Drum Samples/ Replacement/ Augmentation (Future of Drums?)

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hithere
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Drum Samples/ Replacement/ Augmentation (Future of Drums?)

Post by hithere » Sun Sep 20, 2015 12:46 pm

Hey guys. I want to start this off by saying, most of my favorite records are made with great drummers, in great rooms, with great kits.

I think most would agree that if you want THAT sound, you need to go into a proper room, and do it the right way. A real performer not quantized to death, an engineer sculpting a sound to the drummer and the sonics to fit a song will never go out of style.

Even the sound of "real" indie/garage rock drums recorded in basements and small boxy spaces have had their merits over the years. Early Death Cab records, I love that sound, sometimes I even get flashback vibes to dry 70's drum sounds where the kit doesn't take up a huge part of the mix and the snare and toms aren't hyperreal.

Now more so than ever I am hearing heavily sample replaced kits in a lot of local releases, which makes sense to me if that is what you are going for, it seems these records coming out of basements using Slate Drums/Trigger/Drumagog are starting to sound more like a lot of mainstream alt rock records seemingly using a lot of these same samples & techniques. Often favoring 100% replacement than augmentation. And of course metal often has the programmed machine gun snare, clicky quantized double bass as part of the overall aesthetic, one that doesn't pride itself on "realism".

I think that is pretty cool for independent artists going for that sound to have similar access to the big guys, but my question and conversation to you guys is where do you see this going in the future?

The idea becomes more intriguing when I hear songs that may have been recorded by a real drummer, but are then edited to end up sounding something like this new Best Coast song. When discussing rock/popular drum sounds compared to say jazz, samples seem to be closer and closer to the modern heavily compressed snare sound that maybe only rotates 3 different velocities in a verse anyway. Nirvana's Nevermind was said to utilize samples along with the kit sound.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOhLbA-B-bE



I recently was working with EzDrummer 2 and got some impressive results by using the included grooves with the Indie 4 Mic Expansion pack, and some hand programmed sections that had the looseness of a real drummer because I performed them. Particularly I was striving to pull away from the CLA Slate huge modern rock drum sound that usually turns me off of the hyperreal sounding samples.

I hear the best sounds come from drummers playing the best e kit one can afford (I guess with the most sensors and dynamic pads), so that the feel is natural. I often hear of people just mic'ing overhead cymbals along with the pads as cymbals seem to still not be all the way in the sample world.

I almost question why some of these records are even opting to mic up a real kit to only process it to the point where it ends up like some of these overtop kits.

I have to say as I guy who generally records everything else except drums in my home studio, I would love to see a day where I could do my drum tracking exclusively on an ekit, or even an ekit with real cymbals. Some may argue for certain sounds/genres this is already possible. [/url]

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Post by kslight » Sun Sep 20, 2015 1:56 pm

Nah I really don't think the "best" sounds come from drummers playing the best electronic kit.

What triggers/electronic kits/triggering software really is "best" for is as a short cut for no budget and/or no talent bands to get "radio ready" sounds (when such a thing even matters) or for aesthetic choice (in such genres where its cool to have the same drum sounds as every other record). It levels the playing field, in the same way, I guess, that having relatively good quality digital cameras built into our cell phones makes everyone a photographer?having access to "radio ready" drum sounds makes everyone sound like a good drummer/engineer (or at least, that's the theory).

I consider "fixing it in the mix" part of the first category, and layering in the second, for the record.

Now, I'm not a total purist, and I am not the best engineer on Earth (probably the best one on my block though?), but if there's anything that I think I do well when it comes to recording?its getting drum tones. And that process doesn't involve loading any virtual drum plugins (at least, when I am using a live drummer in the first place). I like having drum sounds that are unique to the song, and I feel like if the drums don't sound good in the monitors I'm not gonna hit record just so I can replace them later. I like having a good room tone as well, something that I really don't hear in any of the drum plugins, at least they don't have what I'm looking for.

But still, I will sample a few hits of everything before we record, and in the case that I do need to replace a few weak hits or whatever?I can go back and do that. I would rather replace any bad hits with those samples taken than just load up Slate or whatever (which I don't even own any program like that except for BFD) and replace every snare or tom or whatever.

Layering for my aesthetics is usually a last resort type of thing, as opposed to a default way of working, and its generally reserved for those situations when bleed/EQ/etc just won't allow me to get where I want to go. However, if I am recording the drums myself in the first place, this normally shouldn't happen?



However, if going to a real studio is not practical for your own recordings, there is nothing stopping you today from using an electronic kit and plugging in to BFD or whatever and getting a performance that 98% of the population won't be able to distinguish for real drums?I was doing this in my apartment 7 years ago?but I would probably never do it again because I really hate the way (any I can afford) electronic kits feel.

