how the velocities would be in real life drummers play lighter and there's a hell of a lot more variation when they go to blast beats so what I would do is I would find a range um and the way you do that here is in the mapping sorry I don't think that this is going to sound very good with a blast speed if you want me to show a blast beat I might want to do a metal kit I'll answer a few other questions in the meantime yeah okay maybe one thing to question our tow to talk about that a few people of have asked about is like how to use our how you use thie human eyes and randomize functions and superior like on things like this sure well I don't ever touch the humanized button uh it's on for a reason the minute that you turn it off the velocity variation is going to go away so it actually is already on now randomize is something within your dog that you do too many so I will show you in a second once this loads up if it loads up which it looks like it is I'll show you how to randomize the midi in a second once the beach ball beach ball of doom quit so thank you pro tools so let's see remember we were working on a slam example so I want to vary that high hat velocities some more so I just selected that and I mean if you look here the velocities already are very randomised but that's because I have made them so I will just show you this for the sake of showing you you go to event operations change velocity and right here you have randomize okay and then you have a percentage so go to one hundred percent random was going all over the place we'll find a happy medium like twenty percent or something uh it's totally totally situationally dependent thing so anyways every dog is different though but you want to go to where you can edit velocities and then randomized velocities and don't go too crazy because good drummers air consistent any other questions while I construct this uh yeah so another kind of question about how to get how to get your velocities right? Just kind of what we're talking about here uhm which is if you're planning on replacing drums anyway isn't it ideal to record acoustic drums in a very basic manner avoiding tone and then use drum tracker to get true velocities to import into midi? Well I guess that depends on if you've got a good drummer and a good drug room to begin with what you just described is the process that works really well for when you have a less than ideal situation like here for instance if I was making an album in this room and I was totally unfamiliar with this room I might set up some rooms but I would make a point of getting really really really tight in close mikes that had very, very little bleed and I would preserve all the velocities and then I would use those to trigger sam of loss a sensitive drums so yeah I don't know if I would use drum tracker but I would I would definitely record kind of in that way so yes, what you're saying is a method but it's a good method for overcoming a bad room and or a bad drummer um so couple other ones um how do you approach a band that comes in with a pre programmed many track for example something written a guitar pro for importing into superior drummer and make it so unrealistic I know how much of a fan you are of writing songs and guitar pro okay, you ask the question one more time so basically what do you do when a band comes to you with pre programmed many um and they want you to use that we'll make a pre programmed many drums as opposed to having me fixed their midi well I think what they're talking about is is people who write in guitar pro which well you're a big fan of I mean I might not be a big fan of it but I'm a fan of good musicians and good writing if they do a great job than cool but more than likely if they programmed in guitar pro it's going to be messed up it's gonna need some work it's going to need a starting point yeah I tend to use stuff is a starting point if you don't want me teo improve your songs then why hire me as a producer in the first place unless of you just hire me as an engineer but that's something that needs to be worked out ahead of time with whoever is going to work on your stuff if the band doesn't want that they need to say that but otherwise if I get something that comes in and it's less than adequate ongoing tio work on making it more than adequate so if I I don't want to put words in this person's mouth but my guess is that what he's saying is like, hey, is it cool if we you know, work out our stuff beforehand including writing out rough drums, guitar pro and I forgive you for a border with it it's preferable that's great so you'll take that and make it better totally if the more pre pro a band does the better in most cases another yesterday sean talked about how you can kill an album by doing too much pre pro and that's true but do your pre pro anyways I would I would uh take that risk that's a very rare problem to have these days very rare problem have indefinitely all these bands coming audio hammer just too much pre prom like come on man, just just wing it yeah yeah, I know that doesn't really happen any other really frequent questions um, this is a pretty pretty general question. I'm I'm guessing that it pertains to lets say this pertains to drums, which is from shred word, please, asher how he converts audio committee and I think that's going to be covering tomorrow? Yes, audio to midi? Yes, I'm going to be covering that tomorrow feel like I've been asked that question many, many times in the past few days in regards toe many different instruments and there's a few different ways to do it. I'm gonna go into detail about it, but I definitely think that sometimes you just have to write it out, and sometimes you have software programs that will detect it really well, but the one thing I will say is that no matter how you go about it, you're going to have to get in there and manually edit this stuff because it will not edit itself, and many is not that accurate. To begin with, you have to make it accurate still computer trying to interpret a human performance. So why don't you? Maybe there's a good time for you, teo, to talk about the importance of your no cutting corners philosophy because I'm not speaking about this person in particular, but I feel like what people are looking for is an easy way. To get think they want to push a button and turn the audio in committee and that sounds like trying to cut corners to me any program I've seen that does that has been really crafty that I have not seen a single programme in a scene if you try to do that that gets it all right so if you want mistake's all over your album cool well beans don't edit your midi but it's a place I don't