This is my favorite so far, Larry. Great song. No overt Beatles 'flava' to distract, but still a great set of changes. Bravo!

The fills are still a BIT of an issue, but less than some others. I still feel that, if you picked two or three other S900 styles with a similar feel, and then just recorded the drums with all their fills and break fills, and got a little library of fills that WERE well programmed and consistent (as the S900's styles are), you could give yourself a bit more flexibility and variety than just using what comes with the main style you pick (or painting them in by hand). Another thing you might do is try to have maybe the guitar or bass get some of that fill 'action', so that when the drums fill, they are not quite so exposed...

You know, on this one the S900's drums work pretty well. Maybe the Ozone is helping them punch through a bit more (did you use the exciter on them a bit?). I still think that EZ Drummer CAN take things to another level (their demos show it CAN be pretty realistic), but as a demo or self produced CD, this one works very nicely.

If you are still having trouble getting a good sound with EZ Drummer, have a think about this... EZDrummer's samples are already compressed to a certain degree. I wouldn't mess too much with that, but concentrate on doing the bedding in by manipulating the MIDI notes it receives. It has an alternating sample function, so if things get too machine gun it can vary the timbre. It also has a library of MIDI grooves that are played on those particular samples. While they may not match what you need for the song, they may help point you in the right direction in regards to average velocity level for each drum, average range of velocity difference between hard and softer hits, that sort of thing...

The thing is, if you aren't that successful getting idiomatic drums out of an arranger by 'painting' notes in, doing the same on a better sample library isn't going to help. Have you looked into some of the drummer played MIDI libraries? Twiddley Bits, Drumcore, Drumtrax, that sort of thing? Starting out with grooves played by a drummer, and especially drummer fills, can give you a good jumping off point.

Another thing you can try is comparing the MIDI output of the S900 drum tracks with the EZ Drummer MIDI files, and see if there isn't a simple transformation (adding or subtracting velocity, scaling velocity by small amounts, that sort of thing on a drum by drum basis) that can make an S900 track play the EZ Drummer kit more naturally. Then, take a good look at where EZ Drummer paints in the 'ghost' snare notes, the ruffs and stick drops, the tom flam's and the like (there will be a greater selection of these compared to the S900's kit) and try to copy how they are used by the EZD MIDI files.

But, all that aside, I am very impressed with this song, Larry. You keep getting better every time...