Generic sample packs might save time, but they sacrifice your track's unique identity. Tracking real drums well and sampling your own kit gives you the best of both worlds.
I love the detail you get into here in regard to collecting samples. Do you use Auto Align at all. I’m still a bit new to it but it seems like a game changer
Thanks Jeff! I'll follow up soon with a more detailed article about how I approach blending samples into the kit for genres like rock music, where I'm generally trying to retain as much character as possible while still tidying things up and getting the drums to sit well in the mix.
I haven't used Auto Align 2 yet - it's an interesting concept, I think it'd be great for aligning spot mics, though I'd be pretty careful about applying any automatic settings to overheads and things like room mics where the distance & natural time delay is a feature rather than a bug, and contributes significantly to the sense of depth. Aligning everything would probably flatten the sound and might be a bit weird. The phase rotation side of things is definitely something I'm keen to test and learn more about. AA2 looks like a great tool if you're being very intentional about when and how it was used - I'll have to have a play sometime soon!
I’m really looking forward to more detail on how you use samples. I blend in a bit of a Super Drummer sample into the kick on pretty much every mix, but that’s usually the extent of it. Sometimes a bit of snare.
I’m still learning Auto Align, but yeah you necessarily want to feed every mic into it. They it can rotate phase is mind boggling 🤯
Great article. The only thing holding me back from recording acoustic drums is that I don’t have a good room for it. It would sound awful in my laundry room/cat bathroom studio. It’s the same reason I use headphones, even though I have great speaker monitors. I use a Roland kit with Superior Drummer 3, but I’d much rather be recording real drums. When I can build or buy a proper studio space, I will get an acoustic set and start recording that way.
You might learn a lot from getting started in that difficult space though, and might be surprised! Then by the time you've got a better space, you'll be significantly more experienced at getting a decent sound, and will suddenly have a new advantage of a nicer sounding room. Lots to learn by working in less than ideal situations.
Interesting read. In my case I’m unlikely to play / record with a band again, though I well remember how our drummer seemed to fill the available spaces, from a sound and physical perspective. Where I’m at is trying to create accompanying drum tracks just from a vst drum machine. I’ve never used a sample. That’s all to learn… one day. I’m imagining that if / when I do I’ll find there will be samples that fit together and ones that don’t. Maybe like this article in some respects, samples that can work with a human drumming and ones that make it sound wrong. We’ll see I guess.
Yeah, virtual drums are a bit of a different story to this - what drum VSTs are you using, Mark? I've found they can vary a fair bit in terms of how realistic a sound I can get out of them, keen to hear what you've tried!
Well… a little background first, before you wonder why I’m using… you may recall I’m retired and an aim is “to do more with my music”. Everything feels like baby steps tbh atm. It’s not simply… writing a song, good or not, and pressing record on one’s cassette player anymore. The list of things to consider / learn (re learn) about seems endless. But I am making a start.
One critical aspect is what DAW to use. I bought Cubase 20 odd years ago on Windows XP (initially windows music whatever that was). I have an old MacBook Air (not as old as the PC!) But still it’s 2017 and now not being upgraded. And a marginally newer iPad. Both have GarageBand.
When I bought my Kawai ES920 digital piano the newest piece of kit c5 years old, I also got a Scarlett focusrite which came with a free version of pro tools. I tried pro tools intro, but tbh I found it fiddly and not easy to get to grips with. Could be an age thing 😉.
So I’ve got a bunch of out of date IT and software. It all costs £ to change. But I do want to do things. Starting with exploring, learning, testing things out.
I realised / reflected / understood that at this stage what I’m really trying to do is just start (the learning process… ) of as much of the endless list that is relevant and I can fit in. So I don’t need the newest, shiniest stuff.
Recently I spent 6 weeks in Spain, just with an acoustic and an iPad. (Well wife and dog too 😂). Played around with iPad GarageBand. Nice and simple. Relatively easy to get things done. I.e. basic recording of guitar and vocals. Clearly that comes with “drummers” too. So that’s one I’ve played about with.
I also told myself / decided that to start, before I spend any / much £, I should try and resurrect my old music PC. And that’s what I’ve just been doing this last week.
So on there, there’s a “vst” within Cubase for drums, but I bought LM4 as well initially. At least I think the LM4 was an upgraded version of what was bundled within Cubase. A year or two later I bought Groove agent, which I really liked. I also bought “Hypersonic” which was an all purpose vst with thousands of sounds in it, including drums. Both I gather are no longer available / discontinued in today’s marketplace. Although I believe Groove Agent is bundled within current versions of Cubase.
So, in my resurrection tests to date, plus my use of GarageBand, things work.
So this (very) long winded answer to your question is…
“I’m using what I have available that I find easy enough to use, that is likely (hopefully) to produce a decent enough result for the purposes I want”.
Being GrooveAgent, LM4, GarageBand drummers and there is also an accompanying drum offering within the Kawai. Some of which I quite like so I might “sample” this samples and use those too. Plus a proper musician friend has given me a bundle of samples he uses too, which I’ve not yet looked at. I do like GrooveAgent. But with all these “play along vst drummers” even with good variation options… mostly I think it seems like you choose a style etc, and that’s a lot of what the song eventually contains. So by their nature they I think are limited in variety. Ones you program, or “hit”, like LM4 and the GarageBand kits, then clearly you can play what you want. But in that case, thats the issue. I’m not a drummer. But I do have hands so I think I’ll likely gravitate to an interface which can be “tapped / hit”. Maybe the iPad will do, we’ll see.
