Matching sampled drums volume to live drums? any automated way to generate automation

[Atlanta Bliss]

Originally Posted by amagras

I don't think a fader would work like that but you could experiment sidechaining an expander to add some upward compression... I'm not 100% sure, tho

Thanks, I feel like there should be someway to get the live kick track to write automation based on it's level and then I could just copy that automation onto the sampled track......

[mesaone]

When you're dealing with a virtual instrument, velocity and level are usually not the same. In the case of most drum samplers, velocity acts like a keyswitch and controls which sample is used (or which group of samples). A "hard" hit will still sound like a hard hit, even if you automate the fader. Trigger, Massey DRT, and Drumagog are velocity-sensitive to audio peak level, and each do a pretty good job of converting the dynamic aspect of drums into MIDI.

[JFreak]

Originally Posted by Atlanta Bliss

Thanks for the tip JFreak, I'm checking that out now.

Did you mean I should redo what I already have with Trigger, or that there's some way to just generate automation from it?


thanks again for your advice

What you have done should have been done anyway. Now it's just a matter of blending the samples togehter.

[Atlanta Bliss]

Originally Posted by mesaone

When you're dealing with a virtual instrument, velocity and level are usually not the same. In the case of most drum samplers, velocity acts like a keyswitch and controls which sample is used (or which group of samples). A "hard" hit will still sound like a hard hit, even if you automate the fader. Trigger, Massey DRT, and Drumagog are velocity-sensitive to audio peak level, and each do a pretty good job of converting the dynamic aspect of drums into MIDI.

Thanks Mesaone,

Yes, I understand what you're saying there for sure - just in my personal subjective world when adding in sampled kicks and snares I've found the best, most useable result from just choosing one static kick and snare sample, the same one on every hit and just turning up and down the level of it - rather than a velocity scaled set of different samples, or even a few different hits. Again, this is just my personal taste but I found when the sample was changing - and the live kick/snare is obviously very different on each hit too - that that combination of the two sounds changing all the time was kind of distracting and never seemed to "sit" in the track, it draws attention to itself and doesn't convince me ...... with the sample being the same all the time and just the live drum changing it seems like it kind of hangs together better - when you listen to it specifically it definitely doesn't sound like "live drums" anymore - but when just listening to the song (not focusing on the drums) it seems to work, you kind of tune out the sample's s-s-s-s-sample nature when it has the live one varying over it as well ........ on this particular project the downside of this approach for me is that it sounds pretty electronic / hip hop, which isn't quite right (for this material) - but it's a trade off, I found samples from records worked much better than drum sounds from BFD2 too....... actually drum samples from records is the quickest way to get a production to the finish line in my experience. BFD etc sounds cool.... until I A/B my song with a record.
Another thing I found that really seems to glue the whole picture together is making really long fake reverb tails on the samples, by taking whatever reverb tail there is and making a bi-directional loop that slowly filters out the top and low end - so basically the sampled track always has a noise floor and never goes to total silence, this seems to make the kick and snare sit in a space, which even though it's a different space than the live drums space still kinda works. I've been getting results I like doing that .... but the whole thing is super time consuming, you have to then draw fades between each hit etc.
Anyway, that's just my experience ..... it's a tricky business! Thank you all for your advice!

[albee1952]

A slightly different POV, I often use Drumagog(5) and it does do a decent job of tracking the volume of the original hits. I also usually "clean" my tom tracks by pasting samples(of my own drums) as I delete bleed. Since I run 11(with the Clip Gain feature), its easy to grab and adjust the volume of any pasted drum hit. With 9, I would probably keep the Audiosuite GAIN plugin open in a corner of the screen and do a quick render on any clip(region) that really needs it. Of course, depending on how much you rely on the overheads, those tracks will still contribute to the overall dynamics of the volume, even though you are replacing the "close mic" sound