Emulating a real drummer with virtual instruments

[CrimsonWarlock]

I've been thinking a while now of writing about my approach to this, so here goes...

In my main style of music, which is symphonic/progressive/psychedelic rock (with lots of other influences), convincing drum parts are kind of necessary. Not having access to a real drummer, let alone a good sounding space to record live drums, I'm relegated to using virtual drum solutions. There are many great sounding sampled drum kits available, but the real challenge is the programming. Getting convincing results takes a lot of programming work, and although several drum VSTIs come with libraries of MIDI-tracks, these approaches never get me to the wonderful happy accidents of a real drummer slightly improvising around the base beat.

For a while now, I've been experimenting with Reason's BeatMap player. It's called an algorithmic drummer, it generates drum patterns that modify when moving a pointer across a "map". The killer feature is that you can modulate this position, and in addition also the density of each drum. By finding the base rhythm, and then constantly modulating slightly around this central "location", the resulting drum part is constantly "improvising" around the base drum track.

This alone gives a very organic and human-like result. However, to get the results even better, I generate several drum tracks for each part of my song, and then pick the best parts of each generated track and compose the final drum track from those parts. It is like asking a drummer to play several drum ideas for each song part, and picking the best from that. Of course, there is some corrective programming involved afterward, but that is a minor effort in comparison to programming everything by hand.

The results are stunning, tmo, and I hope to post a track soon, that demonstrates this.

So, what are your tricks to get great drum tracks?

 

[Louie]

I’ve had pretty good luck with Logic Pro’s drummer(s). I believe it works in a similar manner where there are dials and sliders for adjusting preset patterns, the degree of swing feel, improvised fills, and the like, from some kind of internal reference point. I only messed with it for a few tracks but was pleasantly surprised just how good it sounded, especially after playing some live bass tracks along with it (whole different world from an old Boss drum machine). It now has a feature where it will even adapt its timing to another track (still need to try that out). And of course we can now play all the live long day with almost unlimited really well sampled drum goodies. But as you mentioned, not only are live drums a challenge to record and mix, but without an ace drummer on hand (meaning in general a drummer who is relaxed and steady, but powerful, while having their dynamics and sound under control, without feeling stiff or square) it can be a real challenge or even a nightmare to get everything sounding just right in the mix. So for some things, these tools can be superior to a live drummer, and it is hard for me to admit that, as someone who appreciates good drummers, grew up with one, and has played with a lot of drummers over the years (the good, even the great on occasion, the bad, and…some train wrecks).

But to take a stab at answering your question, it would depend on the track. In general I would lean towards a hybrid approach where I would curate the drummer, the groove, some accents and fills, and still have a MIDI track for something to tweak. So a performance or “tracking stage", an editing stage, and finally the mixing stage. I’ve had the best results so far by playing “to” Logic's drummer so to speak, similar to how we play to the strengths of sample libraries to get a much more human sounding performance. If a creator/producer has listened closely to a number of drummers in their genre, has hung out with, and played with drummers, and has the feel ingrained and a little bit of drumming groove and fill vocabulary in their head, these tools, along with good samples and and some judicious editing certainly have potential to edge closer to emulating the feel and idiosyncrasies of a live drummer--without the necessity of having to program every drum track to death (and still not feel quite satisfied).

So on a scale of 1 to 10, for rock or funk music where a live drummer is the norm (not referring to EDM, hip-hop, pop, etc.) Let’s say an old Boss drum machine is a 1 or 2, and a real drummer recorded live in a good sounding room is a 9 or 10. For comparison, maybe these virtual drummers in good hands can reach a 5, a 6, maybe a seven (not only speaking of sonics, but including authentic feel, and energy)? I’m just offering that opinion based on what I know from messing with Logic’s Drummer, doing from scratch programming on and off, and lots of live rhythm section playing experience and listening, with an admittedly old school bias. It will be interesting to hear what other members have discovered on this frontier.

 

[CrimsonWarlock]

I’ve had pretty good luck with Logic Pro’s drummer(s). I believe it works in a similar manner where there are dials and sliders for adjusting preset patterns, the degree of swing feel, improvised fills, and the like, from some kind of internal reference point.

