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Lesson Info

Humanize Settings

humanize. There's a lot of cool stuff here. Lots and lots of cool stuff. It seems simple, but it's not. So let's go one by one, Shall we shall We were good so humanizes going to apply to the performance aspect of superior drummer. And right now, again, we are still listening to a build from when we look before, which is not gonna be fun to listen to very long. So it's come back here and let's get a really swing in mid tempo verse groove. That sounds like this. You close it accidentally like I just did. You can totally just pretend that you did it on purpose or you come back here and hit show and it'll come back. All right, So the humanized feature So what we're seeing here again, this is completely customizable by turning the switches on and off, and I need to tell you what each one does. But as you open different presets as you open different anything, it's period drummer. You will see sort of ah, cavalcade of different combinations of these buttons engaged or disengaged, and it's imp...

ortant that you know what they do again. It seems like it's it's pretty simple. But since we've gone this far, you might as well have the full working experience because this is going to apply to any performance that's generated through superior drummers. Everyone with me. Right now we're working with a midi groove. So in this particular humanize groove we've got going on, we've got random is checked, Alternate is not checked, We have semi sequential is checked velocity. The volume is checked and soft velocity is checked. Seems like a lot of information, but there are a number of things going on under the hood that are really important. So here we go Random. What does random mean? Well, it's very simple. As we discussed earlier with our layer limits, we have soft Grady int and hard hits, right? So these are the types of hits when a drummer comes in that we sample for every single drum and every single articulation of that drum. So think about that for a second. So the bow of the ride, the belle of the ride ride crash right on this side right underneath. Ride in the parking lot right at your mom's house. Whatever we sample all of it and all these different places. That's right, I said right at your mom's house. It is what it is. So what we're doing when random is checked as as that MIDI is playing, it's going to the pool, and it's pulling random samples from that pool to make the most realistic performance that exists. So just like a real drummer, although great drummers have incredible control over their dynamic level, every time you hit the instrument, there is some sort of micro fraction of nuance that is different. That's what random is emulating if random is removed, and a lot of times people remove meant random for the next reason you're going to get that machine gunning effect you're going to get that effect were each velocity corresponds to one specific hit and based on that velocity. So if there's one or two types of hits for velocity 27 every single time, it's going to hit those one or two hits going to sound the exact same. It's gonna be that riel linear, you know, machine gunning, and a lot of people dig that when you're programming something you want. Really, Elektronik are really, really rigid. That's one way to do it but to have random checked is to make sure that you're getting the most out of the sample pool. Right And again, your sample pool in some way is mitigated by what you've got going on here. So it doesn't make a lot of sense to have really low layer limits set and then randomize on if you don't plan on, really. Or you're not looking for a very humanistic approach to the way that is performed, right? Okay, Alternate is really simple. Alternate sticking would be right hand left hand. So instances where this is going to matter is, let's say you have any kit and you're playing in when you hit the right hand left and it's going to alternate. Ultimately, if you're doing things that would be right hander a left hand oriented, depending on how that works, right? You want the right and the left hand hits. So another way to look at that is if you have a mini groove or something that's got 16th notes on the high at where drummers using both hands, you want those alternate hits. Otherwise, imagine again you'd be playing Tom Sawyer, which is impressive, but everyone doesn't want Tom Sawyer all the time, so that's something to think about as well. Now this is pretty cool. Semi sequential. Um, so here's in this again goes back to what we learned earlier about our layer limits. So we have are three types of hits soft Grady int Hard and Grady int is the the area where it's really difficult to get his many Grady INT hits out of a drummer as it is to get soft or hard heads, I think Utah Drummer to play soft. That's an easy Q for the drummer. Play soft and they get to the level of what we would consider soft right, and you're kind of done, you told German hit hard. It's the same thing. I think those two extremes drummers get. You tell a drummer to play play in the middle, and it's like you don't know what you're gonna get. And that is again, a very important component of how we sample the drums. We use real drummer Israel players, riel, things happening in real time. So when you have a semi sequential enabled your pulling drum hits from the hard and soft pools to sort of round out and fill out the Grady Int pool because traditionally, the Grady and Pool is the