Can Sampled Drums Ever Sound Real?

[bamse]

I'm obviously talking about single hits here, not loops. I was pretty impressed by the BFD sound files, but it still doesn't quite do it for me.

It shouldn't be that hard to do accomplish ultra realistic sounding drum samples. The problem I have with the ones I've heard is that samples get repeated too fast.

erland


BFD www.fxpansion.com/products.php

[superluminalmagus]

I would refer you to here:

http://messageboard.tapeop.com/viewtopic.php?t=7980

[syrupcore]

I reckon the problem isn't the sound, it's the (in)ability to play them like a drummer plays a kit.

will

[psychicoctopus]

Can sampled drums ever sound real? Sure. For simple patterns, if the samples are recorded with enough velocity layers, and the programmer is sensitive to the way a human drummer would articulate the performance, then why not?

Still, I think that there's a big problem with sampled hits: they don't take into account the vibration of the drum BEFORE the drum is struck. Most (all) single hit samples are from drums that are at rest. So it's hard to produce a convincing snare roll or tom roll with samples. When a real drum is struck that fast, the impulses from the strikes are all interacting together. Hitting a drum that's already vibrating makes a different sound than striking it from rest. Ever play a bass drum twice really fast, and the second hit nearly cancels the vibration of the first hit? Or play a cymbal with mallets and every time you hit it it feels different because of the relative phase of the strike motion and the cymbal's vibration?

Maybe somebody will write a sampler program that handles the way two consecutive strikes interact. Whoa... complicated!

[Winslow Leech]

Use a sampled kit that is untreated(no comps, verb, etc) with lots of velocity layers, alternate hits, flams, drags, rolls, that is programmed with full decays, no cymbal loops. Use the velocities, learn the behavior of a real drummer and mimic the accents. After you have programmed the part, track the kit as you would a real one. Then place a small accurate speaker face down on a snare drum. Mike the bottom and play the snare track through it. When you get the snare level about equal to an actual hit, bring in a little bit of kick and toms, just enough to activate the snares. Once that's recorded use clean, loud speakers to re-amp the whole kit. Try and get the kit sounding like a live one in front of you, not a "mixed kit". If you have a sub, put the kick by itself down there. Position the speaks at kit hieght. If you have the speakers for it, send one drum per speaker and place them as an actual kit. Record the room as you would a real kit. It sounds like alot but it's not really when you do it. If you get the programming right you'll fool even most drummers. Certain things are really hard to get, complex flippety flappety tom work for instance. You may have to comprimise the parts a little for some impossible to get stuff.

[bobbydj]

Great replies above.

But another way to think about the question "can sampled drums ever sound real?" is to acknowledge the subjective thing. I mean, there is a butt-load of difference between asking me that question, and asking - e.g. - my mrs. For me the answer would be something like "uh, I dunno - maybe not." But ask her and she would say something like "don't bother me with this crap." Ok, maybe she would indulge me a little more and say "Uhm, I dunno, I never listen that closely." Or a simple "yes." All I'm getting at is that surely for 90% of listeners it's not much of an issue. Cop-out alert!!

[psychicoctopus]

Use a sampled kit that is untreated(no comps, verb, etc) with lots of velocity layers, alternate hits, flams, drags, rolls, that is programmed with full decays, no cymbal loops. Use the velocities, learn the behavior of a real drummer and mimic the accents. After you have programmed the part, track the kit as you would a real one. Then place a small accurate speaker face down on a snare drum. Mike the bottom and play the snare track through it. When you get the snare level about equal to an actual hit, bring in a little bit of kick and toms, just enough to activate the snares. Once that's recorded use clean, loud speakers to re-amp the whole kit. Try and get the kit sounding like a live one in front of you, not a "mixed kit". If you have a sub, put the kick by itself down there. Position the speaks at kit hieght. If you have the speakers for it, send one drum per speaker and place them as an actual kit. Record the room as you would a real kit. It sounds like alot but it's not really when you do it. If you get the programming right you'll fool even most drummers.

