Quote:
Originally Posted by albee1952
What I have always done with VI drums is make them my own. That happens in a few ways:
#1-turn off all the ambience and room mics
#2-detune the drums(and make presets for all of these tips) slightly different from factory(just pushing tuning up or down slightly is enough and some folks tune for the song. As with anything, YMMV)
#3-split drums out to their own tracks and treat them as you would if you had recorded them yourself. And remember that you can decide whether to pan according to the drummer's perspective, or the audience perspective(my preference is audience perspective, but either is valid)
#4-use sends and feed everything(minus bass drum  ) to a stereo AUX with a room reverb that pleases you(for me, its often the IK Classik Room). Not suggesting a big cavernous reverb, just put the drums into a room of your choosing, instead of the room that was used by Toontrack(or whoever). This one tip will present a major shift way from sounding like everyone else that uses the same VI.
#5-don't just drag&drop the midi loops and call it done. Go in and edit the midi. Something as simple as removing a few hits on bass drum, change the bass drum pattern to match your bass track, or adding a few grace notes on the snare. Or dragging the notes for hihat in a chorus or bridge and moving them to a ride, or the ride bell.(a lot of factory loops are much too busy for me. Just because a drummer CAN play that busy, doesn't mean they WOULD play that busy) |
Good tips - the lot!
RE #5 - Going backwards, it's typical for me to build my song's drum structure all in one sitting so that I have something to start with and print them. I'll take performance notes as I go along. Things like add a tom-riff here, or ease off the snare a bit there, etc, etc. I'll add them in just before final mix-down.
RE #4 - You're talking about out in the DAW, right? I've done similar to this. I've tried enhancing the ambience inside the VI mixer and I've tried adding ambience on the DAW - both with and without those elements coming in from the VI. What a mess that can be.
It's nice to take a Reverb from a snare track inside the VI and emulate it inside the DAW the best I can so that the snare sounds very close. Makes it available for re-use for anything. Even duplicating and giving a clean copy to a guitar track to give it sort of relational glue.
RE #3: I do this unless I am very lazy and temporary. The only thing I don't like is how SD3 with take 3-mono kick mics, for example, and make me take stereo tracks. I'm going to apply the bounce to mic channels feature and make that all Mono.
RE #2: This I need to do much more than I do. That, and the envelope features.
RE #1: I mean, why not, right? I often don't use them. Too messy and I don't seem to know how to blend them in properly.
Thanks again for the comments!