*********************************
Number: 1028  Name: REALDRUM.TXT
Address: R.SHRIER  Date: 900201
Approximate # of Bytes: 28980
Number of Accesses: 98  Library: 13
Description:
If, like me, you're not blessed with a fine touch on the keyboard, you
might
be looking for an alternative to the standard method of keyboard-entry
rhythm
track sequencing.  Or you might be the owner of a sample or PCM-based
keybard
or modular setup looking for some way to match or approach the "human"
feel 
of the newest-generation stand-alone drum boxes.  Here's a way to turn
your
VFX, M- or T-series keyboard or module, D-series Roland box, SQ-80,
Proteus 
or multitimbral sampler into the fastest, most accurate and human-sounding
drum/rhythm setup you can get.  Also includes tips for trained
keyboardists
on better rhythm sequencing.  ASCII text file; may be listed online or 
downloaded.
Keywords:
Instruction,PCM/sample,module/keyboard,faster,precision,rhythm,sequencing
 ---------------------------------
HOW TO CREATE TRULY HUMAN-SOUNDING DRUM TRACKS ON YOUR PCM OR 
SAMPLE-BASED KEYBOARD 
       
     I write rock and roll.  I record in a MIDI-based home 8-
track studio.  I can't afford a real drummer for every session, I 
don't intend to learn drums, and I can't justify the cost of a 
separate hardware drum box.  That wouldn't be such a serious 
problem if I didn't have other shortcomings...like a voice made in 
Akron, keyboard chops that couldn't split a twig and instead of a 
feel for guitar, I've been blessed with a grope.
     I rely on passion to get my music across, since my chops just 
don't cut it in the real world.  And there is nothing that will 
drain passion from a demo like the mechanical time-keeping offered 
by mostdrum machines and keyboards.
     Necessity, as they say, is a real mother!
     Fortunately, with a couple of hours' tweaking and a ton of 
blind luck, I stumbled upon a system programming concept that 
should allow virtually any owner of a quality sampler, PCM-based 
synth or modular setup to program truly natural-sounding drum 
sequences directly from the keyboard.
     Granted, that's nothing special.  But how would you like to 
cut the amount of sequencer data eaten by your drum tracks by up 
to three-quarters without sacrificing feel?  How would you like to 
reduce editing time on drum tracks to almost nothing, even if you 
can't control your key velocity?  And how about adding at least 
three new "humanizing" features to each percussion hit, even if 
your sequencer won't "humanize"?  And how about doing all this 
without the need to stack voices or steal waves/oscillators from 
that killer piano patch?
     The secret lies in understanding what makes a live drummer 
sound like a live drummer, and applying these observations to 
programming drum PATCHES, not just patterns, on your synth or 
sampler.
     It should be obvious, but certain facts are often overlooked 
in this rip-and-run society.  When a drummer hits a snare drum, no 
two hits will have exactly the same volume, pitch or timbre.  The 
tip of the drumstick never hits the skin in exactly the same place 
twice, and no drum or cymbal is ever perfectly tuned.  This means 
that each hit triggers a different set of harmonics from the skin.  
Fortunately for most drummers, our emotions don't seem to respond 
too well to a perfect drummer.  Unfortunately for we synth/sampler 
owners, "perfect" drum hits are all our keyboards will give us 
unless we're willing to do some work on the samples.  Imperfection 
has to be un-made from these perfect sounds if we're going to get 
truly natural-sounding drum tracks.
     Un-making is the key word here, because most of today's 
samplers and PCM-based synths allow us to apply subtractive 
(analog-style) synthesis techniques to the drum sounds themselves.  
We can shorten or lengthen their decays, change their frequency 
responses, even mess with pitch.  The secret is to do it randomly 
and subtly, to mimic the imperfections of the human drummer.
     Here, in step-by-step detail, is how I set up custom drum 
patch templates to get a truly human feel.
     It should be noted here that my main axe is the Ensoniq VFX 
with the PCM ROM upgrade. (If you bought a VFX prior to February, 
1990, there is a ROM upgrade chip available for the VFX which will 
give you all the rhythm PCM's found in the newer VFX-SD.  Contact 
your dealer or write or call Ensoniq for details.)  The techniques 
I use tax the VFX' modulation system just about to its limit.  You 
may not have access to all the modulators or level/filter-scaling 
features recommended.  If this is the case, try to get the most 
out of what you have available.
     It should also be noted that most of these techniques will 
not work on play-only PCM boxes or samplers that lack filter and 
envelope editing capabilities, and it may require considerable 
experimentation to achieve satisfactory results on the Yamaha FM 
sampler due to the complexity of FM programming.
     These techniques can be used on the Roland D-series keyboards 
and sound modules, although they will require a considerable 
amount of time to properly set up.  Among the ideal units for use 
of these techniques are the Ensoniq VFX and SQ-80, Korg M- and T-
series keyboards and modules, the Kawai K-4/K-4r, the E-Mu 
Proteus, and any well-implemented sampler which utilizes extensive 
envelope and modulation editing.