toughest pool. The sample like What's a medium hit? It depends on what you're playing, really, So what you're getting when that is checked is okay. Maybe there's 50 hard hits and there's soft hits, but there's only 27 medium hits because there's 100 27 million notes, right? But this groove you feel like should be a little bit. Mawr should have more depth when that's enabled. It's going to give you a different range, then, right? So maybe it's going to go. It's going to vary it up based on the hits available, but it's gonna break it down. So it'll borrow some from the heart and some from the soft and make him both medium. So you follow me, everyone with me. I know it's a little weird to think about. Is anyone confuse Drew? Is everyone good with that? Okay, so what you're basically doing is giving more dynamic range to your drummer when that's enabled, and I'm not saying that's a good or bad thing again. It depends on the performance depends on the Midi. Now, if you were to take that off and you've got it set up for e drums. Do you really? I mean, do you think there's a lot of medium hits going on in the dream world? You think there's a lot of controllers that can anticipate? I mean, no. So depending on what you're doing, the function is really there to serve best. How you feel, it's gonna work. Yeah, okay, Velocity to volume. This is a really cool feature. So again, when this is checked, it's ensuring that every single hit that happens at the same velocity goes out of superior drummer at a different volume. Now I want you to think about that for just a second, because that's NASA stuff right there. So let's let's take a step back because we haven't really talked about velocity a lot. Velocity is basically a measurement of force, right velocity. It's It's the force at which you're hitting the instrument to pull the sound out of it. So and again, I'm talking simply from a drum standpoint. The velocity would be this moment. The drummers arm comes up down to the drumming back up. So how hard he hit Soft, quiet and enmity that's measured by a note number. So there are 127 layers of velocity right in the middle. Performance. Everyone with me so far what everyone agreed, right? So what happens is very simple when you get a A real drummer in real life. In a real scenario. Kenny Aronoff Amazing Session drummer Kenny Aronoff goes into play his real drums. He records a track for whatever analyst artist he's recording for, and the reality is that there are all kinds of things going on in the studio through that process to make his playing a little bit mawr consistent and level in addition to his already amazing control. There's compression. There's gating is all sorts of things to bring the notes up to certain volumes where they register across the board. Does everyone follow me? But the science of his actual playing is very simple. No two hits are coming out of that snare drum at the same volume Kick drum No. Two hits that he's doing no matter how often he's doing those things are literally going to come out at the same volume. That's something that was grossly overlooked in drum samplers and programs from the late nineties and early two thousands. It's one of the most beautiful things that our software designers like. Listen, I got to watch a real drummer to know that there's there's all kinds of things that happen even within the most consistent groove. There's a lot of variation and to make it sound rial, we have to figure out a way to accommodate for that variation. And that's what this basically does. So again so far, we're down to bomb the velocity, and you can ultimately take all of those off because there is nothing wrong with the rial rigid robotic feel. I mean, that's that's valid. A lot of people dig that. There are a lot of folks that that's what they're looking for in a groove, and sometimes it's really subtle, Like, for instance, Okay, we're gonna play that. So let's take off random. Let's take off semi sequential and let's take off velocity the volume. I don't know that we're gonna hear anything massively drastic, but it's I hear it in the kick drum the most because the kick drum in just 1 27 1 as you turn them back on again here. I just fooled all of you and you just all nodded. No one caught it. I was waiting. No one came to my rescue. Did anyone come to the rescue online? Drew? When I just said I heard it in the kick drum the most. But I had the floor Tom selected. What was rule number one of Superior Club. Always select the right drum. Now let's try it shall way Whole studio audience, including Bill Epic fail. But I love you anyway, way and we'll soul it Now way Anyone hear any real big difference? Honestly, you don't Maybe a little bit, right? I mean, or maybe you think you're hearing it and that's the beauty of it is it's gonna be different from every single component, right? So I think what you have to look at is where you want to be, in what you want to do with what you're doing. So this is a different set of rules. If a guy is sitting here playing on any kit, you're going to be going through instrument by instrument thinking, OK, you know you want the snare drum you want Alternate? Why would you ever turn alternate on the crash symbol cause I don't know because some dude's gonna maybe OK, that's awesome. But there are components again to enabling this on every instrument that you can tweak. There's a level of customization. Now, this last one which is newer. This is part of a new update we did. I'm not sure which one, but