THIS is why your sampled drums sound FAKE! (GetGood Drums)🤯🤯

Making my sampled drums sound realistic, was one of the biggest struggles I had when programming and writing drums with drum samplers.

In this video I explain a few concepts that helped me drastically improve the quality of my drums, I think they will help you too!

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[MustakimAlMahdi]

As a guitar player, the thing that helped me a lot and it may sound funny, but I watched Drum lessons and tried to recreate drum rudiments using midi.

[MrBikboi]

5 years later and I still adore this kit, man it's just good. Good video, the importance of programming your velocity varied and not 100% slammed can't be understated.

[Harrysound]

As a guitarist I bought a Roland hd 1 kit and started learning drums. I still can’t play drums at all and the drums are long gone but sitting there in front of the kit helped me understand how the kit worked together and what was possible as a human. Very helpful

[midnightwind]

I never understand why people act like they have discovered something when it has been around for ever. They often rename things. Not sure if they are that isolated or that conceited. All this is pretty standard stuff really.

[camdenwyeth]

I come back to this vid a lot, every time I'm confused by why there are so many dislikes. Do people feel attacked by the title or something? lmao, the content here is very helpful

[bransencaperton]

We need a Modern and Massive MIXING TUTORIAL!

[sonidojamon]

After years and years of recording, editing and mixing real drums, I got used to all the nuances. Best way to learn about dynamics of snares, kicks and Hi-hats is to study the raw tracks of a very good drummer. And a good exercise is to try to copy a real recording performance. There's even plugins and tools that let you translate an audio multitrack recording into midi drums.
Just by the wave amplitude (and length in Hi-Hat hits, after Hi-passing to eliminate as much bleed as you can) you can tell a lot. Speeding up in breaks, harder/siglhtly more open hits in HH in 1st and 3rd beats (kick and snare coincident).

Another thing that I usually do, after snap to grid programming and before doing any hand tweaks, is to "un-quantise" by randomising between 5 to 15% (depending on note length settings and song tempo) and also randomise velocity within a 5 to 10 range value.

In Hi-hats, I recommend always using shaft samples on the beat (1/4) and tip on the syncopated 8ths. Even with and open HH 1/4 pattern, it is great to add ghost 8ths with very soft and less open hits.
And if the sampler/library you're using allows it, instead of using different fixed grades (aka"notes") of HH opening, use a HH control automation and use the "all purpose" HH MIDI note plus that one.
A lot of this things I learned myself over time, cause I never was able to find good online content explaining this in detail.

Hard rock and metal recordings are usually slammed and heavily processed, and it's easier to get away with it. For softer or more detailed genres, the use of sample libraries is not that widespread, so maybe that's why I haven't found many skilled drum programmers and mixers yet in youtube.

Get Good Drums are great sounding libraries, but still lack in layers, multisamples and velocity dynamics. Try to program a drum roll from 0 to 127. Even when drawing by hand, you can tell there are "jumps" in intensity, and not enough alternate samples for same velocity hits.

In your "slammed" example, it would sound a lot more realistic if they switched randomly between at least 8-10 same velocity/intensity but separately recorded hits. We don't need 40 snares! We need 5 that have 10 samples for every velocity value from 1-127. That would help a lot. Same thing with HHs and cymbals.
Been playing around lately with MODO DRUM, as the idea is very interesting. It is a sample library and plugin that uses synth processing to model physics, and, though the samples are not that good, the technology really works!

All of this is so obvious to me, and I am surprised that many High-End electronic drum modules lack in all of this, and many plugin makers as well. Mots plugin GUIs are a pain in the ass to use. KUDOS to GGD, because they did very good in that sense. I just wish they created a MAIN GGD player, so we could load different Libraries on it, and blend kits, instead of having one plugin for each.
They should do a One Kit Wonder line, and a top line, similar to EZDrummer and Superior Drummer, and distribute the libraries, instead of creating a different GUI and Kontakt plugin for each.

Let's see what Naughty Seal audio come up with Perfect Drums 2! Can't wait!

Sorry about my weird english, it is not my mother tongue!

Great channel, I instantly subscribed!

[tephrosisOfficial]

Thanks for this vid man. Everything was explained in a nice and calm way. This is a welcome change, cause there are a lot of content creaters who over-act and miss the point.
I already implement most of your tips, but the double kick trick (lower velocity on one of the kicks) was new to me!
Cheers!

[DacianGradaMusic]

Thanks for the refresher! I often forget those little things when programming drums, this was really helpful and detailed! :D

[philippgrunert]

I am predominantly a guitarist, but also record my own bass an key parts. Getting to know drums i whatched a LOT of tutorials of my favourite drummers and even baught drum books to learn.
There are plenty of videos on the topic out there but THIS one sums it up pretty good in a good didactic fashion.
My compliments.

[urgx]

I do that with keyboard parts too, I didn’t know it was called a “flam” — like when you’re playing two or more notes very quickly to start off an arpeggio or a chord...you can’t have them right on top of each other. And they can’t really be quantized either, at least not the first note.

[thebunn]

Really well done Chris. Just got into GGD. Thanks for sharing man.

[SeriousTipStudio]

Get a weighted keyboard then you don't have to do that. Turn the volume up a little bit louder than you normally have it and then your there.
You're still going to put a limiter on the drums. You can't not have the kick or snare fading in and out of the song.

[DavidSmith-nezp]

As a guitarist, Ive always known when I was playing with a great drummer because of the feel it added to the song. But now, as I try and record drums in my home studio, Ive become painfully aware that I paid little attention to the techniques these drummers were using. Things as basic as they only have four limbs lol! Your comments are helpful in my education process! Cheers.

[toshibell]

This is a very important thing indeed. Letting all the velocities on max cancels a little bit of realism of the drums, even though the drum sound is very realistic. I used to give the song a little bit of realism even when composing in Guitar Pro, even though it is only a tablature editor and you can't do much there. Making a song sound a little realistic makes you connect better with it and further motivates you working on it. Now, a little question, as I'm diving right now into virtual instruments, that velocity curve does automate the velocities in the piano roll, like you change the curve and then when you open the piano roll all the velocities are set accordingly? And if yes, does this work with another DAWs as well? I'm asking this because setting the velocities on basically every note does consume you a lot of time and concentration. Also, if you want different velocities on different parts of the song, can you set something like that with GGD or any other virtual drummer? Thank you and waiting for your answer 😉

[explitix]

Sounds good, but next time show the sequencer window full screen, thx!

[maxwellhogan]

Great channel! MOAR VIDEOS :)
In one of your other videos you mention doing a song from scratch. I would watch it for sure!

[MyLittleHecarim]

this was actually really really helpful! thank you! so well spoken too, fun watch

[LexerJason]

My drum part writing as a guitar player has significantly improved after I started playing drums. Eventually, I've also been playing in a cover band as a drummer and I am able to differentiate between various cymbals and wood the drums are made of lol. I have an e-drum kit and a set of Paiste cymbals and hope one day I'll get an acoustic kit made of maple. Drumming lessons have gone a bit too far, yep :D

[chrisbedan]

Do you have trouble getting your sampled drums to sound real? Let me know if this video helped you out!!