THE GOOD NEWS...AND THE BAD

     Worst things first.  This is not a quick fix.  It will take 
you between two and six hours to reconfigure your entire rhythm 
setup, and perhaps several hours' more tweaking to get it just 
right.  But once the job is done, it's done, and you should never 
have to mess with your "signature" setup again!  Just be sure to 
do regular sysex dumps every hour or two if you're using Ensoniq 
or any other make which is prone to having its operating system 
crash on you.
     There's more bad news, especially for trained keyboardists, 
but this should be cause for serious partying on the part of 
guitar players and others with less than perfect touch: Forget 
about entering velocity data from the keyboard!  This setup 
requires that each piece of the kit contain several infinitely-
variable level presets, and it's flexible enough to allow the most 
subtle variations in velocity.  None of your rhythm sequences 
require that you record anything but note on/note off data (or 
just note-on if you have a rhythm-configurable software package) 
to get all the nuance and subtlety you'll need.
     Even more bad news if you're using a heavy-duty multitimbral 
setup that eats a ton of channels: you can't rely on one track or 
one channel for all your drums any more.  Even a five-octave 
keyboard can only effectively support six rhythm sounds with this 
system, meaning that you may need three, perhaps even four 
complete patches or presets to handle all pieces of your rhythm 
setup.  But the upside of this is that no velocity or controller 
data means a lot less sequencer memory is consumed by the drum 
track, and once you're used to the setup, you'll be programming 
whole rhythm tracks faster and with far less editing than ever 
before, and getting a human feel that was only hinted at by your 
previous setup.
     Still more bad news.  This setup will probably be completely 
incompatible with any rhythm tracks you've already written, since 
they probably rely on velocity data.  So be sure and save the 
patch bank or configuration which holds your old rhythm setup.  
But the good news is that some of these techniques can be applied 
to your existing setup.  Where modulation and envelope scaling are 
applied to key zones, simply tie the modulators and envelopes to 
single notes or waves, or to velocity, and you can use these tips 
to spice up your existing tracks.


