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Hello, I have listened to a number of songs submitted by posters on here a lot done with realdrums and to be honest they don't sound that good, I feel the midi drums would sound more realistic and fit in better with being part of the song. On the other hands realtracks sound great just like having a real musician play. Does anyone else share this view? Many thanks Musiclover 
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Quote:
Does anyone else share this view?
About Real Drums, no, I don't. Not at all.
But you should tell us what style(s) of songs they were, so we have a clue about what you are hearing.
And anyway, the great thing about BIAB is that you can choose between Real Drums and MIDI drums to get what you want.
BIAB 2026 Win Audiophile. Software: Fender Studio One 8, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Presonus Quantom HD8 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.
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The "real drums" I have used sound pretty dang good to me.
Kevin
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I wasn't crazy about real drums at first, but I think it was because I had done so much midi sequencing that I was conditioned to the midi drums. The real drums didn't sound bad, just different. Then when I went back to playing live, and recording some of the practice sessions, I realized that the midi drums were just too canned. You can still do a lot with them, by first converting to audio file then using various effects, and even separate them to diff trax prior to making the audio conversion. But the real drums sound very realistic, especially if you choose the correct real drums for the song you are working on.
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I did not care for the original country RDs. They asked for suggestions and I sent detailed notation of what I'd like. The next set of country RDs to come out was the Nashville series that is very close to what I laid out however still not perfect so...
Playing country and being a Bass player I very much want the kick drum to strike the same time I play a note. Some exceptions of course.
I absolutely love the RDs but they don't do this. My solution was to create styles in BIAB that only include Kick Drum that matched matched my various playing. Example: on a slow 4/4 ballad I always play a 1-5 bass line. I play it on the xo oo xo oo during the verse and on the xo ox xo oo for the chorus. In RB I add a MIDI track using this style using. I have a nice Kick Drum font that matches. Using parametric EQ on the RD track I can cut the kick way back. When blended back with the rest of the instruments it makes a world of difference to me.
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Sometimes I find the realdrums don't match well, so I just check the box use midi drums for this song only.
For the most part, and for my light jazz gigs the RealDrums are the real deal.
For some celtic sets, I use midi drums, not realdrums, not a lot of celtic stuff is done with a drum kit, more like spoons, boxes, and bohdrans.
John Conley
Musica est vita
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For some styles the midi drums might sound better but being a drummer myself I know a real drum sound when I hear one. RD far better overall IMHO.
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Quote:
Hello,
I have listened to a number of songs submitted by posters on here a lot done with realdrums and to be honest they don't sound that good, I feel the midi drums would sound more realistic and fit in better with being part of the song.
On the other hands realtracks sound great just like having a real musician play.
Does anyone else share this view?
Many thanks
Musiclover
A lot of people who post stuff miss the mix, imho. The drums are not out front enough and they didn't eq them properly. Just using the PG 10 band you can really bring out the kick or snare, the cymbals, whatever. Now, if you're talking about the fact that some of the RD's don't fit a particular song yes, that happens a lot. The RD's are generic because the players don't know what tune you're going to use them with so they miss a lot of fills, punches etc. That's where midi drums shine, you can program them to do exactly what you want but then the sound... Everything's a tradeoff.
Bob
Biab/RB latest build, Win 11 Pro, Ryzen 5 5600 G, 512 Gig SSD, 16 Gigs Ram, Steinberg UR22 MkII, Roland Sonic Cell, Kurzweil PC3, Hammond SK1, Korg PA3XPro, Garritan JABB, Hypercanvas, Sampletank 3, more.
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I love ah da real drums. I play everything from R&B to Jazz with just about everything else inbetween within a 500 plus song book and I am guessing all but 2-3 tunes are arranged with real drums.
