I learned my lesson the hard way. A few years back, I received an almost great review from Guitar Nine Records when I sent them a copy of my CD, Circle. The one negative? A bad MIDI rhythm section. That criticism stuck with me. What could I do? Hire a drummer and spend thousands to record? Ugh. Maybe if I thought I could actually sell the CD and make my money back.

So, I started looking around for good MIDI drum tracks. Then, it occurred to me: obsessive Zappa fans. Frank always used the best drummers around, and fanatical Zappa fans who also happen to be musicians can be very exacting about representing Frank’s music. I wasn’t disappointed. Among the hundreds of Zappa MIDI representations I found and listened to, a couple stuck out to me because of the drum tracks:

Inca Roads Sinister Footware The Black Page (These came from here and here.)

Now, these tracks are good and definitely believable. But, they’re also just using whatever stock MIDI instruments your soundcard happens to be using. When I loaded these into a MIDI editor, swapped in some decent drum kits, and tweaked the velocities a little, I was blown away. I knew that I had found my answer. So, I studied these tracks.

I wish I had a before-and-after of the same tune to give you, but alas, I don’t. What I do have are a couple of tunes that demonstrate in general terms the result of applying my techniques. First, take a listen to this, a tune from Circle (the CD I mentioned above) named Your Brother’s Toes:

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I happen to like the tune as a whole, but the rhythm section is weak, particularly during the bridge before the solo break. Now take a listen to a tune I wrote and recorded a few months later, after I’d spent some far-too-much time studying the Zappa tracks:

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Now, say what you will about the tune itself, but that’s a lot better, no? Here’s another example:

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If I’ve managed to convince you, read on to learn the 12 techniques I used to make better MIDI drum tracks.

1. Get yourself some decent drum samples

Let’s start with the obvious. Your drum tracks need to sound like real drums before anyone’s going to take them seriously. My source for real acoustic drum samples is SONiVOX. They used to be called Sonic Implants. I’m not paid to endorse them, but I do anyway because they have the best acoustic drum samples, period. My favorite? The BlueJay Loose Drums. These come in the form of SoundFonts, so you’ll need to figure out on your own how to get your MIDI editor to use them. It’s normally not that difficult. Also, I spent a lot of time combining and editing different SoundFonts to create a custom kit for myself to make my tracks sound more unique.

2. Start thinking like a drummer

No, I don’t mean to start smashing up hotel rooms… I mean realizing that drummers have 2 hands and 2 feet (usually, that is). It’s not possible to hit 3 crashes or 3 toms at once. I always ask myself, “Could I physically play this if I could play drums?” Astute listeners will pick up on impossible pattens quickly as computer generated.

3. Don’t rely on the “humanization” features of your MIDI editor, YOU make your tracks human

Humanization algorithms add subtle to not-so-subtle psuedo-randomization to note durations, velocities, and note placement. I’ve never run across any that worked for me. I think there are two reasons. First, these techniques don’t take into account the tone of the track. Is it aggressive? Is it sad? Second, drummers aren’t random. Every drum track has its own personality and nuances that reflect the person that created it. Yours should as well. We’ll add our own humanization, thank you.

4. Vary velocity and not volume

Good SoundFonts actually contain several different drum samples triggered on velocity ranges. Drums take on different characteristics depending on how hard they’re hit. John Bonham’s machine-gun snare fill before the solo on Whole Lotta Love is going to sound “loud” no matter what volume you play it. Make sure your MIDI drums contain multiple samples for varying velocities, and then spend some time tweaking note velocities (and I mean every note) so that no more than 2  occur sequentially.

5. Don’t be lazy

Yes, of course, it’s all about the guitar, but trust me, a great drum track will help you sound even better. Creating drum tracks is tedious and a lot of work. It’s a measure-by-measure game. If you cut and paste and think no one will remember a fill from 8 bars ago, you’re doing the track a disservice. Attention to the tiniest of details matters, so you need to make every measure sound great all on its own.

