Re: [linux-audio-user] [ardour-users] new song on-line

Btw, *anyone* on drums would be a vast improvement, but for the record here's some advice to recordists following my Ardour adventures: If you need to use a drum track composed with a MIDI sequencer there are a couple things you can do for greater realism. First, use a sample player like Specimen or Linuxsampler, you can then set variations in pitch on the snare and bass drums, it makes a big difference. Although percussion is usually classed as "noise" instruments there is still a pitch component that is heard. You'll certainly notice when it's missing, like salt in a cake recipe. Alas, you can indeed notice it in my tracks, indicating how lazy I am about this detail (of course it's also easy to improve just by re-recording the MIDI track using Specimen). The other trick is to add some sort of "disturbance" to the tempo track to upset the metronomic regularity. Example: For a song in 4/4 time I'll make a looping tempo track of perhaps three measures of 3/8 time, with tempo events at the 16th-note triplet level in a series like 120-121-122-120-121-122-121-120 and so on. This tempo variation is slight enough to be felt but not overly-noticed throughout the track. You can also eliminate this tempo dodge just by using Hydrogen and exploiting its humanization features. :)