Drum VST instruments are awesome, especially as songwriting and demoing tools. But as we know, many people don’t have the access to real drummers or spaces to record them for the songs they want to release.
The various drum softwares out there basically do the same thing and largely have similar features – the main difference being in the samples used. Toontrack’s EZDrummer and Superior Drummer, Steven Slate Drums, Addictive Drums and several others of the paid variety are all fantastic tools for the studio and songwriters.
As a drummer myself though, I very often notice a lot of common mistakes that people do using them. Here are a few – and how you can avoid them and get a better drum sound.
VELOCITY
By far the biggest culprit in my opinion. Beginners especially have a tendency to crank the midi velocity up to 127 on every hit, as that sounds powerful and «slammin’».
This is the worst thing you can do actually, unless you want a stiff and robotic kind of sound. Velocities that high equal hitting a drum as hard as you can, meaning you choke the drum and get pretty much only attack and next to no tone out of the drum. No drummer actually plays that hard for any length of time. Velocities over 120 should only be used sparingly, if at all.
A fairly hard hitting rock drummer will play at something like between 100 and 110.
If you find that’s a bit soft sounding, use compression, eq, transient designers and things like that on the elements that need it in the mix (you are of course routing each element/microphone out to separate tracks in your DAW right?).
For a fairly believable sound it’s important to factor in how a drummer actually plays. If you’re unsure, go on youtube and study a few closely.
For drum rolls or quick fills especially, remember that no drummer ever hits the drum in the exact same place and at the same velocity for quick successive hits, that’s just impossible. Experiment with velocities and where the drummer hits. Superior Drummer 3 is great for this btw, as you have much more control in that software compared to the others out there.
And by far the most crucial part of the drum kit where you need to take special care when it comes to velocities/dynamics is the hihat. Spend time tweaking velocities and zones on this and you should notice an incredible improvement when it comes to realism.
The drum kit is probably the most dynamic instrument there is, which is important to keep in mind.
THE DRUM MIX
Another dead giveaway is not doing anything with the levels in the drum software. What a lot of beginners are guilty of is they’ll have earsplittingly loud cymbals/hihats and the room/ambience mic cranked – usually how the preset they’re using is set up.
This is how I can spot a mix using EZDrummer within seconds! Especially the room sound on the default kit that comes up when you load the plugin. Many people don’t even change out any of the drums, nevermind the kit or adjust levels. Come on guys, don’t be lazy.
Find the kit/drums that sounds the best for the particular song you’re working on, output them to separate tracks in your DAW, and then do any necessary tweaks so it fits your mix properly.
As for the cymbal levels, listen to any mix done the last few decades and you’ll find that cymbals and hihats in general are a lot lower in the mix than you think, mainly because they can get very distracting or plain in the way of vocals in particular. In most modern music the most important drum elements by far is the kick and snare.
IMPOSSIBLE PATTERNS
Another newbie mistake is this one. Patterns that are just plain impossible to pull off live on a drum kit. A common one here is busy, syncopated and intricate hihat patterns while at the same doing contrasting ghost note patterns on a snare . Cool for an obviously programmed electronic groove, but try and get a normal drummer to play that one and he might want to kill you.
A little tip is generally most drummers can’t hit more than 3 things at most at the same time (kick + both hands). Theoretically 4 using both feet at the same time, but that may cause them to lose balance and fall off the throne depening on what you’re trying to hit… Seriously!
There’s also the limit to how fast a drummer can move their arms from one drum or cymbal to another. Say, if you’re having a normal kick, snare and hihat groove, the drummer will normally hit the crash closest to the snare on the downbeat of a bar – things like that. The other crash or china normally used when they cross over to mostly using the ride cymbal.
Thinking like this will help a lot in creating a drum track that will sound a bit more natural.
TOO CLEAN
This is more the fault of the software and samples more than the person who uses it. The samples are more often than not recorded in a big lovely studio with fancy microphones going through world class outboard preamps, compressors and eq, and then straight to Pro Tools or whatever software they use and then processed some more. They’re done that way for a reason though. Easier to take away what you have too much of rather than add to something that isn’t there.
As a result things will often sound way too hi-fi and sometimes a bit sterile for the mix and sound you’re trying to create. And very often WAAAYYYY too bright.
Every time I use samples or drum VST instruments (fwiw I never replace drums, only augment with samples), I find I have to both limit frequency bandwidth and dirty things up to get it sounding more natural. To avoid is sounding very digital this is an absolute must in my opinion.
Tape simulators, preamp saturation/distortion plugins, console emulation and things like that works wonders for this purpose. The Soundtoys Decapitator is amazing for this, just a little bit of distortion goes a long way.
Analog modelled eq’s and compressors are also fantastic. A lot of options out there you can use from both Slate Digital, Waves, Soundtoys and other companies.
On cymbals in particular I will often also dull them a bit with eq, normally a low pass combined with a high shelf.
Hopefully you found some of the tips in this article helpful!
Try some of these tips and I can pretty much guarantee your mix will improve drastically.