Real Drums, Human Musicians and the Rest

So I have a question then, if you are aspiring for a true electronic drum sound, ten would you recommend finding the module (808,909) that you are trying to recreate or just use samples in that case?

I can’t wait for the day when androids start playing on real drum kits. Now THERE’S a debate!

i think the difficult part of this discussion is not, if you are right – you are! -, but it’s all about the $$$ and the intention of the production. although i know, that you are right, i often have to use a plug-in, as time, money and budget do not allow recording a real drummer and set. but in the end, if a band wants an authentic great sound overall, there is no chance to do that for everyone of the band, except the drummer. they will never win with putting a lot of bugs into recording all other parts and leaving the emotional drum track behind. to sound great and produce the right feel, it cannot be a plug-in and a track painted in the midi-editor.

I personally won’t consider using programmed drums for my music.  BTW, Travis did a great job with the drum tracks on my songs.  

Thanks TM. Can’t wait to hear the final tracks. I’ll most definietly do a ‘before and after’ post on your tunes.

First off, this isn’t a digital vs vinyl debate. Second, the purpose of editing ANYTHING isn’t to take away the human element. Last, if your drummer wants to lay down MIDI tracks, I have no problem with it.

There’s an app for that.

First let me say that I wholly respect your position (I play guitar and bass and would not endorse any type of product that took my personal human element out of the mix). That being said, it says in the comment section – in response to the assertion that the true human element exists in the groove, not the sound or sample – that you would not have a problem with a real drummer triggering samples with a controller. Does that include triggering with an MPC (for the appropriate music of course – hip hop, electronic, etc) or keyboard pads? Would a human triggering a hip hop beat during a live performance be providing the same benefit as a rock drummer? I think so. 

I ask because I just finished recording and releasing an EP in which I used three different techniques – Superior Drummer with very heavily edited programmed hits, SD with a live drummer triggering the beats, and one with a live drummer miked (Two MXL overheads, AKG D112, Shure sm57) in a semi-acoustically-treated rehearsal space (with outside noises occasionally peaking in). 

I’d challenge anybody (and please understand, I mean this in the spirit of debate and experimentation – not just trying to start fights) to pick out the differences and explain them, not simply guessing on intuition. 

And by the way, cool blog. Well done. I’m sure I’ll be back. 

-Dominic

I’m thankful for the DAW.  I’m thankful that fake drums actually sound good these days.  After living in LA for 15 years and paying for studio time and musicians… I’m so glad that the “creative process” doesn’t have to be interrupted by all the bullshit that use to come from recording your songs. Coming from the day of a cassette 4 track and a crappy drum machine and where we are today is amazing.   You can make a record yourself. Amen.
And who gives a crap what Dave Grohl thinks.  He is a millionaire with one of the best multi-million dollar studios in LA. His drums are going to sound amazing regardless.   AND you can bet he isn’t going to use 1 or 2 mics.  I’d rather use a 24 bit loop before I go down that road. 
I really respect Graham and what he is about… Teaching the Art.  
So why don’t you TEACH some kid in Boise Idaho how to make his midi drums sound good, instead bitching about  Live Drums vs Fake drums.  Most kids can barely afford the gear they have.
AND I’m not saying that artist shouldn’t use live drums… if you have access to it… go for it for sure.  Thanks to the DAW… any musician can do what they want.  No rules.

Well said, Travis. 
There is nothing amazing or interesting in listening to programmed drums or loops. My ear just tunes out as I can not visualize an actual drummer behind the kit.Those software companies should stop desperately trying to fool people into thinking that fake drum loops are as good as a great real drummer and instead focus on promoting it as what it is: great composing, arranging and production TOOL. Not a replacement!Every single client I have worked with had one of those great plugins. However they prefer the real deal as the results are night and day.Perhaps it is about the time that we start our own campaign..

Goran

I fully disagree with all of this.  I have been using drum machines, drum programming and samples for many years now.  I prefer using this method of laying out drum tracks.  I can play the drums, although I can program them better.  I do write Rock n Roll and other genres.  I get nothing but compliments from real musicians and drummers.  I do like that they are always in time and are never “off”.  I am still proud of what I write and it’s a personal challenge to make a drum machine sound great.  