I think it's been within the last year. And this is soft of soft velocity, okay? And it's got this little button where you've got a knob. So check this out. It's really I'm trying to think of the best way to do it. Okay, what this is going to do is extended the range. So when you have this enabled soul again, scenario would be a great when it's going to extend the range of the Midi notes that trigger soft hits. Now let me back up. So we have 127 velocity layers and this is very, very prevalent. I would send a snare drum, a ride, Cymbal, things that you might do subtle things with right that that the drummer arrangement. Sometimes you do subtle Tom work. Rarely does anyone do subtle kick work, but snare drum ride Cymbals by turning this knob up. What? You're basically telling the software is all right, listen, you have this pool of soft drum hits. What I want to do is increase the number of velocity layers that those soft hits are played at. Makes sense is everyone follow me. So, for instance, right now we'll come back right now it's set a so there's 20 layers of soft hits. That doesn't mean by the way, that every mini groove you're gonna play this is gonna be noticeable or anything else. This again is one of those tweak head features that you're gonna hear in some many over others, some performances over others. This is a great sort of preset again for the church guy. And I talk about the church guy a lot because here in the States, in a lot of churches, the music director, they decide electronic drums were the way to go. They like to trigger software. So you right now, guys that play electronic drums General have two speeds because in their mind, they're like it's an electronic drum. It's not gonna be as responsive. So by setting this half the way So ultimately bringing this up, let's say 60. That means the velocity levels up to 60 right? He's gonna very noticeably. It's all gonna be soft for him. And then when he gets over, that in his mind is a very simple switch. It soft allow you could divide 1 27 by two and just be at whatever that number is and say Okay. And that is something that you can mitigate per instruments. So with the kick drums, the snare drums, everything could be different. Save it in your project and you're good to go. I see a question. Good, sir. So how how does it sound different if you turn up that soft volume versus adding mawr Soft hits to the voices. Okay, I see what you're saying. So let's listen. Shall we Listen? I'm gonna go on the mixer and I'm thinking about the snare groove that we have. We're just gonna listen to the top. Let's see, we've got okay. Good. There's not really a lot going on. It's a pretty basic. You can hear a little bit of ghosting, right? So as I turn this up here selected were good. He's not doing anything right. Clearly, everything's at 1 27 So like I said, there's no subtle change. But now check this out. Let's do this. Let's grab a different group. Let's come into, um, the mixture. Let's on mute that so it doesn't haunt us. Now let's find something that's got some more subtlety to it. And for that, I would go to like the Jazz. It's always the jazz, Always the Jazz. Let's ah, uh, do the jam track. Wait a minute. Yeah. Okay, so let's listen to the high hat. Okay, So let's go into the mixer. So as we turn this up, we can see that now because they're playing at this different level. You're actually pulling some of the sound out because you want soft, But he's not doing soft. So and you pulled all the way down those opens those closes, right? Those wouldn't really be soft. There's a software to do a bit of me, but you're ultimately affecting it in a performance capacity. So again, what you're doing at this particular point time is your changing the processing of the midi, as opposed to changing the way the audio sounds. Now, in a minute, I'm gonna show, you know, See, he's got some harder hits coming in, and it really is about the nuance of the player. You can pull it, too. So right now he's nowhere even near hitting 127. So wouldn't matter. So you pulled back, right? So that was where we're up to 67. That's the hardest he's hit. That's so everything's quiet up to 67. So you pull this all the way down. Yeah, better here, how it's everything's coming through. And again, this is one of those things where, depending on how the Midi was played and depending on the performance you're going for, you can really sort of hear these subtle variances. So something else that's interesting is if I was to hear something, that where I think it might make a little more visible sense to with the groove were playing. Let's see, let me come here and hear this groove real quick. That's cool. Okay, so we've got this groove. I have a preset, Um, where was it? Let me find it for you. I have this preset that doesn't exist anywhere. Um, there are scenarios or situations where, for instance, maybe you have a MIDI file that wasn't recorded by to track. Which brings us to a great segue way where we would use this. Because ultimately, what? This canoe is affect the way that performance goes. So let's see if it works in real time, shall we? So check this out when you come back to the question mark and we're gonna keep coming back here. So you've got your operations manual. Got your effects guy, which will talk about during the mixer online support. Right. You've got your expand, superior drummer. Your typical. Come to our web shop and buy more stuff, right? And then you use your MIDI folder. This is what we want to