Trouble is, even after you spend so much time programming a drum track, it still screams “fake.” I’ve recently had to program drums for one of my band’s songs because our drummer wasn’t able to track them that day, and I learned a couple of new things about working with computer drums.

Make The Drumming Realistic

This is where most beginners mess up. Don’t program blast beats or kicks at 64^th beats, few real drummers can do that, and it generally just sounds fake as hell. Don’t make the entire song one drum beat either, that gets really boring and sounds amateurish. If you have no idea what drum parts/fills to use, look up Guitar Pro tabs (you can open them with Tux Guitar which is free) of your favorite songs. Chances are, they’ll have drum parts tabbed out as well, so you can see what kind of beats professional drummers use. Throw in a couple creative drum fills here and there to liven things up, much like what a human drummer would do. If you have a drummer friend, study his/her style while drumming and try to replicate that in your programming.

Drum Sounds

The second hallmark of bad drum programming is a terrible overall sound. Boxy, flat snares. Way-too-clicky bass kicks. Dead-sounding cymbals. Sound familiar? Fortunately, this is a pretty easy problem to fix.

All you need is a drum replacement plugin for your DAW (ex: Logic, Pro Tools, Cubase) and some good-sounding samples. There are free drum replacement plugins out there, you just have to find them. Being a semi-professional audio producer, I opted to buy what is widely considered the industry standard in drum replacement: Drumagog. A basic license costs $90, and it can turn the worst-sounding drum tracks, whether programmed or real, into sweet-sounding beauties.

Drum samples can be found pretty much everywhere on the internet, you just gotta find the really good ones. I’ve found Steven Slate drum samples to be rather good sounding in my mixes, so I’d recommend checking them out. They’re not free, but they’re totally worth it (of course there are ways of obtaining it for free).

However, even with amazing samples and perfect drum replacement, there is still some more work that needs to be done. First, resist the urge to turn up the kicks super loud, that’ll only highlight how steady (and robotic) the drums are. Unless you specifically want that sound, of course. Turn the cymbals down, and apply some basic compression on them to make them fit into the mix better and sound less grating. EQ and compress the snare until it sounds punchy but not too hollow, and make sure to apply a good amount of reverb onto it. While it may sound weird to have so much reverb on just the snare, it sounds pretty darn good in a mix.

With these two main tips and a little bit of effort, you can make drum tracks that sound fairly convincing and realistic. Remember, how good your drums sound is directly related to how much effort you put into programming and tweaking them. Don’t expect to get a pro-quality drum track in five minutes, unless you’re directly ripping off another band. Which I wouldn’t recommend doing unless you’re doing a cover.

Not Double-tracking Guitars

Come on, this one should be obvious; we live in the age of stereo. It’s simple enough, record two guitar tracks, pan one to the left, pan one to the right. Sounds easy right? Well some of these guys actually get it wrong. I’m not sure whether it’s out of ignorance or just pure laziness.

Way Too Trebly/Loud Cymbals

When it comes to mixing and mastering, EQ is your best friend. Hear those nasty sharp high frequencies coming from the cymbals? Cut them a bit. Same goes for their volume. Unless you’re an amateur, each drum mic outputs to a separate track. You can make the cymbals a bit quieter than the rest, so that they’re not the main focus of the mix. Having the cymbals in the background and not overwhelming the mix is part of what makes a mix sound professional.

Not Replacing The Kicks/Using A Bad Kick Sample

Unless you’re trying to go for an old-school lo-fi vibe, a modern metal mix should have audible, consistent kicks (that’s what the double bass drum sounds are called in the industry). Use a plugin like Drumagog to get a nice clean kick sound that will cut through the mix properly. Kicks usually go with the guitar parts and help keep the tempo of the song, so they should be heard well in the mix, they shouldn’t be muddy or lacking in treble. On the other side of the “doing it wrong” spectrum are extremely clicky kick samples that sound like a playing card stuck in a bicycle spoke. Avoid those, because they’re more annoying than anything. You want something that’s not excessively fake sounding or clicky, so take your time in picking a kick sample.

Dry Vocals

Vocals with no effects usually sound bad. I’m not talking about autotune, I’m talking about basics such as reverb, delay, and compression. It’s not cheating to use those, every professional does. Reverb helps with the acoustics of the vocals, and can often make up for recording in a less-than-ideal environment. Compression smooths out the peaks and brings all the vocals up to a more or less similar volume, so that there are no big jumps in loudness depending on how close the singer/screamer got to the mic. On the flip side, overusing effects can be just as bad, so use reverb in moderation. Also, chill with the overlays. Yes they sound cool every once in a while, but you’ll never sound like that live unless you have 2-3 full time vocalists.

Improper Cab Mic’ing

Mic’ing up a guitar/bass cab can sound really good… if done right. Trouble is, most people don’t do it right. I’m no mic’ing expert, so I use digital guitar amps and cabs. I suggest that to up-and-coming producers who don’t have the resources and/or experience to successfully mic up a cab. Because even a bad digital tone will still sound better than a horrible mic’d real guitar amp.

Bass Mixed Too Loudly/Too Quietly

Some local producers mix the bass way too loudly in the mix, to the point of where it’s competing with the guitars and making the mix sound muddy. Others mix it so quietly that it’s barely heard, negating the whole point of having a bass. Mixing bass tracks is something that should be handled delicately.

