Yeah, I know. Here’s why I wasn’t originally worried about it.
If you listen to almost all of the album Ah Via Musicom by Eric Johnson, you’ll hear that drums are fairly straightforward (read: boring). Yet the album was quite good, so I thought that the sax, guitar, and keys would carry the song.
I’m finding out from all of the comments here that I was wrong. And after I finish doing my homework and actually make a purchase for a virtual drummer then the first thing I plan to do is work on replacing the drums for this song.
I don’t think there is anything wrong with simple drums like you have here. Being a non drummer myself I find keeping the parts fairly simple to work best. It’s more a feel thing. From my own experience it’s much easier to program a full on rock drum part than a ballad or something laid back. That’s when all the subtleties are more noticeable.
One thing I find sometimes works is to move the snare timing just a little. Early for excitement and late to be laid back. Also sometimes it helps to ‘rush’ fills very slightly to give an impression of excitement. Also playing with attack times can help, depending on the sample used.
Have you tried playing in the drums? Perhaps kick, snare and fills on pass one then hats and cymbals on pass two. I have found that even if the parts are quantized after that the feel just seems better.
Well, I’m 99% sure I will be buying Jamstix later this weekend. I’m impressed with the logic behind the drumline authoring, and that’s tough to do considering I was an application developer with a decent pedigree in a previous lifetime. The point is that this may be a moot point once I get familiar enough with it to re-author a drumline for this song.