I watched a couple of videos on Logic's drummer tracks. It seems very capable of generating pretty comprehensive drum tracks or parts. This works fine when you want to create a drum track for your composition, but it is different from my approach. Logic's drummer generates a track (or parts) AFTER you have made all the settings to your taste. The BeatMap generator runs in real time, meaning that it works around your starting point, but you cannot predict what it comes up with along the way, like a real drummer who brings a bit of improvisation to the composing process. While writing, I interact with what BeatMap comes up with, like I'm composing/arranging in tandem with a drummer.

So on a scale of 1 to 10, for rock or funk music where a live drummer is the norm (not referring to EDM, hip-hop, pop, etc.) Let’s say an old Boss drum machine is a 1 or 2, and a real drummer recorded live in a good sounding room is a 9 or 10. For comparison, maybe these virtual drummers in good hands can reach a 5, a 6, maybe a seven (not only speaking of sonics, but including authentic feel, and energy)?

My first drum machine was actually a Boss DR-110, but I played in several bands with drummers ranging from pretty good to crazy talented. I agree that getting to that level is hard or even impossible with a virtual approach.

Having said that, I've found that where before, I used to put a lot of work into the actual sound of the drums, now that I get a much more organic performance, the sound does matter a lot less. Like when a (good) human drummer plays an electronic kit (say Bruford on his Simmons kit) it still sounds very human. All those amazing Drum sample libraries focus on the sound quality (obviously), while the actual performance is much more important.

 

[Nekujak]

My standard tools for virtual drum parts are EZdrummer and audio drum loops from Yurt Rock (including their former incarnation as The Loop Loft).

One of the great things about EZdrummer is that nearly all MIDI parts contain multiple variations for each section of a given “song”. So after finding a general beat that I like, I drag all the related MIDI variations plus a bunch of fills, into my DAW, where I pick and choose various combinations and sections of the MIDI clips to cobble together a final drum part. And of course, I can also modify the MIDI as needed.

Obviously, this process doesn’t occur in real time, but it’s influenced by a real time component in my workflow. Once I’ve assembled a rough MIDI drum part, I playback the song multiple times, listening for places where the drums could use some variation. This is an iterative process, with incremental changes made along the way, until I arrive at a final drum part.

Working with MIDI provides the most flexibility, but I’m sometimes willing to sacrifice that flexibility to get a truly natural-sounding performance with Yurt Rock audio loops. These also come with pattern variations and fills, and are performed by some of the best drummers in the business. They’re brimming with a natural authentic feel, in both the recorded sound of a live drum kit, and the performances themselves.

The most obvious downside is that you’re forced to use the drum sound of the recorded loops. A little processing can help shape the sound, and if you really want to get your fingers dirty, you can try overlaying or substituting drum sounds, but I’ve never felt the need to go that far, except maybe overlaying a snare. I mean, if you hire a live drummer, while you may have some influence over certain aspects of his drum sound, you’re still limited to the sonic parameters of his kit and perhaps a few different snare choices.

I’ve also dabbled with Reason’s Beat Map. I like the ability to make freeform varitions on the fly, but strangely enough, I also find it somewhat limiting in that I can only pick from a relatively small set of foundational beats. I would love to be able to tap in a beat or feed it a MIDI file that it used as the foundation for building variations. But still, it's got some very flexible features for generating fluidly evolving drum parts.

Also worth mentioning is Jamstix, which has been around for eons and positions itself as a flexible virtual drummer that reacts to your music. There are folks who hold Jamstix in high regard, but to be honest, I find the UI and workflow completely befuddling. Every time I’ve tried using it, I ended up throwing in the towel and moving on to a more elegantly crafted solution. Clearly there's some good stuff under the hood, but I guess I my brain is not wired in the right way to unlock it

 

[CrimsonWarlock]

I’ve also dabbled with Reason’s Beat Map. I like the ability to make freeform varitions on the fly, but strangely enough, I also find it somewhat limiting in that I can only pick from a relatively small set of foundational beats.