I should also mention that we often back up the “acoustic” drum with obviously electric drums, so they sound more “live” by comparison. Might make it difficult to discern which drums are live. 

look i’m a drummer. i make
it a point to only write drum parts that i can play. but i don’t have
ANY of the necessary components to actually record drums. so why make
the whole recording suffer? just put your effort into making the
programmed drums sound just like you would if you were playing and it
all works out.i’d LOVE to play drums on my recordings!  i don’t think anyone who has used programmed drums would say it was their first choice.  but if you’ve got jack shit for gear and no funding, your only option is to program your drums and make them sound as good as you can.

Should also mention we’re doing the exact same thing with keys.  A Korg M50 outputting MIDI over USB and sampled piano thanks to Sonar, MIDI played back via Dimension Pro.

The beauty of a human-played drum track lies in it’s inconsistencies.

Thanks Ben. I agree 100%. It’s not about the sounds as much as it is about an actual human performing the music…

I agree and disagree. In your post you mention that you imagine not many top engineers or producers in the real professional audio engineering/music production world use drum samplers. You’d be surprised! In fact, that’s not even a question most engineers will ask during a session in a multi million dollar studio. That’s a production topic, not engineering. With that said, MANY top producers in the real world HAVE, and DO use drum samplers. Sampled drums have been all over in music. Every genre’s been touched by them (perhaps not classical music), even Jazz. And lets not even talk about electronic genres lol. 

Even in a scenario where a real drum kit was recorded, a sampled drum might still be used. What if the snare sounded real good during tracking, but not so good during mixing and re-recording the drum parts is not feasible? Sometimes drum replacement is required, sometimes just layering might do it. Hits in every genre account for songs with only live drums, only sampled drums, and a combination of both. At the end of the day, it’s what serves the music best. 

Now that that’s out of the way, I do agree with you in terms of feel, energy, vibe, and everything else in between. To me, nothing has more hype than a real drummer listening to the track, digging the arrangements, feeling the lyrics, and jamming out to a great drum kit that’s well tuned, placed in a good room, and with descent mic placement. But EVEN that is NOT a real world scenario! Most times, the drums are recorded with bass and a few other ‘base tracks’ Then overdubs are done all over the place to enhance the basic arrangement. So that drummer never even got to hear the whole thing. Thus, he never really jammed to the real thing! 

In the end, is all about the music. If you’re a drummer, of course recording a live kit will touch your heart. That’s like telling a guitarist that they’re awesome Orange amp has to be ditched & replaced w/ a virtual Mesa powered by the D.I record because the song calls for it. Or like telling the keyboard player that they’ll ditch their rendition of the electric piano because the Motif’s sound doesn’t cut it, and Lounge Lizard’s rhodes sounds better. It’s whatever the song calls for. If it sounds great, don’t touch it! If it doesn’t, make it happen! That’s my opinion about this whole live drums vs. sampled drums rant.

Personally, I use both equally. I lay down the sickest drum tracks with a sampler (S.D 2 being my favourite) during pre production, then take to the studio with real musicians once the whole arrangement’s been crunched out and every hour means $ during production. 

I love the Dave Grohl quote!

There are three important issues you didn’t cover: finances, space, and neighbors.

Before I continue I would like to point out that I’m not a professional at this point in time, though I am trying to turn my music into a source of revenue.

That being said, acoustic drums aren’t viable in some situations. I own a set. It’s just a cheap beginner’s set that my parents got me 15 years ago. I put top of the line heads on it, but that’s only a small part of a drum’s sound. If it’s cheaply made using low quality materials it doesn’t matter if you put the best heads money can buy on them and Neal Peart himself tunes them for you. A cheap set is still going to sound like buckets. If you can’t afford the $2,000 to upgrade from a Percussion Plus set to one of Tama’s better sets then you’re better off loading a free plug-in to your DAW. No amount of post processing can salvage a recording from a cheap, bucket sounding set.