DOWN TO BUSINESS: KEYBOARD ZONING AND LEVEL SCALING

     (NOTE:  If any of the following terms or techniques are 
foreign to you, re-read the programming section of the manual(s) 
for your master keyboard or tone module.)
     The first step is to map out key zones for each PCM. 
As I mentioned before, the safest route to go is to use no more 
than six percussion pieces across a five-octave keyboard.  My main 
rock'n'roll set-up uses kick, snare, open hi-hat, closed hi-hat, 
ride cup and ride bell on one patch; and low tom, hi tom, crash 1, 
crash 2, rimshot and cowbell on a second patch; with a third patch 
reserved for miscellaneous electronic percussion and effects.
     I assign the first five or six keys on the left to the kick 
drum, an octave (12 keys) to the snare, an octave each to the open 
and closed hi-hats (cross-fade the PCM's using level scaling if 
your system doesn't include a foot or 1/2-open hi-hat; if you do 
have such a beast, reserve four or five keys out of the two 
octaves for this tone), and an octave each to the cup and bell of 
the ride.  You might need less, but I prefer to have the maximum 
possible flexibility for cymbals and snare.  For crash cymbals, I 
use an octave for each cymbal (you can get a third, high crash by 
pitch-shifting your best crash cymbal up two or three tones), a 
half-octave for each tom (I usually use three plus a floor tom), 
and five or six keys each for tambourines, cowbells and other 
percussion.
     The reason I use so many keys for each percussion piece is 
because I don't want to key in the velocities manually.  I want 
each key to have a preset velocity level so I don't have to tweak 
accents on every bar or do velocity editing for every hit in a 
64th-note snare roll.
     Setting up key volumes is a piece of cake on most synths.  
After selecting key zones for each PCM or sample, you simply make 
a fairly radical level scaling adjustment on each piece.  I set my 
softest hits to the left-hand side of the zone and my hardest 
accents to the right, so all needed volumes will lie within that 
range.  If it seems like you're limiting yourself with a maximum 
of 12 velocity levels for each percussion piece, please bear with 
me.  Additional techniques will add infinite variation within each 
of those 12 levels, and this variety should provide you with all 
the range you need for pretty much any kind of drum setup.  
However, if your keyboard supports more than one type of scaling 
curve, you might want to try using an exponential or other custom 
curve instead of a linear scaling curve so you can get more 
subtlety at the lower or upper ends of the volume range.


IMPROVING THE SOUND: THE NATURAL ENVELOPE

     Now that you've made note-entry easier by eliminating the 
need for precise key velocity, it's time to set the synth up for 
more natural sounding drum tones.  And the first thing which must 
be done is the creation of another set of keyboard scaling setups 
for each tone...this time tied to the output envelopes.  Basically 
what you want to do is allow for some fairly subtle changes to the 
decay settings of your PCMs or samples so that loud tom hits decay 
more slowly than soft ones, and...this is important...loud cymbal 
and open hi-hat hits decay more quickly than quiet ones.
     This may sound strange, but it's not, really.  On most drum 
kits, a loud cymbal crash decays to half its volume faster than a 
quiet hit, even though the overall envelope is longer.  On most 
tracks, the tail end of most cymbal/hi-hat hits will be buried in 
the mix and shouldn't be missed, so don't be afraid to go against 
your instincts and either SHORTEN the envelope on the loud cymbal 
hits or lengthen the envelope on quiet hits.  You can gate the 
ends of the hit below a certain level if your keyboard will allow 
it, even scale the gate to the level curve if you can, to make the 
decays even more natural.
     If you have a full-featured sampler, you might just decide to 
use level scaling only on the loop's decay.  But regardless of 
which type of envelope scaling you use, don't use too much.  The 
key to this whole strategy is using little tweaks on several 
aspects of the sound to produce a major overall improvement.  And 
don't completely ignore this aspect of soundshaping, because bland 
hi-hats and cymbals are without doubt the most common fault of the 
average sequenced rhythm track.
     There are certain percussion pieces that don't need to have 
their envelopes tweaked, most notably those that already have 
short decay times.  Cowbells and kick drums are prime examples of 
percussion pieces that don't need anything more than level scaling 
to achieve a natural sound, although you might want to scale in a 
tiny touch of high-pass filter on quieter kick beats.