If I can condense your description:
1. Sequence with dry samples
2. Reamplify through the snare to get authentic snare wire buzz
3. Reamplify into a room for ambience

It seems like a very academic approach. Does this sound different than including the snare buzz and room ambience in the original samples?

[Winslow Leech]

It sounds way different. The snares react to the kik and toms. The snare hits don't come out of nowhere, they relate to previous one. It connects the dots and blurs the jagged-on-off samplyness away. Keep in mind, if you are working on a full record, you can do all the snare/reamp stuff at the end in a day.

All of this said, I just gave up on all the programmed drums on my album because I couldn't make them flippety- flappety. Boom-snik-flaka-dunka-doo-kadunka-splshhh is totally possible though.

[inverseroom]

I posted this before, and I'll post it again now: I think the only drum machine tracks that sound good are ones where the player/programmer has spent as much time working to perfect the track as a real drummer would practicing it--and that goes for drum machine tracks that aren't intended to sound "real" as well! Hours of concerted effort will get you what you want, or, if not that, something just as good.

[mjau]

I use BFD, and with great results. My problem there is not so much the snare or the toms, but the cymbals. They become repetitive, and yes - like someone else has mentioned - when hitting a vibrating cymbal, a different sound is produced on a real kit. But, that said...BFD is still the best thing going, to my ears, in the sampled world because of its flexibility and the quality of the samples. I'm also a big fan of NS Kit, which is a free sampled drumkit and is very high quality.
And, I dunno...I tend to think that a lot of the pop-metal stuff on the radio these days is employing samples to tighten up the drums already, so like the wise Mr. DJ mentioned - most people are probably not taking that into account.

[helmuth]

http://www.toontrack.com/demos.shtml

[Ben Logan]

I like the sound of those single BFD drum hits so much that I downloaded the MP3 demos of various drums, cut them up in Logic, and made some beats from them. Doesn't sound like real drummer, but works for the "amp-guy" style stuff I was doing at the time.

Talk about "bottom-feeding" right!

I've got a beautiful 60's ludwig kit that I bought with the inheritance my Dad left me, that I mic up when I have the time. But I agree that the BFD is the best thing going for "real" sounding drum-machine drums.

[phill2796]

If you are going to reamp and put speakers on snare drums just use real drums.

[pieter]

I use BFD, and with great results. My problem there is not so much the snare or the toms, but the cymbals. They become repetitive, and yes - like someone else has mentioned - when hitting a vibrating cymbal, a different sound is produced on a real kit.

The solution to this and most (not all) of the 'pre-strike sympathetic vibration' stuff is easy: don't just sample single hits. Play a series of notes at varying speeds, record the whole thing, then use something like Recycle or some other threshhold-based software thingy that lets you make accurate cuts dead on the beginning of each strike transient, then send all those samples to your sampler and when sequencing your MIDI notes, do it with an eye towards accumulating tone in the cymbal as if it was played. Be sure to have a few final strikes after tone has built up where you hit it and let it decay naturally--for end of song parts and all that. Same idea with hats--especially if you want them to sound washy and open; it's not quite as critical if you're playing really tight, dry hat stuff. Same thing with snare and tom, although it's not quite as easy here, especially when it comes to things like press rolls and such. But then, the solution for that almost suggests itself: if you're already miced-up and sampling, sample press rolls!

It's pretty obvious stuff, and not any harder to do than recording...but it is a lot of labor. But if you're already going through the laborious trouble of sampling then it's not that much more work on top of that. After that, the tip about the time it takes practicing artful sequencing--as much as a drummer learning parts (sometimes more)--is absolutely correct. Getting the samples is the easy part; there is no substitute for diligence in the sequencing department.

[Rick Hunter]

Can Sampled Drums Ever Sound Real?

no.