Awful Bass Tone

I’ve heard bass tracks that sound like floppy rubber bands, and others that sound like fat blobs of bass. For most metal mixes, a distorted bass sound fits in quite well with the mix. Not too distorted, but just enough to blend with the crunch of the guitars, while simultaneously standing out every so slightly. The fact that I’ve dedicated two separate points to bass is testament to the fact that a lot of local producers completely skimp out on the bass tracks. Just because it’s not front and center doesn’t mean it should be ignored. When done right, the bass can add a lot of punch and character to the mix.

Poor Mixing In General

I’ve heard local bands with terrible mixes. Every factor could be perfect, but a bad mix can ruin everything. A lot of people half-ass the mixing process, even though it is vital to a good sound. Mixing is not something that should be done in 10 minutes. You have to tinker with it, see what’s too loud, what’s too quiet, etc. Then you have to come back a couple hours later and then listen to it again, to see if anything stands out too much. Vocals are usually mixed too loud these days, which is fine for pop, but not for rock/metal where the instrumentals are just as important. Also, a lot of producers don’t listen to their mixes on various systems. I’ve seen producers only use expensive studio monitors, or only headphones. Great monitors or great headphones make any mix sound better, but the fact of the matter is that the vast majority of music listeners are not audiophiles with perfect studio headphones. No, the vast majority of listeners listen through crappy iPod headphones, or through terrible cheap computer speakers, or in mediocre stock car sound systems. Therefore, you have to test on these systems and make sure your mix sounds good on everything.

In conclusion, this is by no means an exhaustive list of everything that can be done wrong; it’s simply the most common mistakes I hear with a lot of demos. As much as you might think it’s all about the music itself, a good recording is crucial to getting people to listen to your band more than once. Plus, unless you’re extremely talented/unique, a good quality demo will attract a potential label’s attention so much more than a half-assed mediocre one.

A demo is everything for a local band, why half-ass it?

MySpace is a prime example of a website that didn’t change, and died because of that. When it finally did implement all sorts of changes within the last couple of years, it was too little, too late. Facebook’s trying to avoid that by constantly improving the user experience, whether the users realize it or not. For example, in the latest version, the top bar with notifications and all stays fixed even when the user scrolls down, negating the need to scroll all the way up to check notifications or run a search. Do users notice those beneficial changes and thank the devs? Of course not. They’d much rather join the bandwagon of hating everything the devs do, just because everyone else does.

Look back into the past couple of years on Facebook— it’s a cycle. Facebook debuts a new design, users complain, then after about a month everybody shuts up, until the next change; then the cycle repeats. Complaining about changes won’t change anything, because in the end, the developers know best- they run tests and collect data to support the changes.

Announced today at the F8 conference, Zuckerberg announced a brand-new way to display a profile, as a chronological timeline, with the ability to easily go back in time. I personally applaud these ideas and changes, it shows that Facebook isn’t content with just having large numbers of users, they want to innovate and stay relevant, especially with serious competitors like Google Plus.

Perhaps next time Facebook makes a change and you’re about to hit “post” on another “I hate this new design”-esque status, stop for a minute and try to see what’s been improved.

Turns out that the commissioner of the Sanitation Department went and directed most of the snow plows into Manhattan, thinking it would be the smart thing to do economically, Manhattan being the commercial center of NYC. Trouble is, he forgot that most of Manhattan’s workforce lives in either Brooklyn or Queens. Good thinking.

For those unfamiliar with the term “cloud,” it refers to having all the data stored on a remote, third-party server, rather than locally or on a private server. Tumblr is an example of this, the whole app along with its databases is stored on Tumblr’s own servers. This simplifies everything for less tech-savvy users, but it brings a risk.

If, for example, I screw up a file or database on my own installation of WordPress, I’m the only one who gets fucked over. Compare this to a system like Tumblr, where one mistake fucks over everybody using it. Not very reliable at all, especially if you host your portfolio/business on Tumblr, like Cameron Moll. Imagine the reaction a client would get if they saw a “We’ll be back soon” on your portfolio, rather than the content they’re interested in. They’ll just move right on to somebody else with a functioning site. Sure, that’s a bit exaggerated, but it’s an entirely realistic scenario.

I’m not saying don’t use Tumblr (unless your blog consists of memes or has “fuckyeah” in the title), just be careful. If you host important information or well-written, carefully thought-out blog posts on it, they could all be lost in the blink of an eye. Worse still is that Tumblr offers no easy way to export entries, and Google Cache can only go so far. And these are only mere blogs, imagine what would happen if entire OS’s stopped working because of a database error on a central server.

The small text just makes it harder to quickly scan the status updates on Facebook. Perhaps it’s a clever ploy to keep users on Facebook for longer by making them stop to read the smaller text?

But c’mon guys, 11 px size text in 2010? Fix it already.

Fucking left-wing cunts. I hate it when liberals limit free speech by calling it hateful the minute it doesn’t agree with their beliefs.

I have a better idea for all those exercise fanatics out there— go to the nearest ghetto, shout a racial slur as loud as you possibly can, and run as fast as your lard legs will take you. While being shot at by dozens of angry ghetto people, weight loss will quickly disappear as a concern. Luckily for me, I never have to deal with it, because I can eat fast food all I want and still stay in my weight. 

Not only does the new plate design look remarkably similar in color to several other states’ designs, it’s also fucking ugly as shit, with a color scheme that’ll clash with any car color. C’mon NY, are we too broke to even afford a decent graphic designer? So far in 2010 I’ve filled your pockets with about $250 in fines, surely you could afford a better designer. Oh wait you’re all too busy pissing our money away on lap dances and hookers.