MODULATION: ADDING THE HUMAN TOUCH

     Now that we've added level scaling to the PCMs for easy 
pattern input and some output enveloping so that the decays match 
the levels, it's time to do some serious yet subtle work on the 
timbre of the sound, and this is where the real humanizing process 
occurs.
     The more modulators you can apply to each PCM, the better the 
overall effect you'll produce.  I use the Ensoniq VFX, which 
provides an astonishing range and number of modulators.  Your 
synth may not be able to duplicate the versatility of the VFX, but 
try to get as much out of your architecture as it will let you 
have.  Adding small amounts of modulation to each PCM is a 
laborious task, but you should only have to do it once, and the 
results should be well worth the effort.
     The effect we want to reproduce is that of the stick hitting 
different parts of the drum or cymbal.  Since the location of the 
hit affects both the pitch and the overall tone of each hit, we 
have to apply modulation to both the pitch and the filter.  A sine 
wave or triangle wave oscillator will do fine as the modulation 
source, but I prefer to use a sample/hold LFO ("noise" on the 
Ensoniq keyboards; might also be called "random") as the 
modulation source.
     The trigger for the modulator can either be "note on" or 
"key" if you use S/H modulation or "constant" or unsynchronized if 
you use sine or triangle wave LFO's.  The destinations will be 
"pitch" and "filter", if you can get both, but the best results 
will probably be had with "pitch" if you can only get the one 
modulation source at this point.  The oscillator speed should be 
quite slow, 1 cycle per second or slower, so you don't get sudden, 
unnatural pitch shifts.  This can be especially troublesome with 
sample/hold oscillators.  And the amount of modulation should be 
minimal; a semitone or so on cymbals and hi-hats, a quarter-tone 
or less on snares and toms.  Yes, it's VERY subtle, but remember 
that we're combining several tweaks to get the overall effect.  
It's a time-consuming job to get good-sounding settings on all 
tones, but at least you don't have to do any keyboard scaling on 
the modulators.
     The next step is to add a randomizing effect to the 
velocities of our drum hits.  Since all velocities are now preset 
on the synthesizer, we can't rely on the sequencer to "humanize" 
velocities for us any more.  If you have a free modulator or two 
left, apply a s/h, sine wave or triangle wave LFO to the output 
volume.  If you've run out of LFO's, tie the output to the 
modulator you used for pitch and/or filter and adjust the amount 
of modulation so that the range is roughly equal to the amount of 
variation in level between one key and the next.  This gives you 
access to a wide range of random velocities on every key from your 
quietest to loudest hits, and if the volume is tied to the amount 
of filtering, meaning that loud hits get zero filtering and less-
loud hits get a slight amount of filterng, the effect is pretty 
much that of a real drummer.

     By now you should have a basic patch template that offers you 
a subtle randomness, a "human" shifting of every tonal parameter 
that matters, that you should notice from your very first drum 
track.  You also have a level-scaled setup that allows you to 
enter your drum patterns faster and more accurately than ever 
before.  The only specialized task left to your sequencing 
software is humanizing the quantize rate of note events, so you 
can mimic the effect of hitting beats slightly early or late.  
Truly human-sounding keyboard-entry drum tracks are now within 
your reach.  All you have to do now is learn to think like a 
drummer.
     (Gratuitous drummer joke: Q. How do you think like a drummer?  
A. Study up on Henry VIII.  Q. Who?  Why him?  A. Because he acted 
like a maniac on his throne, too.)


PITCH-CORRECTING: COMPENSATING FOR COMPUTER INADEQUACIES

     There are still a few tricks left to get even more realistic 
tones out of your sampler or PCM-based rhythm setup.
     One of the simplest is adding simple pitch envelopes.  I've 
found that a number of PCM rhythm samples seem to be pitch-
corrected, meaning that the pitch is constant from the start of 
the sample to the end, and the ones that are not pitch-corrected 
aren't natural-sounding at all volumes.
     Most drums and cymbals have pitch envelopes that vary with 
their volume.  For example, when you hit a tom, you create a 
vibration that stretches the skin at each end of the vibration.  A 
stretched skin vibrates faster, or at a higher pitch.  As this 
vibration falls in intensity, the stretching of the drum skin 
reduces as well, and the pitch drops slightly as it decays.  The 
early synthetic drums such as the Synare and SynDrum took advanage 
of this natural phenomenon by exaggerating and resonating the 
downward sweep of a drum's natural pitch decay.  To put it simply, 
a naturally-decaying tom sounds like it's pitch-bending down 
slightly as it decays.  The same effect is heard on crash cymbals.
     If you want to mimic this effect on your toms and cymbals, 
you'll have to modify the pitch envelope of the PCM so it falls 
slightly after the hit.  Remember that we're using preset 
velocities, so we'll have to take the level scaling into account, 
and if at all possible, link the depth of the pitch envelope to 
the level scaling or create a special scaling curve for the 
envelope on its own.
     You might also have PCM's which are NOT pitch-corrected and 
which pitch-shift down on their own.  These are perfect for hard 
hits, but are slightly unnatural-sounding at lower volumes where 
the ear expects less pitch-shift.  In this case, you might want to 
carefully reverse the envelope (turn it upwards) so that the pitch 
envelop "straightens" the pitch shift on quieter hits and lets the 
PCM's pitch decay naturally on hard hits.  This can be a 
painstaking process, but if, like me, you really only need one 
killer kit, it's time well spent.