Just my 2 cents,
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I agree with Jazzmammal - the tracks take some work a lot of times. Same can be said for most drum tracks.. But they CAN be made to sound good. Sometimes it means running multiple tracks of realdrums and sifting thru them to pick sections to use to assemble a finished track. The good news is PGMusic products provide the tools needed to make the tracks sound as you like. Ed Bulmer's CD project turned out pretty well using realdrums throughout, almost exclusively. Samples can be found on his site at http://EdBulmer.comI like 'simple life' and 'never snows in Mexico' myself...
I do not work here, but the benefits are still awesome
Make your sound your own!
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Quote:
Hello,
I have listened to a number of songs submitted by posters on here a lot done with realdrums and to be honest they don't sound that good, I feel the midi drums would sound more realistic and fit in better with being part of the song.
I assume you actually mean the "sound" of the drums and not the pattern. Based on that, it will depend on how people EQ their drums into the mix. They are a real drum set, so we get whatever set they used during recording, LOL. Adjusting the EQ's can bring out the bass drum or make the cymbals sizzle, depends on what you are looking for in a mix. They sound better then most midi drums. My Tyros has some awesome drum sets and they sound fantastic to me. It will depend on the pattern being played whether I use RD's or my Tyros set. 
The RD's & RT's are getting better each time they come out. Don't give up on em just yet.
Trax
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Some of the older MIDI styles I use have specific drum parts in them that match the style well. So I may elect to use those instead. Don't overlook the MIDI "Live Drums" styles too, where a live drummer played a MIDI set for the recording and making of the target styles. For jazz work, I greatly prefer the RealDrums, though.
MIDI drums and a great MIDI synth still have a place in this world, too.
Use what you like. Use what works for each instance.
--Mac
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Hi,
Just to say that I did a gig last night and the drummer was no where near as good as RealDrums on sound and not as good as Midi drums with patterns
But most of the audience thought he was ok
The great saving is that you only have to pay for the whole of RealDrums and Midi Drums once and they don't turn up late
jazzman
BIAB - RealBand - 2022
Windows 10 64
Zoo computer with 7i processor- SSD 1TB -2TB HDD
Roland keyboards
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Jazzman like my signature says............
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I think the biggest problems most people have with the MIDI drums are: 1) Many of the styles use the drum grid instead of "live drums" - result is a quantized, robotic, "dead" drum part. Note: Since they were introduced, all Norton Music styles use the "Live Drums" feature so the music has the "live groove".2) Bad sounding drums in the little synthesizer chip on your computer's sound card (this is probably the main reason). Most computer sound cards and low-priced software synths simply have cheesy sounding drums. A good sound card or external synth can solve this problem. I'm not a Real Drum fan, although I commend PG Music for the excellent job they have done with them. But like most pros, I prefer MIDI because they are editable. There are a number of other reasons that apply to the way I make music (YMMV) and I go into greater detail here http://www.nortonmusic.com/midi_vs_loops.htmlThankfully we have both the "Real Drums" and the MIDI drums to choose from, so that musicians with good synthesizers who want to make the drums fit the particular song better or do song specific kicks can use the MIDI drums, and the people who think the RDrums sound great and the rhythms are "good enough" can enjoy the RDrums. Insights and incites by Notes
Bob "Notes" Norton  Norton Music
https://www.nortonmusic.com
100% MIDI Super-Styles recorded by live, pro, studio musicians for a live groove
& Fake Disks for MIDI and/or RealTracks
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Being a working jazz pianist, I use Real Drums and Real Bass for my backing tracks. Midi tracks, for My Purposes, sounds like playing with a metronome IMHO. I've posted similar replies like this to similar posts. It's in "the ear of the beholder"!! Later, Ray
Asus Q500A i7 Win 10 64 bit 8GB ram 750 HD 15.5" touch screen, BIAB 2017, Casio PX 5s, Xw P1, Center Point Stereo SS V3 and EWI 4000s.
