Can Sampled Drums Ever Sound Real?

[pieter]

Can Sampled Drums Ever Sound Real?

no.

wrong.

[psychicoctopus]

Can Sampled Drums Ever Sound Real?

no.

well, that's kind of a blanket statement!

BTW, can recorded drums ever sound real?

[dictaphone]

See the Kevin Shields interview. Listen to My Bloody Valentine's album Loveless. That is the best I've ever heard it done.

[ThorAndersen]

Real drums can sound fake. On most recordings they don't sound anything like real drums. When was the last time you listened to a drumkit with all 6 of your ears sitting within an inch or so of each seperate drums? When have you ever seen a band have their floor tom to the right of the rest of the band and the rack tom and or crash on the other side of the band?

With that said, you can get fake drums to sound like a recording of real drums. Whether or not they'll actually sound like real drums is another matter entirely. And whether they'll sound like a good drummer is too. But some drummers sound like machines.

[Methlab]

to resurrect...

first off, most albums nowadays just sound fake anyways..especially radio metal, because the producers use samples and triggersfor kick and snare.

I would get BFD, and juse use the kick and snare from it.

Then get 2 condensors for overheads and a hi hat mic of your choice. buy a hi hat, a ride and some cymbals.


then play those parts yourself. you will have solid kick and snares, and real feel to your cymbals. unless you are making a mjor label album on a big budget, this sound should be more then acceptable. I have had many people think my old drum samples were real drummers just because i put so much time into the tone and feel of them.

[joel hamilton]

Can Sampled Drums Ever Sound Real?

no.

well, that's kind of a blanket statement!

BTW, can recorded drums ever sound real?

Thats where I was gonna go with this. You can make real drums sound "fake" really easily. You can also make "fake" drums sound "real" pretty easily as well. I have slipped many a "fake" track past people who would NEVER accept samples or loops or anything like that in their music collection (which is lame anyway, I hate the word PURIST no matter what it is used to describe).

I feel the same way about amp farm, or any other emulation. If you write a part that flatters the device you are using, it works! If you try and program a beat to sound exactly like bonham on when the levee breaks, it will suck, for sure. If you NEVER use the toms, and just make a bad ass half time beat with hat variations (super slight, like a good drummer would naturally) you can "fool" anyone. The cymbals can use some chambering sometimes, depending on the samples you use. Funny that there have been times where I mix some erykah badu sounding thing with a kick ass drummer, and people are like: "what is that snare sample?" and it is really just a tight small drum with a relentless gate on it! it is "real."

Recording drums, or drum samples is smoke and mirrors anyway, so make it work. electric guitars are played through speakers, so they sound pretty "normal" coming out of other speakers... drums dont come out of speakers, so they always sound "recorded" no matter what.

Just my 97 cents..

[heylow]

Nice post Joel!

[rpowell]

Then get 2 condensors for overheads and a hi hat mic of your choice. buy a hi hat, a ride and some cymbals. then play those parts yourself.

IMO, cymbals are the toughest thing for a sample to emulate well. The infinite variations are more detectable on cymbals than they are on drums. This is good advice, and many records have been made this way.

The re-amp thing, when done correctly, also works well to put some glue in the samples, which tend to sound isolated no matter how good the sampling.

RP

[joelpatterson]

And the next question is, why would you want something to sound "real"?

[psychicoctopus]

The re-amp thing, when done correctly, also works well to put some glue in the samples, which tend to sound isolated no matter how good the sampling.

If you sample single hits on a drumkit with a generous amount of room ambience mixed in, and crop the samples carefully, they will sit together nicely.

Close-miked drumkit samples tend to sound like a drum machine. Hi-fi recording techniques exacerbate the effect.

On the other hand, room-miked drumkit samples sound more along the lines of DJ Shadow, RJD2, Cinematic Orchestra, etc... vibey and glued.

[psychicoctopus]

And the next question is, why would you want something to sound "real"?

yeah, exactly. Classical music is the only type of music where the recordings are supposed to sound real. Are we here to rock out or what?

[leigh]

It all depends on CONTEXT: Where are the drums going to sit in the mix? How naked will they be?

I think most anyone would have trouble making sampled drums sound real for a drum solo. But a little 8th note timekeeper part tucked away behind guitars, vox, keys, horns, cheese, crackers, tuna, whatnot - who's gonna know? Only you and your hairdresser.

But yeah, as was mentioned above, who cares about "real" in the end, as long as its engaging. I love the DJ Shadow drum solo on the first track from Entroducing... even though it's obvious he's utilizing the same isolated hits from a cut up loop over and over.

Leigh

[Rigsby]

Close-miked drumkit samples tend to sound like a drum machine. Hi-fi recording techniques exacerbate the effect.

Yeah, i'd agree with this, and it's especially true as others have said with cymbals, i believe in can get an accurate feel from samples of every other part of the kit, but anything more than simple patterns on the cymbals and it just doesn't sound right, no matter how many different hits i have, and the hi-fi element of a lot of samples is a big part of this. I did loads of stuff with fairly hi-fi kit samples for the first draft of my record and scrapped all of it after asking myself 'do i actually like this?'. I didn't because i guess i can't fool myself. Why spend all this time on recording all live instruments and 'cop-out' with the drums?

Are we here to rock out or what?

(feeling slightly shy) I don't think i am.

[Rick Hunter]

Dudes, I still say no. I think the only way to make drum machines sound cool is to use them obviously as drum machines. TO ME, its like imatation crab meat. If somebody gives me some fake crab and trys to pass it off as real...I get pissed and insulted. It doesnt mean I hate it, it means its obviously not crab, so dont try and call it crab to impress me. Drum machines are the same way. When somebody makes REAL RAWK BEATS on DR 770 and trys to pass it off as a real drummer, its makes me laugh. But if its obviously a drum machine and they are not doing rediculous tom fills or cowbell shit, then its cool. Not "real" like a sweet drum set, but Cool as in "Real Cool". I think there is a big difference between "real" and "cool". Lots of "real" drums aren't "cool".


EDIT: I think we have all had a few friends out there that record some song with the fakest drum machine sounds and shown it to you and said "dude, can you even tell thats a drum machine..."
Its hilarious. Admit it.

[gaotu]

Has anyone ever heard the newest and best of the Roland V-Drums? Sure it's a "real" drumset but this is the most convincing thing I've ever heard, and I'm sure you could just MIDI-trigger the sound module rather than actually playing the drumset. (Can you buy just the module? - I don't know.) This thing is brilliant though. It takes into account just about everything you could think of including the pre-rumble of drums having already been played. And things like the snare buzz that is caused by hitting other drums. It's amazing. I saw it at a Roland demo at a Sweetwater event.