THE WELL-TEMPERED CYMBAL

     One of the trickiest effects to mimic is the change in timbre 
between soft and loud crash cymbal hits.  Yet it's one of the most 
important improvements you can make to the overall sound of a PCM 
or sample-based rhythm setup.  If you own an M-1, you have at 
least a partial solution built into your hardware.  If you own 
anything else, you might have to use an external frequency-
sensitive noise gate such as the RockTron Hush units or the gate 
in a Rockman Sustainor to create level-dependent gating of the 
high frequencies, and it might take some serious tweaking to get 
just the right effect.
     If you have a sampler with enough memory, such as an Ensoniq 
EPS or a Yamaha sampler with memory upgrade, you can try 
crossfading hard and soft cymbal crashes across the range of the 
cymbal key zone.  Just be careful in the region where the two 
samples overlap or you might wind up with an overly-dense, almost 
flangey type of tone.  You might need to add low-pass filter 
scaling to the loud-crash sample and high-pass filter scaling to 
the soft-crash sample so they don't walk over each other.
      The M-1 can do a passable job of fleshing out a loud cymbal 
crash with its aural exciter and some fancy effects routing.  The 
key is to tie the exciter to MIDI volume or level scaling, so that 
louder hits get more of the exciter's effect.  It's not as good as 
crossfading samples, but it's a usable alternative that should 
produce noticeable results.  You can also route the snare's output 
level or scaling to the exciter for a similar effect, or use the 
mapping capability of an external processor such as the DSP-5 or 
SGE if you've got the snare or cymbal on a separate output.


PANNING: NOT JUST FOR LOUSY CRITICS

     The final tip in this tutorial concerns panning a drum kit.  
It has always been my belief that since most people are familiar 
with the visual layout of a standard drum kit, creating 
comfortable, listenable rhythm tracks should reflect this learned 
preference on the listener's part.  But most hobbyists tend to use 
the whole stereo field, even when attempting to recreate a "live 
room" drum track.
     The stereo field has 180 degrees of sweep.  In order to get 
the best compromise between my personal preference and the natural 
preference for a narrow stereo field for drums, I usually use no 
more than 110 degrees of sweep for the whole kit, including kick, 
snare, toms, hi-hat and cymbals.  If I do any unusual panning or 
hard-left/hard-right routing, I reserve it for Latin percussion or 
electronic effects.  (As in all things, there are exceptions. I've 
done one track where I had all snare hits on the 2 panned 70 
percent left and all hits on 4 panned 70 percent right for a 
striking bouncing effect!)
     This particular approach to panning may go against your 
instincts, and it might be a wise idea not to pan in a narrow 
field until you're ready to record or it may upset the delicate 
psychological balance so essential for creative rhythm tracks.  To 
properly program PCM drum kits, you've probably learned to imagine 
yourself on the throne behind the kit.  In order to enhance the 
illusion, you probably pan your cymbals fairly hard to the left 
and right, especially under the headphones.  But remember that the 
average listener never gets that close to a drum kit.  His field 
of audio in a live listening situation is much narrower.  I find 
even a 90-degree sweep is  much larger than the average person 
hears from a ten-foot distance, but it's a good compromise to use 
a field from 90 to 120 degrees, if only for the basic drum kit.  
Here's how I set up my rock kits, using as a reference -10 as hard 
left and 10 as hard right.