The second consideration is space. I barely have the space to store my drums, and I had to leave the bulk of my cymbals at my parents’ house. There is absolutely no space for me to set them up and now that winter’s starting to set in moving my drums and computer outside to record isn’t viable. You can’t record them if you can’t get to them, and when you only have room in your workspace for an individual drum or a set of rototoms your only options are to either record each drum individually over dozens of sessions (try timing sixteenth note triplets that move across the toms while recording only one tom at a time) or load up Super Drum FX and try to add that human feel through velocity changes and anti-quantize.

And then there’s the neighbors. Around here they couldn’t care less if you’re babysitting your infant nephew and their constant target practice is keeping him awake. Their response is to either put earplugs in him or wait until it’s too dark to see the targets and try to get him to sleep then. However, five minutes on the rototoms on a Saturday afternoon will have them barging in and taking a hunting knife to your drum heads.  That’s not an exaggeration, either. I actually have shredded heads on my rototoms from my only attempt to record them.

I don’t disagree with the premise that tracks should feature real drums played by real drummers. In fact, when I first got my drum set I said I would never use a drum machine. Then when I discovered DAWs I said that clicking on a piano roll would never replace recordings of an actual drum set.

However, the realities of the situation have set in since then. Recordings that sound like they were done on five gallon buckets, a move to an environment where a drum set won’t fit, and neighbors who couldn’t care less how noisy the area is unless it’s someone else making the noise have made plug-ins a necessary evil.

I have to agree with Travis to a point.  I like using loops, but I continually have to modify them, add a fill here, add a different riff on the snare, so much to what I mostly do is get my drummer friend to come over and play what I like from the sample.  Loops are nice, but they are just that, LOOPS!  Repeated drums.  But in order to make the music  more exciting, I need a real drummer to “feel” not “fill” the energy of the song.  I will continue to use loops but I no it will be more time consuming trying to get them to conform to the rest of the song. 

BU, Thanks for chiming in. However, I’m simply suggesting that a human performance can’t be compared to programming. I don’t think using plug-ins that model analog gear is the debate here.

My irrelevant background: Percussion teacher, orchestral + drum corps etc. 

It seems to me like there are a lot of different arguments happening here. We should consider 
1. Musical style + desired level of interaction
2. Pros vs Hobbists
3. Time vs money, 
4. Electronic Pads vs Programming vs Loops
1. Musical style + desired level of interaction ”Drop it like It’s Hot” would sound dumb with real drums. Much of Imogen Heap’s stuff would too. Of course the big catch here is that these drums are SUPPOSED to sound electronic. If you tried to program Rush, Led Zepplin, or any thing Buddy Rich played you’d spend a year doing it and drive yourself mad. The big catch here is INTERACTION!For example, if you listen to Buddy and Lionel’s album you’ll hear buddy interact with the rhythms that the other players are doing in ways that will blow your mind! Of course you don’t always want this level of interaction. Most rap/pop tunes today want something more straight forward and repetitive.2. Pros vs Hobbist
Are you a hobbyist or trying to “make it”? Honestly a lot of people who argue about this issue don’t have any hits. They are just hobbyists with limited income who perhaps make some tracks for youtube or for their friends and family. These people have plenty of time to argue about “purity” of the musical composition and real vs fake drum patterns all day, but at the end of the day, the pros use both. In fact many artists alternate between the two on the same album! 

If you’re trying to “make it” then you need to do whatever is stylistically correct for your genre. If that means real drums, you better save up and hire a real drummer. 

3. Time vs Money (assuming we’re trying to sound like a real drummers in a pop/rock context)

More time———————————–Med time————-min time
Programming from scratch                 Triggering             Hired Drummer
                             Manipulating loops                                

More $$$$——————-Med $$$$——————min $$$$
Hired Drummer                Triggering                    Loops, Programming

4. Electronic Pads vs Programming vs Loops
I’ve heard some fantastic results of combining a real drummer with drum triggers. You get the interaction and the human element with endless tweakability. And if you don’t play drums yourself, you don’t have to hire the absolute top notch drummer because you can fix things yourself later. In fact, if you listen to any of the tracks from Native Instrument’s site it’s getting harder and harder to tell the difference between a real drummer playing drums and a real drummer playing an electronic set. However we’ll probably forever be able to tell a real drummer from loops. 

Anyhow, I hope this contributed. I use all of the above because I’m a drummer, a hobbyist, and interested in every style known to man….minus country….