talk about. We've been listening to MIDI this entire time that was recorded by tune Track makes sense recorded in our format recorded or many mass. But if you click on use Mini, this is my MIDI files. You can drag in any MIDI files that you have and make them available in the browser this way. So I downloaded these free shredder grooves, right, so I could just drag that over in there and they want to go to the group's page undermined MIDI files. Boom! Those folders air there. Now these were recorded by someone else. This is just someone's many, and what it's got is the BPM. The ideal BPM were 1 20 right? So 1 pretty pretty basher, Right? So let's pick this air drum. Let's see weekend way here, how it's affecting the actual performance. Okay, because they didn't really use any soft. So it's varying on the kick drum to the same thing. We've changed it all together, right? So before you hear that, it's all loud, loud, loud. It's actually more music with a little more in tune with the way Dumber might play, so you can actually adversely affect the performance just by changing that and again, so much of that depends on the source material. It's not a every time it will always do this. It's you literally have to put it on every single drum, hear how it sounds. See if that's what you want to do. How did the drummer perform those sorts of things, and then it will alter the performance whether it's real time or recorded many like we have. It's a really great feature to have because again. Lots of people work with many lots of people have lots of many. And again when you when you buy our work with to track many of the advantages just that was recorded on our software for our purpose. So everything sort of lines up. But while we're talking about many and why this is really useful, I should show you something else. But I know that if I don't do this now, I'll completely forget to, like, put a regular groove back and we'll be like, What just happened? Why is that group still playing? All right, so one last thing you need to know about maybe while we're talking about it is every single expansion library were in the question mark menu. Again. You have will have its own mini map, its own description and its own mini layout. So check this out. So we're in Avatar. So if you click on the description, it's gonna tell you about every drum that was recorded and what through and how so you can make an educated decision right as to whether that's the right drum for you. If you go back and you click on the mini map, of Avatar. It's going to show you the keyboard layout of where all the Midi notes are here. Now, we're gonna talk more about this tomorrow when we do mapping. But every single tune track product has a different or expanded MIDI map. So this is an incredibly useful tool toe have. When you're looking for the right, you know where you want the notes to be, or your programming your own mini. So again, every every single one of these has its own product description and its own map so that you know exactly where the drums were recorded, what they were recorded through, how they were recorded through what it is and where it shows on the keyboard. Very, very cool feature. Okay, we have a question. Yeah. So Statman wants to know Does random change every time you play the track back thus could sound a little bit different every time it's played? Or does it decide beforehand and then it locks it in eyes? There any option to humanize timing? Or should that be done in the doll timing? We will talk about tomorrow. You can affect the timing with the velocity envelope you can. There's certain things you can do with the offset to effect timing if you want to. More than likely, you're gonna want a nudge, entire performances. So you'd be better off to do that in your doll, where you could quantities or be off the grid, because timing is relative to the grid you're committing to and there is no sequence or in superior drummer. So when we come back from lunch, we're gonna talk about the grooves page in a couple of other things that will show you. But that's a That is a great question, but it's also relative to your final workflow. As far as the random ization. Remember that your random ization is also relative to your voice layer and limits. How many of these voices air available? Right now, we only have six soft voices available to us, so it's going to repeat those if that's all you have available. When you have everything set to unlimited, it's literally going to sound like a different performance to some micro extent every time Now. The only way that that would change is if you came in the cash mode, because when you activate cash demoed, you're telling the software. Hey, listen, listen for anything I'm not using and pull that out. So the very first time that it listens to everything played through, it's gonna pull out anything that wasn't played. Thus Onley leaving the sample pool that was being played. And you'll have the same performance, which was an incredibly complicated answer for a very simple question. But I think everyone gets that right. So we had to talk about all this stuff to begin with. Yes, everyone's good. Yes, sir. So you're saying like you were loading in Amidi, a section of many for the groove of the of the kit. Could you do something similar for just the drum? Say, if I had, like, a pattern of bells, could I load it onto the Tom's That way or no, you would have to make certain that the actual pattern matched the mini notes that the Toms were signed