6. The magical flam

A flam is a term that describes the drumming equivalent of a grace note. It’s like a mini roll before a note. These are very effective when creating realistic MIDI drum tracks. The technique is simple. First, turn off auto-quantization. Then, stack up a bunch of notes, anywhere from 2 to 5, depending on how much quiet space you can fill up, before the note you want to accent. Now, move the notes as close together as possible while making sure that they’re still distinguishable as separate notes. Finally, apply a velocity (not volume) ramp that gives a more-or-less exponential ramp up to the note you want to accent (and make sure that note is louder than the rest). Use this technique  liberally everywhere on your track, and your personality will really shine through.

7.  About fills

The thing to remember here is that most of us are not drummers. So, at least at first, keep things simple. Keith Moon didn’t develop his technique overnight, after all. Until you feel like you can be more adventurous about your fills, keep them moving generally downward. That is: snare -> hi-tom -> mid-tom -> low-tom. You can vary exactly how you move from high to low in any number of ways, just so long as you start high and end low. And if you apply flams and the other techniques here, you won’t believe how good even very simple fills sound.

The best way to learn how to create great fills of course is to steal shamelessly from drummers you like. Whip out your iPod and listen to a couple of your favorite tunes. Remember, you’re probably trying to innovate in the guitar space, where you shouldn’t steal, and not the drum space, where no one will notice or care if every fill and beat pattern sounds just like Neil Pert. Heck, it may even be a plus.

Combined with the flam, the fills can really make a track shine. Be yourself and be musical!

8. Accent crashes with the bass drum

In the world of MIDI drums, always, always, always accent crash cymbals with your bass drum. MIDI crashes don’t have the same punch and clarity that real crashes do so they really need that extra boost. Don’t worry, 99% of the time, real drummers do the same.

9. Hand-humanize everything

What tips people off to a bad MIDI track are the repeated notes. Humans are natural pattern recognizers. That’s what we do best. Therefore, mix it up and vary velocity a lot while keeping things musical. It’s probably going to take more than you think. Maybe all the way from 75-127. The hi-hat and ride  are the usual suspects, but people pick up on repeated snares as well, or even duplicated fills, as I wrote earlier.

Don’t worry about humanizing quantization as much. Good drummers are almost as steady as metronomes. Where humanizing quantization pays off is in the flams I wrote of earlier or in poly-rhythmic fills (e.g. 5 beats in 4, 10 beats in 2).

10. Sometimes less is more

One of my favorite drums fills comes at the fade out of The Police’s Spirits in the Material World when Stewart Copeland does a 16th-note double hit on the snare on beat four, pauses and lands with a crash on beat one. It’s simple but very effective. He was a master at this type of thing: building anticipation using air instead of complex fills. Combine this simplicity with flams and you have the makings of a very realistic drum track.

11. Split out cymbals, snares, and toms into separate audio tracks

This is a must. Snares sound better compressed and heavily reverbed. Bass drums don’t like much (if any) reverb but can deal with compression. Remember that drums kits are heavily mic’d in the studio and end up in different channels on the board for a reason. Different drums sound better through different compression, reverb, and other effects like delay or phasing.

Also, this allows you to fan out the drums in stereo as if you were sitting in front, listening, or from behind, as if playing. Fanning the drums out a little can really create some good air in your drum track.

12. Figure out what you’re trying to project

This is just me talking now, but I’m not a big fan of the huge arena drum sound. I much prefer the sound of an intimate room. I think it’s more honest, particularly for amateur musicians like you and me. Therefore, I choose SoundFonts that sound like a well-mic’d kit in a basement studio with just a little reverb as opposed to a huge electronically enhanced arena kit. And different kits demand different realism techniques. In the highly compressed arena kits, for example, subtle flams won’t work. They require more of a straightforward approach. It’s up to you and your music of course, but it should be consistent across a project.

Conclusion

The most important thing of all for us to remember as guitar players is that drums matter. They matter a lot. Spend as much time fussing over your drum tracks as you do your solos. Maybe more. I typically craft my drum tracks first and to the point where I think they stand up as musical performances in their own right. I think it pays off in a big way, and I hope you find the same.