Dynamics and timing
As you’ll have no doubt noticed, our drum part so far, while making sense in terms of playability and pattern, still sounds totally mechanical and unrealistic. This is because we drew all the notes in by hand, snapped perfectly to the grid and at a constant, fixed velocity level.
The best way to remedy this problem is to play the part in live using a MIDI keyboard or drum pads. It does require a modicum of skill and the ability to ‘feel’ the groove rather than just rigidly bash it out, but you don’t have to play the whole thing at once. Set up a record cycle and play each element in separately as the track loops round – hats, then kick, then snare, for example. The result will be a MIDI part with naturally varying velocities and subtle timing fluctuations from beat to beat (and they do need to be subtle – if anything sounds noticeably out of time, move it closer to the grid).
If you can’t or don’t want to play your part in live, draw the notes in with snap turned off, aiming for the grid lines (and being sure to fall within a few milliseconds of them). When you’re done entering the part, manually tweak your velocity levels or use a MIDI plugin to introduce a touch of randomisation/humanisation.
Keep it believable
Varying velocities and timing is the best way to make your parts sound realistic, then, but don’t go too mad! Keep your velocities within a relatively narrow range – a drummer will strive to be as consistent as possible, so obvious leaps in volume from hit to hit will sound wrong. For hi-hat and ride cymbal patterns, the drummer will play the notes that fall on the beat harder than those falling in between (or vice-versa, if they’re looking to accent the off-beat).
Of course, it’s not enough to trigger just the one sample per drum at varying velocities – you need a properly multisampled drum kit, so that low-velocity hits trigger samples of drums played gently, while high-velocity hits fire off full-strength recordings. Your DAW most likely has a decent multisampled kit built in, and there are several fine third-party solutions: Toontrack’s EZdrummer and Superior Drummer, XLN
Audio’s Addictive Drums, FXpansion’s BFD series, NI’s Battery and Studio Drummer are just some of the great titles available.
Finally, an important timing consideration is push/pull: skilled drummers will deliberately play very slightly behind or ahead of the beat to create a driving or laid-back feel. To emulate this, simply apply a bit of channel delay to the whole part, or manually shift selected elements of it after you’ve made all your other edits.