what's up guys Tom here welcome back to another video today I want to show you
how to add some life and some feel to your programed MIDI drums with the use
of ghost notes and a couple other little tricks too alright so we're in logic and
I've got a software instrument track pulled up already
so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna hit Y to just bring it up my sort of menu over
here select your drum kit let's go with Brooklyn cuz why not hit Y to get rid of
that I've already set my tempo to 80 BPM because that's kind of where I want to
work for this group that I have in my head to just use it as an example so
let's hit our record something and we'll go from there
very simple groove so I'm going to select my region I'm gonna hit C to
cycle through this to make sure it repeats if P to bring a piano roll and
I'm gonna select all and then go to sixteenth note quantization rigid
lifeless a couple other things to just sort of get to to even here I'm gonna go
to fixed velocity I hit command and nine to open up this window by the way
command nine to open up my MIDI editor window we're gonna fix velocity in the
drop down menu here and it's at 100 by default operate only command W to close
that again dull lifeless but it is a group now I'm gonna take all my snare
notes here and I'm going to pull them to 120 my OCD likes it and also when I
start dragging them around they won't overlap each other so I'm gonna make
sure they're nice and short so I've got my snare Center here
now here's we're gonna do I'm gonna take the snare Center and I'm gonna drag it
up to snare rimshot for my back beat on two and four then I'm gonna hold command
I'm gonna drive around with it come back down to the snare Center I'm gonna add
one there and I have one there and I'm gonna get rid of that guy and I'm
gonna pull this guy right back here to 1:21 and I'm gonna make sure it's
quantized of 32nd notes and then we'll pull this region back and let's see what
we got here so a little bit better we got some ghost notes but it's the guitar
center groove it's super lifeless super emotionless and it's what you hear
people practicing who are very good at drums on the kids at Guitar Center so
let's add some life to it so I'm gonna hit a for the automation window and I'm
gonna select just the snare Center track and I'm gonna bring these way down to
like 55 ish and I hear the difference already I'm bringing down a little bit
more cuz the point of the ghost notes is to be almost more felt than audibly
heard just adds a little bit of syncopation to give that beat some
forward momentum and now we're gonna do let's add a little bit to a little bit
of life to the hi-hat I'm gonna select every second note here every offbeat
eighth note I'm gonna pull up automation again I'm gonna pull these down if we're
at a hundred on the one and three I'll pull down to 80 ish so now we've got the
depth depth that's sort of driving quarter note feel thing that keeps it
kind of loose in groovy and then didn't even do that
get rid of automation one more time and the last thing I want to do is I want to
add a couple of ghost notes on the kick drum here so now that one there and then
add one here let's select both of those move them down to the second kick track
that way I can select them all at one time
easy-peasy keep hitting that and then I'm going to hit a for automation again
you can see what hotkeys are important all
so just so you know you can click this little button right here to show her how
to automate I just like hotkeys it makes life a lot easier I'm gonna bring this
kick drum down to around 55 - still too hot I want to bring it down even more
I'm gonna come down to like 30 there we go now we got something going and then
the last thing I want to do this is the cool trick right here I'm gonna select
my kick drum and I'm gonna pull up the MIDI automation window one more time now
that we've got let's just listen to our groove one more time now that we've got
some life and feel in the ghost notes and the velocities now we can add some
movement back and forth around the click track to give it more humanity if you
will so this is our groove right now completely gridded to the click we've
already come like miles ahead of where we were with that rigid beat to begin
with right this already has a ton of life to it but we can still do more so
again select the kick track command 9 to bring this up and I'm gonna go to this
drop-down menu I'm gonna go to human eyes and what this does is it adds
randomness to the notes you can humanize the entire thing you can humanize
certain parts of it here's what I like to do I like to go for velocity I like
to go about v randomness since we've already swish things up a little bit and
we've adjusted our velocities where we want them this isn't quite as important
but you do want to add a little bit of flavor to it so we're gonna 5 there on
length length doesn't particularly matter with drums because it's one
strike anyway so I'll just leave it at that or set it to zero it really doesn't
matter and then position this is the big one you don't want to go random you want
to go subtract or I'm sorry add you want to go to add and what this does
is if this is your bar line this adds the specified number to the number of
ticks that your note will fall behind the bar line so if you want to give
yourself a phat kick drum like if you're doing hip hop or soul or funk something
like that or even EDM man if you want to give it more pocket add a little bit to
that so I'm gonna go with just 10 10 can actually make a lot of difference a lot
a little bit a long way with this so I'm gonna add 10 and let's zoom in on the
very first kick drum here so you can see what happens so here's our bar line when
I hit operate you see how it jumps back just a little bit just a little bit will
add a ton someone zoom back out I'm gonna do it to the hi-hat as well it
will zoom in so you can see what happens operate only alright now I'm gonna close
this window here and now let's listen to our groove it's not a lot but it's just
enough to provide that pocket in that feel that makes it feel like a really
good drummer is playing this part and just for argument's sake if you're not
hearing that difference let me exaggerate it a lot and show you what
that does so let's just add another we're already 10 behind so let's add
another 20 to the kick drum and you see it pop over now let's listen
you hear how fat that is how far back in the pocket that is that's like some funk
drumming right there so this kind of thing is actually super rad in hip-hop
if you want to add like take your baseline and your kick drum and lay them
back for that super slow groove like that kind of thing and if you want to do
like the old-school hip-hop feel where it's you got like a live drum kit like
the Questlove thing and like a funky bass line this kind of groove is amazing
for that and you can switch up all kinds of different things in here with the
ghost notes and where your ghost notes are placed depending on your groove
there are a lot of different kind of grooves obviously so put your ghost
notes and history interesting places but always think about them as subdivisions
on the offbeat so if you've got a tempo of 80 got got got got got got got got
got got got those are your sixteenth notes you want them on that left hand
kind of every time because the point of them is to subtly add a little bit of
momentum and movement and syncopation to your track so that you get that forward
feel but you can also pull it back and give it kind of a fatness at the same
time so that's what this is great for I think you'll be surprised at how
lifelike you can get your fake drums to sound doing this even just stock stuff
and logic don't feel like you have to go out and buy a ton of plugins when you
have every tool at your disposal just already in your DAW so if there's
anything else that you want to hear me kind of do this thing on if you want to
learn something if there's anything you would like for me to share or break down
like this let me know in the comments section I want to do a ton more of these
videos I really enjoy them I like doing them and just think of me as your human
guinea pig I will even if I don't know how to do it
I'll learn how to do it and then I'll reteach so yeah that's it for today
thanks for watching and I will catch you next time peace
you