Hi, this is my first post on this forum, but hey, you’ve got to start somewhere! I wondered if I could be so cheeky to request with my first post a tutorial that focuses on real, or acoustic sounding drums that can be achieved via sequencing. Might also be nice to look at VST drum kits such as ‘EZ-Drummer’ (I think it’s called?).
When trying to source these samples, I always end up failing that authentic, warm sound, and therefore end up settling for something that sounds a bit 808-y, which is really not what I’m looking for.
Would love to see a tutorial for Ableton or Logic, though any DAW would be fine, as the principles could be transferred in any circumstance.
Thanks! J.
Believe it or not im pretty good with this as i worked in a studio for a while and my main task was to mic up and mix down drums for heavy metal wannabe bands lol. What you need to understand is live drums are recorded through mics where as 808/909 are synthesised. This means that to get a better sounding live drum feel you want live drum samples. A 909 kick will always at the core be a 909 kick which came from a synth. You can of course mess with it to make it sound more ‘analogue’ but it is much easier to use live drum samples. There are loads of sample packs with live drum sounds so you just gotta search google for that.
Now live drums are recorded through mics, every mic is different and sounds will vary slightly recorded through different mics. There will also usually be a slight room reverb because unless you are recording yoir drums in one of those special chambers there will always be slight reflections and ‘spillage’. Spillage is basically where one mic records a bit of the other drums on the kit as well as the main sound from the drum it was assigned to.
You can add these fx like a bit of reverb and you can even simulate ‘spillage’ with how you record etc. Also make a drum bus for all your different samples and chuck on a PSP vintage warmer on it to add warmth and a bit of an analogue sound to it. Also remember live drummers are not computers so placing some of the drums slightly off time and adding a bit of groove also add to the human drummer feel. I hope this helps a bit.
Thanks for this! It’s been quite useful! Mic’ing a kit nowadays is so expensive with all the preamps mics, interfaces and whatnot. When you say ‘make a bus’ for the drums, do you mean send the whole signal to a return track for compression? Do you happen to know any good sounding sample packs for this kind of thing?
Cheers, J.
Just to clear a few things up, mabey i shouldnt have used the word analogue. As it may get confusing in regards to analogue/digital synths. So lets just say more of a live recorded drum sound as apposed to a drum computer/drum synth sound. Sending something to a bus does NOT mean sending it to a return track with compression. Im not sure if you use Ableton but to bus something in Ableton is to make a group channel.
As for sample packs i cant really reccomend anything as what i might like you might not. Just type ‘live drum samples’ or ‘live drum sample packs’ into google. Listen to a few different ones and pick the ones you like. You can also get each individual samples of the individual drums that make up a drum kit, just make sure they are live recorded drum samples and not samples taken from a synth.
i use EZ drummer and like its “real” sound but i get stuck most of the time when trying to process these “real” drums with compression etc most of the time i just give up and go back to samples. which is upsetting. any little processing tips you might have for real drums would be great dude, compression settings etc, or any other things you might add as tricks of the “live” trade, chorus on the overheads, bit crusher on the snare etc… ??
It’s funny this thread should come up actually because I mic’d up and recorded live drums in the recording studio last week!
Ended up using 11 mics, bit of a mixture of dynamic and condensor mics. Haven’t processed the recordings yet.
Its very hard to tell you exact compression settings etc because every kit is different. To understand what processing needs doing you have to understand what different processors and FX actually do. For example if say your snare is sounding a bit dull and lifeless then you might try to brighten it up with an EQ or add a touch of verb etc.
New York compression works well on the overall drum bus.