to. So that would be more on the programming side than our side. Like we could not turn the toms and anything other than Tom's. However, you could easily have used, Let's say, use the sense to get you know, the sort of bell sounds that you wanted once that, you know, we'll talk about many notes, we get back. You just have to make sure that the many notes you were using for your performance line up with the well, that's on the time. But I think way go the other way. Just Yeah, yeah, you could. We and we can show you again. We're gonna get into all that stuff a little bit latter. What's the best workflow for combining the song writing capabilities of easy Drummer to with the powerful, sound shaping capabilities of superior drummer to great question. So a lot of people own both programs or considering working with or having both programs. And they do work together at the moment what you would want to do to utilize the song writing function like the song track and sort of the intense many functions of Easy Drummer Tube. You take the Mickey Out Signal from Easy Drummer to into the median of Superior Drummer two point. Oh, now, unfortunately, that can only be accomplished inside of your Daw. It's a very simple routing process, and actually, tomorrow, when we're actually in pro tools working on a session, I'm gonna show you how to do it in pro tools because a lot of people do use pro tools. It's fairly simple, but it would be a function of your Daw. You can't do them individually together in solo. As of now, that doesn't mean you won't be able to. But you would ultimately mitty out of easy Germer to, which would mean that all of the many information you put in these drummer to would feed to the sound set of Superior to. So you'd have all the sound shaping capabilities in spirit number two and all of the MIDI editing and kind of configuration, the capabilities of these drummer to the best of both worlds. And that's why a lot of people own both programs as well. He's one for the writing and then one for the actual sonic possibilities. So great question, but it can definitely be done on if you haven't tried it. Tune in. Tomorrow we're gonna show you how to do it in pro tools. Sweet. Thanks. Supposing I do have several STX libraries? Would it be possible to combine components of these different libraries? Libraries kicks from one library, stems from another You showed how to do that and pull in different elements. Yes, but the answer is yes. I mean, so the Mawr tune track expansion media you own in Superior Drummer, the more you can create custom configurations of that and one of the easiest ways to do it. I mean, we're gonna get into X drums and mapping were moving in that direction. I promise we're going to get there. But one of the easiest ways just to kind of give you an idea is to come into here, and you can start with an empty kit. I mean, ultimately, from that point on, you can add different sorts of extra ums from whatever expansion media you have and build your own custom kit. Now there's a whole bunch of other things that have to go with that. It's not a simple just drag and drop, and it's not a simple is just like, for instance, the selection menu and easy Drummer To makes it very simple, because an easy drummer to the drop down menu will give you the option to just go through all your median. Select the drum. It's not quite a simple just because of some of the really cool mapping components that are there. But you can do it so you can have, like you said a kick from one expansion Tom's from one other snares from another symbols from another. You can build your own custom kits. And as you do that, and I would certainly encourage you to try again. Just keep an eye on all the things we learned earlier about the memory, how things were loaded in what you're loading versus what you're not. All those critical functions that are gonna help the software really respond. You getting the most out of it based on what you want to do. Very cool. I'm gonna pull back up that place that could go ahead next. Next, Um, can you add to extra ums or more into a kit? Absolutely. You can add tons of extra arms, and we're gonna try and Max that theory out tomorrow. But you could just keep going. Um, I'm sure there's a theoretical limit. There may even be a realistic limit, but I haven't reached it yet. You're gonna reach your memory and CPU limits long before you kind of tax out how many things you can fit in the screen, but that is no reason to not try to do those things. So certainly feel free to continue to add as many as you want until your computer or your computer's memory tells, you know more. But, yeah, very good stuff. Big question here. Um, first, I've got to say Thank you. I love the jazz kits and presets on Easy German, too in Spirit Drummer to and use them to create mock ups for my trio, which is piano, bass and drums. Seeing how there's a huge shortage of good software for jazz Jones my question is, Is there a midi groove pack or sound pack in ah, in the works dealing with odd meters 5474? And also is it possible to create tempo shifts in the software, say, a jazz drummer say, how a jazz drummer would create double time feel on a ballad? Sure, so me address the first question. Which is, Is there any sort of mini that we have that's capable with maybe some some different stuff. We do have some really cool many, and in the grooves library you'll see that we have one that just came out a few months ago. It feels like a few months ago. But basic