Any advice on how to make midi drums less driving i.e. more laid back

[Roy Slough]

I am not a drummer. I create a midi drum track for my songs using templates and samples I have available. (apologies to all real drummers but I don't have access to one anymore)

I have a song which is uptempo but laid back in feel. All the drum tracks I have tend to try and drive the song which isn't the feel I want. Think R.E.M. for a reference.
Is there a way or method to alter an existing pattern to drive less or what technique should I employ e.g. which beat count for kick, snare, hi-hat?

 Alternatively a source of midi drum track might yield results.

Any advice on this welcome - Thanks

 

 

[Glenn Stanton]

one option is to move the MIDI forward or back slightly (more like milliseconds or 1/32 note etc) and see if that helps with the feel. you might then tweak the bass to acommodate that move as well.

[Sidney Earl Goodroe]

Try reducing velocity in certain points, such as, velocity reduced on verses and slightly increased for chorus and middle sections or during solos!

This technique can bring a bit more character to the entire song! 

Try this with all instruments, not just the drums!

Dynamics are the very soul of music!

[Amberwolf]

6 hours ago, Roy Slough said:

I am not a drummer. I create a midi drum track for my songs using templates and samples I have available. (apologies to all real drummers but I don't have access to one anymore)

I have a song which is uptempo but laid back in feel. All the drum tracks I have tend to try and drive the song

There are several things that can make them do that, but one fix that probably works is just to slide the drums forward (later in time) by a tiny amount. 

 

Sometimes it isn't *all* the drums that need it, it may be just the kick (and / or snare), and sometimes it isn't every beat that needs to move. If you have each one on a separate track and they're MIDI, it's easy to mess around just by using the Time+ field to push some forward or back relative to the rest of the song, without moving the actual data until you find which things need to move.

I'm not a drummer either (or a musician) but I need them to compose my stuff, so I've gotten fairly good at some things with them.  (some of my best ones with the most percussion work on my bandcamp page are Just Give Me A Voice (inside the Lies, Truth, and Assorted Inconveniences album), Gareki, Less Like A Whisper, Ookami no Kari no Yume, etc).  Some of them are all MIDI driving drum synths, some are actual individual drum samples laid out and tweaked individually, some are audio loops sliced up and tweaked, and some are a mix of all of those.  

 

6 hours ago, Roy Slough said:

 Alternatively a source of midi drum track might yield results.

There are quite a few places with free loops and such you can experiment with.  Some are MIDI, some are audio, and some are both.  Some of them come as "kits" where you have the basics of a whole song as separate stems, and you can just delete the other stuff after downloading and use just the drums---but having the other parts available is useful for lining up timing of everything, using a  muted (or even archived)"timing track" to stick the other parts in and use it as a visual reference to line things up with. Then delete that track when you're done with that part. 

 

Ghosthack has a lot of stuff free as "advent calender" downloads from the past several years.  FunctionLoops has free "Beta" packs that are samplers of their regular packs.  Cymatics has a number of free downloads.   MIDIKlowd also does.   Groovemonkee has good stuff; I don't know if they still have their free stuff up (wasn't there last time I looked)--some of their stuff used to come with Cakewalk products, and all of it was pretty useable. 

If you have SessionDrummer, there's a bunch of usable patterns with variations in there that you can load up into it to use as a drummachine to play to, and then drag them into the tracks to edit them to your liking.   I've used this technique a few times, deleting out stuff I don't want, or even splitting them all to separate MIDI tracks and transposing which notes go to which drum to use them in a completely different way than intended.  (I've even used this method to generate arp patterns for synths, but that takes a lot more work) 

 

This search https://www.google.com/search?q=midi+drum+loops will show a lot of sites, some with free, some not, if none of the above are things you like. 

 

Edited January 30 by Amberwolf

[mettelus]

2 hours ago, Sidney Earl Goodroe said:

Try reducing velocity in certain points, such as, velocity reduced on verses and slightly increased for chorus and middle sections or during solos!

I have a hunch this may be a primary factor in what you are seeing. Are you using the Piano Roll View (PRV) to work with firing MIDI samples? That makes editing simpler in the MIDI world, but sometimes working with the audio output on the track level via automation is even simpler per song section depending on what your intent is.

6 hours ago, Roy Slough said:

Is there a way or method to alter an existing pattern to drive less or what technique should I employ e.g. which beat count for kick, snare, hi-hat?

Again, the PRV (or even Step Sequencer) is the place to focus to alter a MIDI pattern most easily (the SS is nice because you can work 1-2 bars at a time and drag it out for the applicable song section). Another side note that may be contributing "driving drums" are "straight beats" where the bass/snare dominate and are perfectly timed to grid and at the same velocity/volume. Beats with a "shuffle" to them (e.g., Toto's Rosanna or Africa, but examples abound) give a more laid back feel, even at higher tempos. Both the PRV and the SS are places to try things with the samples you are using... basically focus with velocities and timing... for many shuffled beats either the snare (or bass) will dominate, while the other will be significantly lower in volume.

[Sock Monkey]

Yes velocity might be the key. But depends on the VST. Good samples are recorded at different velocities so using a lower velocity is like when the drummer plays softer. Try around 80. 
If this makes the drums sound too quiet then turn up the volume. Play around with different velocities and volume settings. 
And try different drum VST’s. 