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I think what it is Ray, is Notes is somewhat like myself in that I prefer playing all jazz all the time but I do a lot of commercial gigs where the jazz is mostly first set dinner stuff, after that it's dancing. Dancing is of course all covers and we both want the tunes to sound pretty much like the record and Real Drums don't work too well for that. Take simple classic R & R like Jailhouse Rock or Johnny B Goode. How do you get RD's to do those punches? Or basic blues stuff that has similar punches? RD's are great for the 90% of a tune that's just groovin along but transistions, bridges, endings all that stuff that makes a song unique just isn't happening with RD's.
All the jazz tunes have that stuff going on too, it's just that most jazz bands I play with don't rehearse so we just jam everything. When you listen to the original recordings you hear tunes like Joy Spring have a ton of punches, stops, little licks that should be there during the head that nobody plays because nobody around here rehearses. Jordu, Well You Needn't, lots of others. Listen to the heads, there's a bunch of neat little punches going on. RD's are no help for that kind of thing but if you just want to groove along, they're great.
It's a lot of work to program Biab to do that stuff even with midi and most of the time the RT/RD's are good enough and a lot of fun. Now, if we can just get that new cool A.I. thing going...
Bob
Biab/RB latest build, Win 11 Pro, Ryzen 5 5600 G, 512 Gig SSD, 16 Gigs Ram, Steinberg UR22 MkII, Roland Sonic Cell, Kurzweil PC3, Hammond SK1, Korg PA3XPro, Garritan JABB, Hypercanvas, Sampletank 3, more.
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Hi
As a non drummer they all sound quite good to me but i hope that some time PG will come out with some single hits that you could mix in with the realdrums so you could use them like midi ie a driving cymble but then you would have to have just a bass drums or snare drums,and for me that would be even more complicated as i have no more idea how to be a drummer along side 90% of musicians, for me real drums are brilliant and saves me a lot of hard work
regards Dave Hoskins
I always play the right notes but not always in the right order
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Hi Bob. That's why I typed "My Purposes" in my post. Most of my gigs are jazz and the rest are just background music.
At a typical jazz gig, people come up all night and ask about the bass and drums. They're knocked out that such a program exists. The midi bass and drums are a little too "sterile" for My Purposes. Later, Ray
Asus Q500A i7 Win 10 64 bit 8GB ram 750 HD 15.5" touch screen, BIAB 2017, Casio PX 5s, Xw P1, Center Point Stereo SS V3 and EWI 4000s.
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Quote:
I think what it is Ray, is Notes is somewhat like myself in that I prefer playing all jazz all the time but I do a lot of commercial gigs where the jazz is mostly first set dinner stuff, after that it's dancing. Dancing is of course all covers and we both want the tunes to sound pretty much like the record and Real Drums don't work too well for that. Take simple classic R & R like Jailhouse Rock or Johnny B Goode. How do you get RD's to do those punches? Or basic blues stuff that has similar punches? RD's are great for the 90% of a tune that's just groovin along but transistions, bridges, endings all that stuff that makes a song unique just isn't happening with RD's.
All the jazz tunes have that stuff going on too, it's just that most jazz bands I play with don't rehearse so we just jam everything. When you listen to the original recordings you hear tunes like Joy Spring have a ton of punches, stops, little licks that should be there during the head that nobody plays because nobody around here rehearses. Jordu, Well You Needn't, lots of others. Listen to the heads, there's a bunch of neat little punches going on. RD's are no help for that kind of thing but if you just want to groove along, they're great.
It's a lot of work to program Biab to do that stuff even with midi and most of the time the RT/RD's are good enough and a lot of fun. Now, if we can just get that new cool A.I. thing going...
Bob
Very well said. Especially, that part about "...most jazz bands I play with don't rehearse".. Exactly my experience. Not that that is a problem. Its just nature of Jazz. It likes to be fresh and creative. Thats why it tends to be played at the dinner hour. The masses do like for tunes to sound familar so the dance sets do have to have those, licks and hits that make the song recognizable as it was originally played.
Good thread guys.
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