drums sounding robotic

[nowhere]

I'm fairly new to production and have been having the roughest time with drums. My issue doesn't pertain to the sounds but more to the arrangement. I cant for the life of me seem to get an organic sound loop going. Any advice would be appreciated .
For the record I am using ableton and drumrack for my drums.
Thanks,
Anthony

[Basic A]

Turn quantiz off, shuffle hits a little to the left or right of the grid lines.

Use 10 different hihat samples, that all sound pretty similar but have thier own uniqueness's, and then arrange them. Same with any other drum.

Automate reverbs on off and automate thier room size/decay time to creat the illsuion the sounds are imperfect...

[hasezwei]

gotta hit the bed so short answer:
turn off the grid in your sequencer, don't quantize your midi notes. don't loop shit, instead place the hits by hand roughly where they belong. there you go, instant humanized beats!

also important is using different velocities so not all drumhits are the same volume (except when youre doing a typical dancefloor tune, there the kick and snare should of course be consistent)

[Dreadfunk]

Don't use 10 different hat samples. Use like 2-3, but alter each slightly with envelopes, pitch, and velocity.

[Wrigzilla]

Don't use 10 different hat samples. Use like 2-3, but alter each slightly with envelopes, pitch, and velocity.

Why not use 10 very similar hh samples? I do most of my beats in audio so I usually end up bouncing different versions of the same hh sample but with volume/eq/envelope differences.

But yeah I agree with the whole moving stuff off of the grid thing, not necessarily burial off the grid but just a little can work wonders.

[Basic A]

Don't use 10 different hat samples. Use like 2-3, but alter each slightly with envelopes, pitch, and velocity.

Now see, here we go with this worse then popular press with twisting quotes around here... You know I didnt actually mean ten... But... In FL we have this shit called the FPC, where you can assign velocities to different samples... take that + a multi-sample recording of the same hat but different hits, and ten seems a very sensible number really...

[nowaysj]

I think you should play in your drums if you can, maybe compress the velocities if you can in your daw to even things out a bit, but still maintain some variability. Use velocity to very slightly modulate things beyond amplitude like cutoff or resonance, maybe attack (inverse, so softer hits have a very slightly softer attack).

Or you could embrace the machine nature of what you are doing, get into that machine mind.

[legend4ry]

Listen to tracks what have a live drummer playing...

Its not always about turning off qauntise, you can have a very interesting and organic beat while its on the grid.

Good sample choice and simple but effective pattens with good fills and hat placement..

Think of how drumkit is layed out - pan it how you would a real kit, think of the drummer only have 2 arms and not 234904823904....

For instance, don't have toms playing while your snare and hat is playing at the same time..

[ABBmusic]

uhh this is a toughy. In ableton you can set your drums to randomize to an extent (pitch/ color) but other than that if you have a good loop it will sound natural even if it's quantized. Also, the groove of your other instruments and how they interact with your kit has alot to do with it. Even some professional songs would sound weird with just one sound turned off

[serox]

First off I would like to say well done for spotting your drums sound robotic! A lot of producers who have been at it years are still making music that sounds like hits stuck on a grid with some simple FX over them!

You need to try and think out of the box. Stop wasting hours just going thru different drum hits and putting them in different orders on a grid thinking you will somehow make something sound amazing. Some things I have worked out recently that have really changed my drums a lot, mostly my hi hats. I think hi hats is the weakest point in 90% of Dubstep trakcs I hear now days.

Here some things I have done recently to get interesting results.

Make a decent ½ bar groove with a kick clap or snare. Then make 1 bar dry hi hat loop, double it and make the second slightly different. With the hi hat loop use a drum machine where you can cut off the hi hats when the new one hits (cannot rem the name of this?). So open hi hat ends when the close hat hits for example. Get about 4 or 5 different hit hats, maybe reverse one but have them all cutting each other, maybe auto the ADSR on one of them, maybe more. Simple automation on this small loop can sound neat! Leave it basic but make sure the hats are in time with ur groove THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT! Don’t be another producer with hi hats that don’t fit with the track lol.

Once you got ur simple hi hat loop going, export it. Then import it so you have them both playing at the same time. Now try adding low FX to the imported loop, chorus, rev, dist, filters etc. Have it low in the mix under the first hi hat. Maybe import another, hi pass it, do different things with it etc.

Some simple ideas but the point is to try different things other than sticking hits on a grid. Automation plays a big part in all of this! Automation on small loops.

[EDN]

If you are using live 8 then the groove engine is your friend.

[nowaysj]

Very frequently I start tracks with just a kick, snare and hats. For a lot of what I do, that is like the holy trinity. The type of kick dictates how the whole bottom end works. Snare sets how the beat is going to bob or roll, and hats do the pacing and push and pull at the feel of the beat. Once all of those are set, I start to slot other elements into the beat, bass, background, lead, further percussion.

But that trinity is the little bit of structure that the whole crystal grows from, determining the whole shape of the track. So getting that structure right from the beginning is clutch. I also find that the bar length of that initial structure determines how far I can go with the song. Like if I come up with a two bar loop, it usually is not enough of a basis to produce a whole track. But if that initial structure is 8 bars, that is big enough to actually grow a whole song from. Sorry this is tangential, and poorly explained, just thought it might a bit of relevance to the discussion.

But at some point in the process, I find it advisable to resample either just the drum buss, or the whole beat together. Treat that like a beat I've sampled off of another artist, and just work it as a single tangible thing, rather than 12 stereo mixer tracks with fx, and automations and what not.

This kind of rechopping and resampling starts to break down more obvious beat structure, into something more nuanced, malleable, and ultimately, interesting.

[serox]

But that trinity is the little bit of structure that the whole crystal grows from, determining the whole shape of the track. So getting that structure right from the beginning is clutch. I also find that the bar length of that initial structure determines how far I can go with the song. Like if I come up with a two bar loop, it usually is not enough of a basis to produce a whole track. But if that initial structure is 8 bars, that is big enough to actually grow a whole song from. Sorry this is tangential, and poorly explained, just thought it might a bit of relevance to the discussion.

True 100%. Getting a decent groove going from the start with a few channels and then keeping it while adding more is THE GOLD. I hear time n time again people with too much going on doing different things, its not in time with the track!

[stereotactic]

Like everyone else said, it's not strictly placement that generates a groove, but small variations in the percussion also (although there are no rules to say kick and snare can't be altered, Kryptic Minds for instance usually tweak their snares to hit differently).

You could hard quantise your beat and still get heads nodding. Variation in hats, subtle effects usage, velocities, pitch, these can all create movement in your loop.

I work in audio for my drums (big up Wrigzilla, I was beginning to think I was a bit of a dinosaur in this respect so it's good to know others do it too) though all techniques can be apllied to midi... moving some hats a fraction left or right after quantising can also aid a more natural sound, and also consider a real drummer has two hands, one stronger than the other, so when arranging hats or whatever I sometimes imagine the two hands, so hit 1 is strong, hit 2 slightly less so, 3 stronger, 4 slightly less so... I'm sure it could be explained better but hopefully you get what I mean.

[ABBmusic]

I'm fairly new to production and have been having the roughest time with drums. My issue doesn't pertain to the sounds but more to the arrangement. I cant for the life of me seem to get an organic sound loop going. Any advice would be appreciated .
For the record I am using ableton and drumrack for my drums.
Thanks,
Anthony

The other thing is that heavily quantized beats CAN be really groovy. Just listen to any Diplo song.