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Midi Drum Programming Guide: Check Velocities

The document provides guidance for programming drums digitally in a realistic way. It recommends varying velocities between hits, adjusting velocities to simulate right or left hand dominance, subtly changing fills and beats between sections, considering the physical limitations of drummers, finding the velocity ranges of samples, avoiding hits that occur simultaneously, adding dynamics to cymbals, avoiding unnatural sticking patterns, and air drumming parts to check playability. It also includes a checklist for evaluating drum programming.

Uploaded by

Marius Leonte
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© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
223 views

Midi Drum Programming Guide: Check Velocities

The document provides guidance for programming drums digitally in a realistic way. It recommends varying velocities between hits, adjusting velocities to simulate right or left hand dominance, subtly changing fills and beats between sections, considering the physical limitations of drummers, finding the velocity ranges of samples, avoiding hits that occur simultaneously, adding dynamics to cymbals, avoiding unnatural sticking patterns, and air drumming parts to check playability. It also includes a checklist for evaluating drum programming.

Uploaded by

Marius Leonte
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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MIDI DRUM PROGRAMMING GUIDE

CHECK VELOCITIES
No two hits should ever be the same velocity. Ensure that they are all different by utilizing
humanization functions in your DAW or, in the worst-case scenario, do it by hand.
MANUALLY CHANGE R/L HITS
Pretend that your drummer is right hand dominant and adjust your velocities accordingly.
This means that right handed and right footed hits should be represented with higher velocity
settings to simulate a slightly harder stroke. All drummers naturally hit a little harder with
their dominant side.
CHANGE THE BEATS SLIGHTLY
Avoid copying and pasting entire sections of songs over and over. This is a dead giveaway
of lazily programmed drums. Change cymbal hits and fills or adjust the beats in subtle ways
like a real like drummer would.
DRUMMERS ONLY HAVE 4 LIMBS (USUALLY)
Take a moment to look at your arms and legs. Hard as it may seem, drummers also only
have two legs and two arms. (Unless they have less.) It’s important to approach drum
programming with the realism it deserves. After all, eventually you’d want a real drummer to
play what you’ve written, right?
FIND YOUR VELOCITY RANGES
Each drum library is created and sampled a bit differently. You’ll want to go through each of
the samples and find the ranges for hard hits, medium hits, and soft hits. This way you’ll be
able to accurately understand how to make your drums sound realistic.
NOTHING EVER HITS TOGETHER AT THE EXACT SAME TIME
Slightly adjust shell hits that you want to hit together. If you want to program tom hits where
the drummer hits Tom 1 and Tom 3 at the same time, one of these tom hits should be very
slightly programmed later or earlier than the other to essentially create a small flam. There is
no such thing as a drummer hitting things at the exact same time because it’s physically
impossible. You will notice that with this programming method, the toms will sound like they
are in stereo and huge whereas, when played together, they will sound mono and thin.
CYMBALS NEED DYNAMICS
Drummers will naturally hit a hi-hat or ride cymbal harder or with the accent of the beat. You
can simulate this by bringing up the velocity of the strike where the beat would be. As such,
all velocities should be different just as they would be with shell strikes. The exception here
could be crash cymbals if playing very hard and heavy styles of music.
AVOID ODD STICKING PATTERNS
An “odd sticking pattern” would be a case where a drummer would need to hit a tom 3 times
at high BPM or if the stick pattern is broken up between the feet and hands in an odd
combination. Another great way to explain this is where it’d just feel very “off” if somebody
were to try and play this in real life. If you’d like to learn more about sticking patterns, you
can search for snare rudiment tutorials and watch them describe normal and comfortable
sticking patterns that you could utilize for fills and your own music.
WHEN IN DOUBT—AIR DRUM IT OUT
You have arms and legs—so air drum it out! If you can’t seem to be able to do it or it feels
very strange, odd, unnatural, etc. even as you try to air drum it slowly, then there is a high
likelihood that the drum pattern needs to be changed.
The Chernobyl Studios Checklist
1. Does the beat fit the riff/song?
2. Do the fills make sense?
3. Does it sound good?
4. Did you change velocities?
5. Can you air drum it?
Thank you for downloading this PDF and MIDI file! I hope it helps you get your drum
programming on track.
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment on my YouTube
channel.
Have a good one!
Scott, Owner
Chernobyl Studios
www.chernobylstudios.com
www.youtube.com/c/chernobylstudios

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