Making drum loops/looped one shot samples sound "real"

[PillowFight]

I've been focusing really hard in my productions to get my drum beats/loops as on point as a lot of signed artists' tunes, and for some reason, certain things are just escaping me. I spend a lot of time utilizing compressors properly and in parallel, adding the right effect chains, equalization, and layering to death, but after all of that I just have a lot of realllly nice sounding one-shot samples.

From here I try use send effects to create a nice hi passed plate reverb on each individual sound, and then sequence out the drum beat in my head and for some reason, despite the individual hits sounding GREAT, the beat itself sounds dry, machine-esque and "unreal"

Now I know electronic sounding drums are used in a lot of music, especially those with focus on specific drum machines, but these beats just don't pop like they do in my head.

I've tried turning quantization off, performing them live with a launchpad and keyboard, etc. etc. but that just didnt come out right for some reason.

Are there any tips and tricks that you guys want to share for sequencing drum samples that make them sound more...human maybe?

[LUNCHPADDLE]

mate for starters im against pre made loops, use a sequencer and make your own beats.

if youre looking for that more professional sound on your drums and your samples lack definition, look up and learn parallel processing/mixed bus compression/new york compression (theres 3 names for the same technique as far as i know)
but thatll be exactly what you need - it helps you put fx and such on your drums but also allows you to keep the original punch of the dry samples without losing it to the wash coming from the fx.. if that makes sense? watch some tutorials on it.

if you want to make your loops sound more human, try changing the velocity on every second snare/hat and make the kicks vary ONLY SLIGHTLY in velocity, a drummer will never hit a drum at the exact same speed/intensity every single time, therefore having the intensity of the hit being varied gives a much more human feel.

also what daw are you using?

[PillowFight]

mate for starters im against pre made loops, use a sequencer and make your own beats.

if youre looking for that more professional sound on your drums and your samples lack definition, look up and learn parallel processing/mixed bus compression/new york compression (theres 3 names for the same technique as far as i know)
but thatll be exactly what you need - it helps you put fx and such on your drums but also allows you to keep the original punch of the dry samples without losing it to the wash coming from the fx.. if that makes sense? watch some tutorials on it.

if you want to make your loops ound more human, try changing the velocity on every second snare/hat and make the kicks vary ONLY SLIGHTLY in velocity, a drummer will never hit a drum at the exact same speed/intensity every single time, therefore having the intensity of the hit being varied gives a much more human feel.

also what daw are you using?

I know ALL ABOUT and am using parallel (or new york style) compression, and it does really make the single hits themselves sound a ton punchier and lively.

I haven't tried that velocity thing yet, is there a way to edit velocity on an audio sample in logic 9? (im in logic 9 btw lol)

[LUNCHPADDLE]

not sure how to edit velocity in logic, but in FL its via the piano roll.. so if you send the respective drums to the piano roll you'll most likely find the right shizz.
id say if you can get into the piano roll youll find it, if not, do a google search on editing velocity in logic 9.

also man, with parallel processing; in the top of the signal chain on both the wet and the dry drums channels, make sure you have a limiter just in its standard default setting, for some reason if you dont have a limiter on the wet and dry channel, somewhere between them leaving their respective channel and hitting the master drums bus, they create a phasing issue where snares for example sound really hollow and tinny. i had the same problem - i was scratching my head saying to myself "this ny comp shit sucks arse" and then a friend told me to whack a limiter at the top of the wet and dry channels.
not a lot of tutorials mention it, but as i said, try whacking a limiter at the top of your signal/fx chain on both the wet AND dry channels and it might give you the punch youre after.. if that doesnt work - get some better samples haha!

also on the wet channel, slight delay and reverb with the wet channel on about 40% - 50% volume and the dry channel on 90% - 100% should give you a nice little extra bit of fatness to the beat.

and NEVER send the kicks to the wet channel, kicks are dry channel only imho, otherwise you get a lot of low end interference of the delayed/verbed kicks later on when youre trying to work out your basslines/sub freq and you get all these nasty unwanted clashes..

hope that helps, let me know how you go!!

[PillowFight]

Thanks a bunch man, that limiter stuff sounds really interesting, I'm gonna have to play around with it. As far as reverb/delays go I usually use them on a totally separate send and hipass it to avoid that low end mud anyway, and use a very minimal amount on my kick.

[LUNCHPADDLE]

Thanks a bunch man, that limiter stuff sounds really interesting, I'm gonna have to play around with it. As far as reverb/delays go I usually use them on a totally separate send and hipass it to avoid that low end mud anyway, and use a very minimal amount on my kick.

mate you want delay and reverb on the wet channel of your parallel processing chain, thats what the wet channel is for, max out the fx and fuck the beat beyond recognition but have the dry channel booming nice and clear over the top.

wet 50% vol
dry 100% vol
^ youll get a ton of body out of the beat that way and you can even sidechain the dry channel to the wet for a bit of extra funkery.
^ this depends on the feel youre going for of course but yeah..
this is an old dubstep attempt of mine (i forgot i had it on my soundcloud page LOL) but yeah man hats need a bit of work - this was about 10 months or older.. :s ive come a long way since then.. but yeah have a geeze.. parallel processing on the drums etc. gives them some extra oomph.
Soundcloud

in terms of avoiding mud in such a way, youre better off putting an eq on the muddier sound/sample and doing a roll-off between 25 and 50hz - rather than having a filter affecting all of the drums.

50hz is the sweetspot for sub bass as well imho..

watch some producer masterclasses from start to finish on youtube, youll pick up heeeaps of info. the kryptic minds one seems to have disappeared, i was gonna link you. but theres icicle, bonobo etc etc.

computermusic magazine does them.

post me a track when youve had a crack, dont forget, default limiter on both wet and dry and plenty of fx on the wet channel haha! thats where the oomph comes from depending on what you put on there.

[PillowFight]

If you want to hear how my parallel compression & wet sends sound there's a link in my sig. I think I need to load my samples into the sampler to get them on the piano roll and mess with this velocity thing

[LUNCHPADDLE]

^ yeah man id have no idea, im strictly FL Studio.. cant even begin to guess how you go about it in logic.. :s
sorry man! all the best!