From my perspective, there isn't actually a "set" of foundational beats, let alone a mall set. There are (currently) six maps to choose from, and each map has a large number of rhythms that flow over into each other, basically giving unlimited variations. And the real magic happens when you start modulating parameters (especially the map location) in real-time. The track I'm hoping to post soon-ish is an almost 7 minutes long progrock track with a jazz-rock oriented drum track, and across the whole drum track there are no two bars the same

 

[Nekujak]

The track I'm hoping to post soon-ish is an almost 7 minutes long progrock track with a jazz-rock oriented drum track, and across the whole drum track there are no two bars the same

No doubt it depends on the style of the music. For jazzy prog rock, I can definitely see how free-flowing evolving drums make total sense. Some heavy metal styles also rely on bold adventurous drumming.

But for more traditional pop/rock/country-type songs, which is where my personal sweet spot lies, and where the drums mostly function as a steady backbeat, having predictable patterns with occasional minor variations is usually all that's needed.

It's all a matter of choosing the tool that best suits the task at hand

 

[CrimsonWarlock]

No doubt it depends on the style of the music. For jazzy prog rock, I can definitely see how free-flowing evolving drums make total sense. Some heavy metal styles also rely on bold adventurous drumming.

Agreed. That's why I never got to a level of satisfaction even with hours long tedious programming sessions.

But for more traditional pop/rock/country-type songs, which is where my personal sweet spot lies, and where the drums mostly function as a steady backbeat, having predictable patterns with occasional minor variations is usually all that's needed.

Again agreed. For those musical styles, sequencers with probability options are almost all you need. Reason Studios did a nice country-style example in their drum-sequencer video:

 

[proggermusic]

He's been a bit quiet on the internet lately, but the wonderful pianist Rabih Rihana ("Keepitsimple" on VIC) is a phenomenal "finger drummer" on the keyboard. He has some videos on his YT channel, I think, of some really impressive work with Superior Drummer.

 

[Tom Spell]

For my drums I usually use Superior Drummer 3. I begin with browsing through the MIDI packs I own, looking for a beat that fits the part I am working on, often using the great Tap2Find feature where I can play in a rough idea of the beat and get a selection of similar sounding MIDI files. Also, if a part sounds good but not good enough, you can drag the MIDI file onto the Tap2Find field and it shows similar results that might work better. Another great tool is the selection of the lead hand which can for example be on the hi-hat, ride or cymbals. There is also a function that increases the intensity of a part and automatically adds additional hits i.e. on the toms or cymbals.

I cut, combine and edit the parts a lot (i.e. adding kicks, cymbals, ghost notes, changing velocity, etc.) so the performace fits the song. After that I just keep on listening to the song many times, checking if the feeling and the flow is right. If a part sounds off, I edit again until it sounds right.

I play a kind of straight forward rock / metal so this works pretty well for my style. With the numerous existing MIDI packs covering many different genres and play styles this might also work for more progressive kinds of music.

 

[HCMarkus]

I perform drum parts using SD3 or BFD3 and a Korg PadKontrol and play the song beginning to end in many cases, particularly when emulating real drums as opposed to other approaches to percussion.

Two passes, each with its own pad assignments, get me most of the song:

1) Kick/Snare/Toms. (Basic beat plus fills)

2) Hi Hat. (10-12 different SD3 hat articulations on the pads)

A third pass adds detail in Crashes and Rides.
Some editing to add a few flams and massage fills, and general clean up.
Velocity editing here and there as the production is built further.

There are times when building along to a beat works great. Other times, it is nice when things develop the other way around.

 

[Nekujak]

Mike's very own RealiDrums deserves to be mentioned in this thread. The design philosophy is all about fluid real-time tweakability using "complexity sliders" and fill keyswitches.

TBH, while I really like the overall approach, I haven't actually used it yet in a production. Part of that may have to do with the drum sounds themselves, which are decent but to my ear don't offer the same consistency and impact as Toontrack or other drums. And part of it is just my lack of familiarity with the workflow - I've been working with MIDI and drum loops since forever, so that's what I fall back on when I need to get things done quickly, which is most of the time these days.

But I really owe it to myself to spend more time getting familiar with RealiDrums, because like I said, I really like the overall intent and design approach.