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Post by joninc » Sun Sep 20, 2015 3:48 pm

interesting how many of the biggest name mix dudes all have their go to samples though.

and they are mixing stuff recorded by many of the best engineers, in the best studios, with the best gear, played by the best drummers. and it still gets enhanced by samples.

it's like how auto-tune is the norm. it's a culture obsessed with "hyper reality".
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Post by kslight » Sun Sep 20, 2015 5:02 pm

And I'm sure 30-40 years ago top mix engineers were covering everything in reverb and fx cheese...doesn't make it good.


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Post by floid » Sun Sep 20, 2015 5:18 pm

I know a guy who has one of the nicer Roland vdrum kits. A pretty good drummer. He loves it, swears by it. Spends hours going through the menus putting together vkits. All I hear are the glitchies poking out. To my ears it's like some hits get chopped off and others get choked. Cymbals are unnatural and most of the snares are too hyped.
Maybe the very upper tier ones are light years ahead, I don't know. But how much drumkit and mics and treatment can be had for those prices? How much playing time and mic'ing technique can be had in exchange for those menu hours? And for some people, the more pertinent q is prolly would you rather have this big bulky noisy thing that takes maintenance and space and pisses off the neighbors if you don't spend money on a special room for it not to mention buying lots of other gear that must be mastered in addition to mastering the thing itself, or would you rather have something that takes up one corner, plugs straight into your computer, and you can don headphones and get on with it.
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Post by joninc » Mon Sep 21, 2015 3:12 pm

kslight wrote:And I'm sure 30-40 years ago top mix engineers were covering everything in reverb and fx cheese...doesn't make it good.
i wasn't meaning to imply that I thought it was good - just that it's interesting that even people who are recording in the best case scenarios still have their work supplemented by samples a lot of the time. you'd think it wouldn't be necessary at that level.

but that's my point - reality is not good enough anymore for a lot of people!

it's not how I work and i aim to have things sound as good as i can possibly make them without bringing in pre-recorded drum hits to supplement - but i don't pretend that I can do what michael brauer or CLA does either and I do accept a certain level of "rawness/realness" that some wouldn't tolerate.

what i meant by hyper reality is that we want to hear so much information at once - we want tons of detail and definition to the sound (ie: close and tight) and also an awesome room tone with excitement etc.... it's not realistic - it's better than reality really is. ie: enhanced

it's like taking the most beautiful women and putting them on a magazine cover and then still feeling the desire to do some airbrushing here and there. tightening up the body proportions a tiny bit here... why? she's already gorgeous. we want PERFECTION.

admittedly any type of editing or comping could be seen as tampering with reality and I suppose we all have our own lines in the sand that we draw. I'll comp takes for sure but i won't open up beat detective on my drums or paste autotune on my lead vocal tracks. I'll heavily compress/distort/eq but i won't use drum samples.

doesn't make me better. just makes me me.
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Post by kslight » Mon Sep 21, 2015 6:26 pm

What bugs me is the mindset (from engineers/producers/performers/whomever thinks they know best) that its actually necessary?without even listening to what they've got.

A band I engineered awhile back went to the most expensive and only LA-level studio in town with gobs of great gear and such and the first thing the engineer wanted to do was sample their drums and use those hits to automatically replace everything for that album.

I think they'd already paid for their session so they finished it, but they didn't do their record there, I did it somewhere else.

They wanted everything pretty raw, and that's what we did. Basics to 2", rest to Pro Tools, the only drum edits I did were punch ins and maybe one or two creative things?but guilty as charged they wanted a little more click out of the bass drum than EQ was gonna give (between the drummer's mediocre kit and recording to tape) so I did give them a clicky bass drum layer? its a hard rock/metal-ish record so I agreed they kind of needed it. But I wasn't about to just go in and sound replace everything without making an effort. This other studio has a reputation for sound replacing EVERYTHING, and I think a lot of their work that I hear sucks (and not just because of the sound replacing). Not that I'm the best engineer either, but my business partner took one of his bands at the time and spent?more money than most people make in 2 years?and did their record to tape at said "LA"-like studio, then mixed on the SSL from Pro Tools. Everything came out machine gun stupid, not even sound replaced "well" but sound replaced with no velocity or round robin (it would seem) or anything? Oh and its not a metal record at all, more like The Dead Weather (and the band came out about the same time period).

He swears up and down that one day we are going to go back, retransfer all of those tapes, and start it fucking over.



I think there are a thousand terrible aesthetic decisions being made on records today, as I suppose there always have been?I hope that some day people will get over this one.

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Post by Nick Sevilla » Mon Sep 21, 2015 6:41 pm

I always work with what I am given, or what I record.

Samples I do use when there is to be no drummer, or when the style of music is all about samples.