know if that's what you want yeah I mean just record a crappy riel drummer e mean if you're not going to edit your midi, why are you making an album in the first place? You will definitely have to edit that stuff if you make the choice of having mittie you had to edit it to the point of being sample accurate and e I think I've been asked about howto how to do this for basis well in the past few days I think at least four different times and the same answer goes if that person's watching there is no way to really do this accurately you have to do it by hand it's not that hard either uh one more question going back to when you were tight when you're working on the assembling the kits um do you take the cymbals out of most of the ambient mikes or only the ones where you had compression that is I was just showing a specific trick because I know that you guys want tricks so just showing the compressed the shit out of the room to compress the shit out of the room trick that sounds horrible of the symbols aaron it like would happen in real life so I'm just showing you guys a trick but I was also illustrating that you khun do many many different things with bleed so I wouldn't necessarily always cut that out sometimes you want that roomy sound on your symbols but the point is that you can affect these things so why not try different things cas we'll let you uh looks like you're all set to go here with just about last beat so we'll let you go sounded pretty good already I really know what else to say the velocities kind of work so this is a good if you take a look you see that the velocities are pretty random but they're all within a specified range used to bump it all like that sounds horrible yes the worst I hate those that sounds much more to me like what a drummer would sound like when they're playing also what I'm noticing that I don't know somebody else might have to have actually pointed out to them and it makes sense with the way that drummer actually plays is that you have the hardest flossie hits on the downbeat yeah because that's what a charmer actually does yeah absolutely and so you're not just when you when you change your varying the velocities there's a method to your madness right you're not just like randomly dragging things up and down your randomly doing it within a specified arrange so some sort of pattern though it's not like sometimes yes sometimes there is a pattern uh often there's a pattern let me see here sometimes it's just straight up randomised but I like to get in a little deeper and definitely do that along with the beat that's that's a good observation you get a you get a point congratulations so right here that would be limit too so I've got randomized set it like twenty one percent and I'm limiting it to velocity a minimum of let's just say ninety five and a maximum of one ten for the blast that's actually a little quieter than it was before let's see signs that one weird hit you know where that came from and then happened that time so computers are temperamental but I think that actually sounds even a little bit more real now than it did before you just uh then take it and coffee it there you go blast beats by all and uh yeah they definitely they smell good but let's see one thing though that I would do here which I haven't done but I would do and again this is covered in detail in the easy drummer class is I would go well look they're not totally on the grid but it's in the exact same places every time so I would go and move these guys around some that might be a little much so you're moving in what like a sixty fourth note or something if that just moving them around so that it's not the exact same thing feel wise every time it's not something you can really hear it's something you just feel if something is exactly on the beat just feels metronomic and stale and it's something where like we said yesterday a million times you just got to use your ear use your ear use your ear and uh use your ear one and doubt use your ear yes sir and if I kind of like you did there you kind of programme a section and then duplicate that repeated times well I want to go into that was more for everyone's benefit of just hearing and I could have just moved it but right but I was just saying if you do that then you want to go into each instance and kind of adjust things randomly separately for each instant so that it doesn't feel repeat repeated yeah the same randomized thing is gonna happen over and over and over again and then it's going to sound like a loop so if it's like did that that that that that that that and it repeats then the same thing happens every time that that that that that that that that that that that that did it it just sounds like a loop I don't sound like aloof when I sew your here's here's a question that's kind of that's this kind of ties together tones programming a few different things somebody's asking it the kind of everything you've talked about so far in terms of writing and stuff like that and feel has been about getting things to be a little bit more loose and naturalistic um so pat aton wants to know about the quote unquote super tight germ sounds like valin maya veil of maya and all really choppy is that about envelopes and leaving the room almost off you've done something along those lines like for reflection and a couple of reflections and a couple other bands how would you approach just briefly like that kind of a style in terms of the drums, the envelopes, all that stuff and most importantly the writing well one thing I will let you guys know about reflections is that their drummer is awesome and even though the sample is really, really loud that was an artistic choice the guy still played that stuff and he played it really really well so the first way I would approach it is either programming the drums or having them performed really well by someone super tight now just because they're played super well and it sounds like it's one hundred percent on the grid. It's, not always one hundred percent on the grid that's, part of what makes it feel really cool. A lot of people say that that record has a great feel to it, even though it sounds kind of sampled, it has a great feel to it and that's, because it's not one hundred percent of the grid. So that stallion talking about, I think, it's more about sharp cuts, envelopes, things like that, maybe, yes, removing the room somewhat, but no it's, not always one hundred percent of the grid. And when it's one hundred percent of the grid, it starts a sound demo. I've noticed those bigger recordings that you guys were referencing, I don't think are one hundred percent metronomic place that was worked on.