 

[proggermusic]

On Rabih's recommendation, I finally got Sonnicouture's "Sun Drums" and "Moonkits" this summer, and damn, they're fantastic. Great sounds and presets with lots of variation without option paralysis. I'm a new fan!

 

[ElectraHeart]

It's worth checking out the CHAIR Excite plugins.. I have been using them a lot lately mixed in with other samples etc. They are kind of physically modelled, and you can play them through a microphone (in the pro versions, or via midi in the free versions).

Plug-In – The Center for Haptic Audio Interaction Research

www.chair.audio

 

[Nitrateaudio]

So, what are your tricks to get great drum tracks?

I just send it out to a drummer I know. He will send me back the tracks for a fee. Its pretty reasonable if that is what is needed for the track. My philosophy on this is, if I am working ITB with VI, there is no point trying to even attempt to mimic what a real drummer would do. It's too intricate and time consuming. So I might as well just keep it simple and drum machine-like with a little round robin in there.

 

[Spirit Groove]

I posted recently on VI-C about revisiting Stylus RMX. Amazing features considering it came out 20+ years ago.

I have Triaz and Playbeat for grooves, Addictive Drums, and the NI stuff in K14CE for straight ahead acoustic drums.

I'm forever trying to find better ways for non-drummer me to play beats into the DAW as it's the most direct path for creativity in my mind. I'm just not a good drummer or keyboardist. I'm a humble guitar player and have no way to play drums on a guitar.

So in my quest over the years to become a somewhat better MIDI drummer, I got a DrumKat4.5 Turbo, Korg PadKontrol, and recently added a Launchpad X and XJam.

 

[HCMarkus]

Korg PadKontrol

Works great for me.

Playing in bands with excellent drummers can be a pretty darn good education in programming.

 

[CrimsonWarlock]

I just send it out to a drummer I know. He will send me back the tracks for a fee. Its pretty reasonable if that is what is needed for the track.

In the genre that I make my music in (symphonic/progressive rock), the drums are an integral part of the composing and arranging. So, sending tracks to a drummer and see what I get back is not very useful. But if it works for you that's great.

So in my quest over the years to become a somewhat better MIDI drummer, I got a DrumKat4.5 Turbo, Korg PadKontrol, and recently added a Launchpad X and XJam.

I still have a PadKontrol, but it's years since I used it. Even though I can find my way around a real drumkit somewhat, I got better results programming things (before I went the algorithmic way).

Playing in bands with excellent drummers can be a pretty darn good education in programming.

Absolutely. Playing live gigs during the eighties and early nineties in all kinds of bands was great for this indeed.

 

[Spirit Groove]

Playing in bands with excellent drummers can be a pretty darn good education in programming.

I played electric bass in bands for years with top drummers and much of what I do now came from my experience with them. I can even set up a kit perfectly so a 'real' drummer can just sit down and be ready to go.

I just don't have the ability to pay anything more than a 4 on the floor beat.

I was thinking about getting an E-drum kit so I can just play/practice anytime I want but have a place that has no room for anything.

 

[Louie]

I posted this in the AI thread earlier, but I think it fits better over here and more in the spirit of a music forum.

As I posted earlier, I also enjoy Logic Drummer. I’ll tweak until I get a groove I like quite a bit, then record a bass line with that, and usually with the two combined can still establish a nice rhythm section bed. But I’m also in kind of a middle ground as far as how healthy it is for musicians to lean too much on these kinds of virtual performers. I use that term "virtual performer” intentionally (not virtual instrument).