But replacing already existing drum parts? LOL no.
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Post by frans_13 » Tue Sep 22, 2015 7:24 am

Replacing drums makes all things sound samey. Meh. Really liked the last Kurt Vile record for that also.

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Post by hithere » Tue Sep 22, 2015 11:16 am

Good conversation guys. Lots of the opinions and thoughts mirror what has been going through my head lately, especially relying on these samples so much in great sounding rooms with great sounding gear. Also the mindset that things NEED to be replaced.

I came up working with engineers and studios who never did this.

My whole interest stems from not having access to those components all the time and being a home recordist. I would love to not have to create guide drums to later be replaced as the last thing recorded in a proper studio on my tracks.

The edrum thing is interesting because most even agree that the top of the line Roland V Drum brains pale in comparison to VST sample packs. So people seem to be purchasing these kits for the dual triggering multi positional heads and cymbals to run with Slate/Superior/Addictive.

I agree that most of what I hear right away is wrong in the triggers/samples are the cymbals, particularly crash and ride hit repetitively. I hear that choke sound triggering as well.

What are you guys opinion on the more hybrid approach? As in using an acoustic kit with some Ddrum/Roland Triggers on the shells, and live mic'd overheads? Would it be weird hearing two different drum sounds blended, or having the kit/cymbals occupy another acoustic space than the samples do?

frans_13 wrote:Replacing drums makes all things sound samey. Meh. Really liked the last Kurt Vile record for that also.
Also what Kurt record are you hearing sampling? Kurt is pretty cool recently getting into him.

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Post by honkyjonk » Tue Sep 22, 2015 6:51 pm

I fucking hate sampled drums. I fucking hate idiots who edit the shit out of reality. I mostly (98% of the time) hate click track tracked/overdub drums.

Fucking rock like your life is at stake, in one moment. Quit building fucking leggo formations.
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Grrrrrr.

I have to take issue with calling schenanigans like this "rock," indie, metal or otherwise. Pop maybe, but for the sake of the jungle, don't use the word "rock" because the word "rock" is half of "rock and roll": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0JHM0Q8JKQ
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Post by Recycled_Brains » Mon Sep 28, 2015 10:50 am

I try to steer artists away from triggering whenever possible. I don't like that sound and I find that most often the drummer wants it because it is the default for a lot of their peers in the genre (in my case, a lot of metal and hardcore stuff). To me, the latter is a perfect reason NOT to do it, because why sound like everyone else? BUT, I also am trying to not be so dogmatic about it as I have in the past, because in the end, the tracks I've worked on where drums got augmented by triggers ended up coming out rad regardless.

I do think that perfection is overrated and when not done tastefully, sampling can suck the balls right out of the music. To mitigate this, augmentation, rather than outright replacement is def. my preference. In the few cases I've done it, I sampled the drummer's own kit. Solitary kick and snare hits... a few each played at different intensity levels. Then I'll combine that with a couple samples from a sample library if it sounds ok. I take all those tracks and add them to the real drum sounds until there's a good balance and things don't sound too unrealistic.
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Post by losthighway » Mon Sep 28, 2015 2:23 pm

There are things I don't have in the computer, or in my outboard collection. Their absence sort of sets the tone for the service I provide. I don't have any pitch correction, or drum replacement stuff. I'm not saying using it is wrong, it's just not the way I work, or the recordings I like.

I'm in the business of capturing performances. When you do this, everything is unique. I love getting great sounds I know I'll never get again.

I personally hate sampling drums in a rock and roll recording. It goes against the strengths of the genre to me. Techno, industrial, top 40 pop, I get it. People do it, that's part of the sound. That's just not who I serve.

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Post by Jarvis » Thu Oct 01, 2015 4:55 am

It's a damn tough instrument to master, from using all four limbs to pissing off everyone within hearing distance.
Hi. Scott Jarvis here, of Scott Jarvis's Pathetic Little Vanity Project and I would like to thank my Mom and my sibs for what they went through so that I could learn to play this anachronistic instrument. I suspect that in the future we will have less drumkit artists and more programmers. It is the way of least resistance and if humans can find an easier way, they will take it.
Still the ladies love a drummer. Or so I'm told.
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Post by oneflightup » Fri Oct 02, 2015 2:08 am

Hi all,

Interesting thread.

My approach is always 'keep it real'. I love real drummers, real kits, real mics, real recordings. I don't 'look down' on the use of samples or anything else, it's just not my way of working.

I had memories reading the OP of the saying that went around in the 80's and 90's - that real drummers weren't needed anymore as drum machines replace them.
Well, a few decades on and there are still plenty of drummers and real drum recordings.

Same with computers and visual art. Some art is now made using computers. But plenty of art is still made the old fashioned way!

Cheers!

Nick

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