Drum programing question,

[Akkush]

Hi there!

I recently started experimenting with drum plugins.
I would like to ask for a few tips regarding to recording.

1, Which one is more practical?
- Put all the drums in one single MIDI track
- Or put the snare, kick, toms and cymbals in different MIDI tracks

2. Does stacking different drum samples is a practice?
Meaning that I have two MIDI tracks with the same drums, but I use two different sample packs on them?

Bonus: Does anyone else use GuitarPro for writing the drums?
I just can't program them on the MIDI keyboard in the DAW.
I need to see the notation in sheet music to know what's going on.

Thanks!

 

[tedtan]

1, Which one is more practical?
- Put all the drums in one single MIDI track
- Or put the snare, kick, toms and cymbals in different MIDI tracks

Most people keep them on a single MIDI track, and then split the audio output of the drum plugin to different tracks.

2. Does stacking different drum samples is a practice?
Meaning that I have two MIDI tracks with the same drums, but I use two different sample packs on them?

That’s a pretty common approach amongst professional mix engineers.

Bonus: Does anyone else use GuitarPro for writing the drums?
I just can't program them on the MIDI keyboard in the DAW.
I need to see the notation in sheet music to know what's going on.

I read plenty of people mention using GP, though I don’t tend to personally. I suspect most people probably draw them in on the MIDI grid, though.

 

[CJ7]

Tagged because I'm new to this as well.

The only thing I can add is that I also write the drums in GuitarPro. I find it easy to do.

 

[TedEH]

I expect this is one of those "do whatever works for you" kinds of topics. There's no reason you can't do any of the things you mentioned, if that's a workflow that you're comfortable with.

 

[TheWarAgainstTime]

1. Yes, just one midi track that triggers all of the kit pieces.

2. Stacking/layering libraries if samples is very common, and some loaders like Kontakt will allow you to load multiple libraries into one instance, so you don't have to create and route separate midi tracks. Misha made a video about this on the GGD YouTube channel about his "franken kit" that helped me figure it out.

3. I haven't used Guitar Pro much for my own stuff in recent years, but I've continued to produce and mix for my old band who uses it for all of their writing and notation. Depending on your drum software, you can map out the kit pieces to the corresponding midi notes when you export the GP drums into a midi file and just drop that into your DAW. I find this to be somewhat limiting since most drum libraries offer more kit pieces and dynamics than Guitar Pro, but the same approach can be helpful for keys, midi bass, or additional percussive elements like shakers.

 

[Akkush]

Thank you for the replies!

And how do you uselly mix the drum parts?
In the plugin's mixingboard, or you create separate tracks for them and use the faders?

 

[Kaura]

Thank you for the replies!

And how do you uselly mix the drum parts?
In the plugin's mixingboard, or you create separate tracks for them and use the faders?

I personally find the mixing options pretty pretty weak in the plugins so I usually mix using 3rd party plugins. But for demo tracks I usually just slap some general compression and EQ to the whole drum track instead of mixing all the parts separately which is something you should do when doing a final mix. Of course that depends how processed you want the drums to sound. I find some libraries sound pretty mix ready out of the box so that always means less post-processing.