In Addictive Drums I have a snare , I think it’s Black, that is noticeably softer. 
And I find drum loops are all way to busy. I just play my own using the keyboard or enter a pattern in the step sequencer 

[Chaps]

13 hours ago, Roy Slough said:

Any advice on this welcome - Thanks

Regarding velocity, one thing you can experiment with because it can be very useful are Cakewalk MIDI Effects. You can access them in the MIDI track's FX bin or by  the by right-clicking a a MIDI track and selecting either Insert Effects>MIDI Effects>Uncategorized>Velocity or Process Effects>MIDI Effects>Uncategorized>Velocity .

The difference is that Insert Effects will add the Cakewalk FX Velocity MIDI Effect into the clips Effects Menu and it is non-destructive and can be changed, like a plugin in a track FX bin. Process Effects makes changes to the actual velocities in the MIDI track.

With Cakewalk FX Velocity you can change the maximum and minimum velocities in a track as well as randomize them, and other useful MIDI velocity tools. I use it a lot and I find it very effective in getting the track to sound the way I want it to.

[Chaps]

26 minutes ago, Sock Monkey said:

In Addictive Drums I have a snare , I think it’s Black, that is noticeably softer. 
And I find drum loops are all way to busy. I just play my own using the keyboard or enter a pattern in the step sequencer 

One thing I like in AD2 is that we can add Snares as FLEXI instruments that can be triggered when the snare is hit. I usually load up three snares as Flexi instruments so four snares are playing for every snare hit. Then I blend them in the song to get the sound I like for that part.

[Amberwolf]

Is "FLEXI" like a "round robin"?  Or more like velocity-swtiching? Or something else entirely?

 

@Roy Slough:   Keep in mind when using velocity to modulate drum hit volume that drum synths that use velocity-switching or similar techniques to create more realistic sounds will play different drum samples for different velocity ranges, so if you are editing velocities on something that is built this way, and it suddenly sounds different than you wanted it to, you just change the velocity back to what it was and it will sound the same.  

In that event you can use a volume envelope on audio track to change the volume of that hit, *if* it is either isolated in time from others *or* is on a separate channel (like with Session Drummer with several independent outputs, vs something like SI Drums with only a stereo pair). 

Most of the ones I've tried are very simple and don't use velocity switching or different samples, but ones that do are nicer / easier to use for subtle realistic percussion variations, if it's important for your track(s).  

 

[Chaps]

1 hour ago, Amberwolf said:

Is "FLEXI" like a "round robin"?  Or more like velocity-swtiching? Or something else entirely?

 

The three Flexi instruments are ones that you can load any instrument on. If you load snares you can link them to the original snare so that when it is triggered, they will also be triggered. In the image below I show where I have the snare drum linked to three Flexi snare drums. If you click and drag the Link icon to the Flexi drums you will get a dialog box where you can pick how they are linked to the original snare. Each Flexi snare's options are independent of the other Flexi snare's options.

[Roy Slough]

Thanks for all the responses, I haven't quoted you all as there are so many all with good ideas.

By accident I did find pasting the midi clip slightly late improved the feel but messed up other things. I had not thought of just delaying just the kick and/or snare. The selection of a different snare also improved the feel

Also the comment about FX velocity very interesting and will experiment with that also.

As usual, there are so many areas and features of Cakewalk I have not discovered, many of which are not so self evident as to their usefulness, so having them explained is good.

Edited Friday at 10:42 AM by Roy Slough
More info

[mettelus]

Side note with the Step Sequencer specifically. In order to create shuffling beats, you need to adjust the Steps per Beat so you have access to more timing options (can be up to 16). Below is an old video from SONAR X2 that is still applicable and marked at that section. If the Step Sequencer is new to you, it is worth watching the entire video (12 minutes) to get yourself familiar with it.

 

Edited Friday at 10:55 AM by mettelus

[Amberwolf]

Something else that can either make percussion more interesting or fit better in certain parts is to render out the hits as audio clips, (or if you're using audio clips for building them in the first place), and use a tiny clip fade-in on the initial peak of the hit on just certain ones.   

I use this to let some other instrument or vocal "take the beat" for something that has driving percussion for much of a project and needs to not actually change timing for whatever reason, but has parts where the other instrument / vocal needs to take over, and is a slightly different timing than the percussion.    

Also for sections where I just want that other sound to dominate the beat even when they are identical timing, and I don't want to turn down the percussion, just soften it's attack on *just* the hit that intersects with the other instrument's attack. 

 

[KSband]

Ezdrummer3 has velocity knob that can adjust a single part of the kit or the whole thing. I use it pretty much on each recording. I find that unless I'm doing rock it sounds like it's hitting too hard ( I do mostly jazzy stuff).

[msmcleod]

On 1/31/2025 at 10:40 AM, Roy Slough said:

Thanks for all the responses, I haven't quoted you all as there are so many all with good ideas.

By accident I did find pasting the midi clip slightly late improved the feel but messed up other things. I had not thought of just delaying just the kick and/or snare. The selection of a different snare also improved the feel

Also the comment about FX velocity very interesting and will experiment with that also.

As usual, there are so many areas and features of Cakewalk I have not discovered, many of which are not so self evident as to their usefulness, so having them explained is good.

You could delay just the kick & snare this using articulation maps, e.g:

The above is using the GM mapping of note 36 for Kick  and note 38 for Snare, but you can define as appropriate for whatever drum VSTi you're using.