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

tim hall wrote: Thanks, Tim. I admire your work too, it's some of my favorite stuff on the LAM site. 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. :) Craig Anderton has written an excellent article on what he calls the Tutt/Guerin effect. Basically he just analyzed MIDI recordings of some top studio drummers and discovered how the various instruments in a set are all acting at slightly different times. The temporal distances between the activity of the bass drum, the snare, the hi-hat, and the ride cymbal all add up to a feel unique to each drummer's way of playing in the groove. Lately I've been listening to the drummers for the classic r'n'b bands behind the Stax/Volt, Motown, and James Brown sounds, really interesting stuff to compare in the light of CA's study. But in the end, I'd only go to this much trouble (finessing a MIDI drum track) if I really couldn't find a decent drummer to play the parts. Alas, that is precisely why I write MIDI drum parts for my recordings, there's no-one in Findlay OH who can play blues drums well enough. My band's drummer is coming along, but he still listens to too much Robben Ford (fine musician) and not enough Muddy Waters (blues titan). Yes, I'm an unabashed blues purist. :) It's my dream to someday journey up to the cold northern climate and record at Mirror Image. Maybe I can get Ron to play drums then... ;-) Btw, I've been working with JAMin too. What a great tool, thanks to Steve Harris & friends ! More stuff coming soon... Best, dp