Drum Track Ideas

[Kon Alexiou]

I can play basic drums but the neighbours won't be happy if I start recording an acoustic kit...I've considered a Roland electric set but I believe there are other alternatives....

I've heard of drummers/producers using programs such as BFD or Sampletank to manually track drum parts bit by bit i.e. kick first, followed by snare etc..I've tried this and it's not bad...I've also heard about people actually overdubbing a real hi-hit so as to add a truer feel to the drums...

To all of you drummers or PT users who have good drum ideas what are you doing? What works? What do you think about using a real hi hat to add that extra sense of reality?

Thanks.

Kon

[Jim Casey]

I can play basic drums but the neighbours won't be happy if I start recording an acoustic kit...I've considered a Roland electric set but I believe there are other alternatives....

I've heard of drummers/producers using programs such as BFD or Sampletank to manually track drum parts bit by bit i.e. kick first, followed by snare etc..I've tried this and it's not bad...I've also heard about people actually overdubbing a real hi-hit so as to add a truer feel to the drums...

To all of you drummers or PT users who have good drum ideas what are you doing? What works? What do you think about using a real hi hat to add that extra sense of reality?

Thanks.

Kon

Kon, it is pretty much all on these two threads.

Use this thread:
http://duc.digidesign.com/showflat.p...1139497&Forum=,All_Forums,&Words=&Searchpage=1&Limit=25&Main=113 9056&Search=true&where=bodysub&Name=74826&daterang e=1&newerval=1&newertype=y&olderval=&oldertype=&bo dyprev=#Post1139497

And this thread:
http://duc.digidesign.com/showflat.p...1146269&Forum=,,All_Forums,,&Words=&Searchpage=2&Limit=25&Main=1 045187&Search=true&where=bodysub&Name=74826&datera nge=1&newerval=1&newertype=y&olderval=&oldertype=& bodyprev=#Post1146269

[kommando]

this all depends on the genre you're working in; for modern heavy metal type stuff you can have a completely triggered kit and it wont sound out of place at all, most bands sound replace the whole kit, which means you can effectively program everything out of a module. for slower more dynamic stuff like jazz or whatever you're gonna want realistic mutli sampled sounds (a selection of different velocity hits) you can get this kind of thing with drumkit from hell or bfd (i've used both) but the difference in using live hi-hats is still massive, i would extend the idea to all cymbals if possible, it adds a noticable amount of realism.

here's a cool way of doing it for free and with a lot of flexibility; sample your own kit using protools! get a selection of snare hits and a couple of bass drums hits recorded (some toms if you want to program fills this way), cut the waveforms at their transients so you have a bunch of named regions you can just drag onto a track, set your tempo and in grid mode build your song frame up using just these samples. An advantage of this is when you want a drum fill - you can punch in and play it on your kit, the snare will of course match perfectly and you don't have to do any time consuming fill programming, then you just need to overdub your cymbals and hats. hopefully your neighbours will be okay with the occasional tom roll and crash happening, or schedule your punch-in recording for when you know they're out... also, have your hihats loose and hit them softly on their recording pass, you can then turn up the mic to have it sound like it's getting hit at full volume and the neighbours shouldn't even notice.

i've done things this way a few times for quick demo ideas and got very convincing results, but the spontaneity and subtle nuances of a live drum take is very hard to replicate artificially.