EZ Drummer with Guitar Pro?

Hi guys

I'm gonna do some home recording again (after many years) but this time I'll be recording my solo stuff so I'll be doing all the tracks/instruments by myself (aside some sporadic help/fun with my formers bassist and lead guitarist and some friends from other bands). I'll be not using any real drums, so the main thing will be to compose and "play" the drum tracks. I'm looking to have an "as real as possible" drum tracks sound and, of course, I've been headed to EZ Drumer for the rendering. So my question is: I'll be composing/exporting drums via Guitar Pro 6, is it a proper tool/software or I can find something better? My main concern is the "real hand" feel. I'm used to compose drums via softwares that allows you to write actual music parts (with notes, pauses and so on) and I'm not used to MIDI only softwares (dragging colored squares on a Tron-like circuit... really, I'm not good with that kind of stuff at all :| ). For the records: the genere will be rock/hard rock, a lot guitar oriented (of course), I'll use an M-Adio Fast Track Pro and Pro Tools, all the guitars and bass will be recorded mic'd (I've a very beautiful soundproof room ). Thanks for the help.

EDIT: found out I cannot use EZ Drummer with Pro Tools SE (bundled with the m-audio) 'cause it doesn't accept 3rd party plug-ins so I've to find a way to make it works elsewhere. On the other hand I've started using the midi editor in GarageBand and, despite being less immediate and intuitive than a Guitar Pro -like software (at least for me) I think, with some practice, I can deal with that and looks like I can use EZ Drummer with it and solve the Pro Tools compatibility problem.

Not sure if you are still around to get this answer.

Yes you can create your drum track via Guitar Pro. Make sure you are using standard drum notation when you create it. I say this because the first few times I used GP to write a drum track I was using guitarist thinking and most of the drum tracks actually were upside down in a sense.

Once you have your drum track written. Export it as a MIDI track and then open that up via your DAW that will use EZDrummer and use EZD to populate your MIDI track with the drum samples. If you write the track properly, it should automatically do this. Once you are able to get the track to play, you want to open up whatever editor your DAW uses where you can adjust the velocity settings of each drum hit. Example: Hihats- if your hihats are playing at a steady 8th note beat, when the velocity is at 100%, the hits will sound like a metronome. Adjust the velocity so that the hat hit ON the beat is close to 100% or at 100%, while the other 7 hits aren't playing as at high of a velocity. Make sure you vary the velocity across the board. This will give you that humanized feel.

Look at Velocity as how aggressively a drummer, or for that matter, a keyboardist hits part of their kit/keyboard. The harder they hit, the louder the sound is. Example of this would be Guns N Roses My Michelle, when the band kicks in during the intro riffing and the choruses, Steven Adler really gets on it, while during the verses he pulls back and the drums aren't as loud. Also during the ending of that song he pulls back even more. You can also hear this in Nirvana Teen Spirit during the Soft/Hard segments of the song. A keyboard example would be Billy Joel Piano Man. Listen to the chord/arpeggios right before the vocals start. The chord is played harder(more velocity) than the arpeggio(less velocity).

Back to your drum track. Go through each portion of the drum track and adjust the velocity for each part of the kit. Once you have one part of the kit to your liking see what is sounds like with the rest of the track. This will take a while, but the more time you put into it, the better the track will sound overall.

Don't be discouraged. It takes a while. I am currently working on a couple drum tracks I did for some of my original music which incorporates lots of blast beat snare/hihat work. Blast beat snare runs are a nightmare to program and work with the velocity on to get them sounding human and not repetitious, even when trying to incorporate a more routine velocity path, a drummer will always have a few hits that are harder here and there during a blast run.

Thanks for the detailed reply. Since I started the topic I've put GP aside and started learning how to use the piano roll in Pro Tools and Garage Band to program my midi parts, it looked scary and difficult at first sight but when you start understanding how it works and practice on it it becomes much easier. But anyway thanks for taking the time to getting back to me. Best.

No problem. I use piano roll as well, but I usually do the initial drum track including click in GP. It is just faster for me. I will use Nuendo's piano roll to create fills and adjust the velocities. It is easier.to do it that way, even with the EZD interface/mixer takes more time than piano roll.