jazz. If you haven't had this, this is what you need. You need to go to the tune track website just by right now. As you can see here, we've got swinging 34443444 Everything but 54 So this is what you need to get started. We have another jazz pack that's been out for quite some time. That's a little Maura I want to see eclectic. So let me tell you the difference. Treating basic jazz Um I'm sorry, which I'm looking at This is jazz. That's actually the jazz easy ex. Let me go to the one I wanted to show you here. Basic jazz. It's got the word basic in front of it. So this one's got your 34 your 44 again. Same thing. This is really cool because it is helping people sort of come to grips with basic fundamental jazz playing recorded by German session drummer Norman Garcia. Great guy actually happens to work for tune track, amazing human being incredible player. And what you're looking at here is basic comping stuff. There is some jazz inspired many that comes with the roots and the jazz libraries. And then we have another pack recorded by another great drummer of Morgan Argon called Jazz. I think we were looking at to begin with, Um, yeah, and it's got a lot of the same things as faras tempo shifts go, this is work. It's kind of interesting. We don't have in Superior Drummer a timeline as a set earlier, so there's nothing to snap to or snap against. So it really becomes an issue of working in your Daw to move things a hair in one way or hair another way. However, there is a way to take a groove from full time to have time to double time in Superior Drummer very easily that we're going to show you so hang tight because that's coming up actually, in this segment. But yes, that can be done, especially for using it for mock ups. Great stuff, and that is a really great way that a lot of people use Superior drummer ain't Easy drummer as well as is to sort of demo drums for their real drummer. You know, people are always concerned. Hey, you know you guys air trying to replace drummers, and we always tell people that we've never met a great drummer that's been put out of work by a machine ever. So the reality is, is that is another great fundamental tool. So that's a great encouragement. So, yeah, definitely be watching. Or next two segments we're gonna talk about how to manipulate the grooves a little bit in the mini window. Also, one last question will start diving into content. Here. What's Ricks opinion on mixing to drum samples In one configuration, for example, Midi note like C zero is two types of snares together. I think that I think it's fantastic and add a custom sound so basically triggering, Yeah, um and we're gonna talk about that in a lot of detail tomorrow because it is a very common production technique, and superior is set up to accommodate that. So again, let me just make sure that everybody understands where we're at because we never want to presume anybody knows everything right. I'm sure there are tons of people that again are power users and are patiently sitting through for all the good stuff again. I'm pretty sure you've gotten some pretty cool stuff so far. We're gonna give you more. But what the questions referring to is So you have a snare drum and you love it. But you have this other snare drum, and you love that as well. And maybe it's because there's a sonic characteristic in this drum that you don't hear in this drum and in your music mind you say, Hey, don't put these two together. You can totally do that in Superior Drummer and in our opinion, our experience with producers. I mean, that's pretty much how most popular music is made. People layer Munitz layering. It's a very common effect where maybe you take up to 45 instruments and you are taking different attributes of the instrument and highlighting it as their sort of mix together. It's no different than mixing abandoned. Having that's what the band sounds like together as opposed to the base rooms. It's the same concept, and it is very doable, almost limitless. Lee and Superior drummer. And there's a lot of really cool really, really cool mapping and stacking features and functions that we're gonna be going over. So great question if you aren't quite sure how to do it consistently or as thoroughly as you want. Superior. Hang tight tomorrow. That's gonna be one of the first things we go over in the mapping page. So But I'm I am a big fan of taking those sounds and building. You know, take two or three sounds. You build a kick drum ticked, and that's reflective in the way that we do are combined presets as we showed you earlier things that you can. I'm sorry, wrong menu by. You go into your user presets and your combined presets, and you'll see that different people the Joey Sturgis Pact, for instance, the class back seems like they do the exact same thing. They take different sounds and samples and layer them together and present them to you. So that kind of the hard work is done. But be I'm personal opinion. I'm a big fan. I've depending on the type of music you rarely hear and again you do. But it depends on the type of music you rarely hear just naked drums these days, generally here, just one kick. Once they're generally in most rock pop metal music, there are layers and stacks of drums, as I think a lot of producers and engineers folks that have been on creativelive of shared. I mean, there's always a trick to getting the mixto so pump, and you can do so much of that in superior that I'm really looking forward to sharing that stuff. You guys, we keep going.