Here is what I mean by "middle ground": As a rhythm section player, I spent a lot of time early on working on my time feel both with a metronome or click, and without. I learned this from playing with good and great drummers. They will affirm how important it is to have a great time feel internalized, so that the drum machine, virtual drummer, click, whatever, is only a reference--but never a crutch (BTW, a good exercise is to practice with a click just 1 click per bar, or even 1 click for two to fours bars, to help develop that internal sense—picked that up from an excellent drummer ). I developed this skill over a period of time, and is now a permanent part of my skillset as a musician. But for musicians that are still in their early stages of developing their time-feel and likely with less band/gigging experience these days, a virtual drummer or AI drummer is even more seductive than a drum machine, and perhaps even detrimental to developing a good time-feel. Back when I was doing a lot of live playing/gigging, the best drummers were the ones who had the time-feel thing internalized. They could groove with or without a click. A couple drummers that I ran across fairly often on gigs that weren’t at that level were the ones that depended too much on practicing with a click or drum machine, and tended to sound mechanical/stiffen up when the tempo moved around a little. They had not developed an overall compass or internal frame of reference of how to groove, and tended to overcompensate by playing too rigid and in the center of the beat. Even worse, one guy would drag when a soloist or a vocalist would “lay back” on the time, which is almost like death to band).

Here is the flip side: I can play classical music ok on the cello. But I’ll never be at the level to play a very technical classical melody on par with a virtuoso performer (this is after years of practice and private lessons, not just arbitrarily picking up a cello and scratching around for a few weeks) And, I’ve heard people try to emulate solo violin, solo cello, and the like with VIs and even with the best of efforts—it just isn’t convincing. And part of that isn’t entirely due the limitations of the virtual instruments, it is the fact that musicians, particularly MIDI keyboarists, that never learned an orchestral, solo instrument, or learned to sing, likely have not internalized all the little idiosyncrasies that someone has in their ear that has been dedicated to a melodic instrument (fill in a style) for many thousands of hours. The reverse of that also tends to be a thing, musicians that never learned a keyboard instrument from a young age are more likely to struggle being very fluent with harmony. So it stands to reason, if someone isn’t an actual drummer who has spent literally thousands of hours listening to, practicing with, and emulating their favorite drummers, and playing with other good human musicians, it is unlikely they are really going to nail a super groovy musical drum part tapping it out on a MIDI keyboard (don’t get me wrong, exceptions exist like Prince, and Stevie Wonder would be my all time one man band hero, and even Stevie wasn’t completely solo, except for Inner visions, but I could be wrong). For a writer, all of those hours are a whole lot of time that could have been spent on developing ideas, writing, arranging, developing mixing skills, etc..

So let’s say I’m writing an arrangement for string quartet as part of a jazzy song. It would be nifty to have a virtual string quartet simulation to aid the writing process. But something where you can just concentrate on writing and not have to endlessly tweak for a (somewhat) convincing playback (I’m familiar with the NotePerformer, MuseScore notation apps, plus Sacconni, and other solo string quartet sample libraries). Where I’m going is AI virtual performers are already here, and I’m betting they are eventually going to be ubiquitous as the technology disseminates. We are already seeing them for violin, and of course for vocals and even choir (Ace Studio, Cantai, Synth V, etc). And by all accounts the developers have agreements with a cadre of performing musicians/trainers, so these don’t have the stigma of LLMs, and everyone involved agreed to provide their services voluntarily. Anyway, I’m kind of in that middle ground where I almost certainly would not purchase someones music that had, say an AI drummer, or AI string quartet, but at the same time, it is tempting use one (when they become available) for playback when developing ideas and making demos—very seductive.

Finally, I’m a huge advocate of simply getting with a really good drummer, violinist, sax player, etc. for those special songs/projects—we only live once.

P.S. In the drift of the last few posts from the recent AI thread (also FYI), wanted to share some preliminary research coming in on how even just using assistive AI tools to help with writing isn’t looking like it is helping with thinking and internalization, and may even degrade those cognitive skills--and we don’t even know the longer term impacts yet.

The researchers conclude, “Collectively, these findings support the view that external support tools restructure not only task performance but also the underlying cognitive architecture.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/03/opinion/aritificial-intelligence-education.html?unlocked_article_code=1.T08.DAyB.YBxhQsKWQuU5&smid=url-share

(an underlying theme that keeps popping up in concerns about AI tools becoming too much of a crutch)

Apologies for the long winded post, and bit of a ramble—and I don’t even use AI to help with my writing

 

[LinusW]

So, what are your tricks to get great drum tracks?

As a drummer I will play the part on the keyboard or drum pad or whatever. You can get away with a lot of quantization on drums, but not being static/repetitive in articulation and accentuation.