-6      -4.5     -3   -2   -1   0    1     2      3      4.5     6
                      Rim/Snare    Kick
          Synth Toms    Hi tom     Tom 2    Tom 3     Lo Tom
                    Hi-hat                           
   Crash 1       Cowbell      China         Ride          Crash 2

     As you can see, nothing is dead-center except the china or 
gong, which are usually located directly above or behind the 
drummer and used very sparingly, and nothing is even close to hard 
left or hard right.  I'm left-handed, so my toms are weighted to 
the right.  You may wish to reverse this.  Graphically, it looks 
too heavily weighted to the right, but it's not really.  Don't 
forget that the busiest piece of percussion in most modern music 
is the hi-hat, and by setting it slightly off-center on the 
opposite side of your toms, the overall effect is a balanced one.  
I may also shift the cowbell harder left or right, since it's not 
always played by the drummer and therefore doesn't have to be 
considered part of the kit.
     If this sounds like conservative thinking, it is, and with 
good reason.  Most of us are trying to break into the industry.  
Until we do, we play by "their" rules.  Unless we've already got 
an original slant which is supported by virtuosity in some area, 
whether it be in songwriting, musicianship or performing, we can't 
risk alienating A&R people with off-the-wall ideas about 
production.  Chances are if we do get a deal, the producer will 
have points and future work riding on the success of our project 
and will want to put his own stamp on our music.  A conservative 
approach to demo production leaves the A&R rep's doors open to a 
wider range of potential producers, and the greater the choice in 
his mind, the more input we might have over his or her decision, 
and the less likely that the producer we want will reject the 
project based on his "feeling" about the sound.   


SOME FINAL WORDS

     I think you'll find that the best course of action to take 
with modulators and level/filter scaling is the same course of 
action I suggest with using digital reverbs.  Set the amounts 
where they sound good to your ears, then BACK OFF!  Not too much, 
but just enough to make up for the fact that you might be getting 
off on what is a much more radical change than you really need.  
I've used the word several times, but it bears repeating: 
SUBTLETY!
     Slight changes are the real keys to making this sort of 
setup work for you.  They're the difference between having an A&R 
rep pull your tape after the usual 30 seconds due to "beat box 
fatigue" and being asked by pros and fans alike, "who played 
drums?"  A nice change if you're used to being asked WHAT played 
drums!  I know...since I started paying attention to envelopes and 
modulators I get asked to recommend my drummer, and it never 
happened before.  I've even been asked to rewrite a rhythm track 
or two with my "human" touch, and couldn't we all use a few more 
sources of income?
     I first started using the envelope- and pitch-altering 
approach on Yamaha's RX-5.  Using its primitive editor, I had to 
go into every event to randomize pitches, decays and levels.  It 
took approximately ten to twelve hours to properly sequence a 
four-minute rock song with all effects and settings using this 
method.  Using this keyboard-based setup, I not only get much more 
natural results, but I've cut the time required to do a first-
rate, professional-sounding, human-feeling rhythm track down to 
about two hours.  In other words, the entire time spent tweaking 
the patch/preset setups to the specs outlined here was saved and 
then some on the very first rhythm track I recorded.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR

     Steve Winter is the owner-operator of Living Skill 
Productions, a music and print preproduction facility in Calgary, 
Alberta.  He is the author, editor and publisher of eight books, 
including the highly-publicized "Ultimate Shopper" and the 
infamous "Strange Rock Tales", and composer of over 100 songs, 
including "One is a Thousand", published and released by Random 
Image Music/Random Records in Toronto.
     Mail can be forwarded to him through RShrier on GEnie, or by 
addressing questions to Steve Winter on the International MIDI 
Echo.  Cassette samples of completed tracks recorded with the 
techniques outlined here are available.
     This file is copyright (c) 1990 by Living Skill Media and may 
not be reproduced in any form without written permission from the 
publishers.  The only exceptions to this prohibition are posting 
to electronic bulletin boards or messaging systems where this file 
is posted intact including the filename with no physical changes, 
or single-copy printing on a privately-owned electronic printer 
for personal use only, or brief quotations embodied in reviews or 
technical articles where the source article and author are 
credited.
     Hard-copy reprints are available on request at a nominal fee.  
Contact RShrier on GEnie for details.




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