So there we have it. (Ps as I wrote this I decided I’d write it long hand so that maybe I’d use the word as basis for a future post for me, create once, use multiple.😉.
Great context! I've got a colleague that does a lot of music work with an iPad, pretty amazing what you can do with them these days! And yeah, there's no point getting bogged down with drum systems that require a whole lot of tinkering if it's going to pull you out of the creative flow - using those auto drummers like they have in GarageBand / Logic is a great way to get something decent sounding while still concentrating on the actual song.
From what I gather, Cubase is still a great piece of software with heaps of high end features and regular updates, and the obvious advantage of being both PC and Mac compatible, which is the downfall of Logic and GarageBand for anyone with a PC.
Good luck with the journey, keep us updated with how you get on!
I love the detail you get into here in regard to collecting samples. Do you use Auto Align at all. I’m still a bit new to it but it seems like a game changer
Thanks Jeff! I'll follow up soon with a more detailed article about how I approach blending samples into the kit for genres like rock music, where I'm generally trying to retain as much character as possible while still tidying things up and getting the drums to sit well in the mix.
I haven't used Auto Align 2 yet - it's an interesting concept, I think it'd be great for aligning spot mics, though I'd be pretty careful about applying any automatic settings to overheads and things like room mics where the distance & natural time delay is a feature rather than a bug, and contributes significantly to the sense of depth. Aligning everything would probably flatten the sound and might be a bit weird. The phase rotation side of things is definitely something I'm keen to test and learn more about. AA2 looks like a great tool if you're being very intentional about when and how it was used - I'll have to have a play sometime soon!
I’m really looking forward to more detail on how you use samples. I blend in a bit of a Super Drummer sample into the kick on pretty much every mix, but that’s usually the extent of it. Sometimes a bit of snare.
I’m still learning Auto Align, but yeah you necessarily want to feed every mic into it. They it can rotate phase is mind boggling 🤯
Great article. The only thing holding me back from recording acoustic drums is that I don’t have a good room for it. It would sound awful in my laundry room/cat bathroom studio. It’s the same reason I use headphones, even though I have great speaker monitors. I use a Roland kit with Superior Drummer 3, but I’d much rather be recording real drums. When I can build or buy a proper studio space, I will get an acoustic set and start recording that way.
You might learn a lot from getting started in that difficult space though, and might be surprised! Then by the time you've got a better space, you'll be significantly more experienced at getting a decent sound, and will suddenly have a new advantage of a nicer sounding room. Lots to learn by working in less than ideal situations.
Interesting read. In my case I’m unlikely to play / record with a band again, though I well remember how our drummer seemed to fill the available spaces, from a sound and physical perspective. Where I’m at is trying to create accompanying drum tracks just from a vst drum machine. I’ve never used a sample. That’s all to learn… one day. I’m imagining that if / when I do I’ll find there will be samples that fit together and ones that don’t. Maybe like this article in some respects, samples that can work with a human drumming and ones that make it sound wrong. We’ll see I guess.
Yeah, virtual drums are a bit of a different story to this - what drum VSTs are you using, Mark? I've found they can vary a fair bit in terms of how realistic a sound I can get out of them, keen to hear what you've tried!
Well… a little background first, before you wonder why I’m using… you may recall I’m retired and an aim is “to do more with my music”. Everything feels like baby steps tbh atm. It’s not simply… writing a song, good or not, and pressing record on one’s cassette player anymore. The list of things to consider / learn (re learn) about seems endless. But I am making a start.
One critical aspect is what DAW to use. I bought Cubase 20 odd years ago on Windows XP (initially windows music whatever that was). I have an old MacBook Air (not as old as the PC!) But still it’s 2017 and now not being upgraded. And a marginally newer iPad. Both have GarageBand.
When I bought my Kawai ES920 digital piano the newest piece of kit c5 years old, I also got a Scarlett focusrite which came with a free version of pro tools. I tried pro tools intro, but tbh I found it fiddly and not easy to get to grips with. Could be an age thing 😉.
So I’ve got a bunch of out of date IT and software. It all costs £ to change. But I do want to do things. Starting with exploring, learning, testing things out.
I realised / reflected / understood that at this stage what I’m really trying to do is just start (the learning process… ) of as much of the endless list that is relevant and I can fit in. So I don’t need the newest, shiniest stuff.
Recently I spent 6 weeks in Spain, just with an acoustic and an iPad. (Well wife and dog too 😂). Played around with iPad GarageBand. Nice and simple. Relatively easy to get things done. I.e. basic recording of guitar and vocals. Clearly that comes with “drummers” too. So that’s one I’ve played about with.
I also told myself / decided that to start, before I spend any / much £, I should try and resurrect my old music PC. And that’s what I’ve just been doing this last week.
So on there, there’s a “vst” within Cubase for drums, but I bought LM4 as well initially. At least I think the LM4 was an upgraded version of what was bundled within Cubase. A year or two later I bought Groove agent, which I really liked. I also bought “Hypersonic” which was an all purpose vst with thousands of sounds in it, including drums. Both I gather are no longer available / discontinued in today’s marketplace. Although I believe Groove Agent is bundled within current versions of Cubase.
So, in my resurrection tests to date, plus my use of GarageBand, things work.
So this (very) long winded answer to your question is…
“I’m using what I have available that I find easy enough to use, that is likely (hopefully) to produce a decent enough result for the purposes I want”.
Being GrooveAgent, LM4, GarageBand drummers and there is also an accompanying drum offering within the Kawai. Some of which I quite like so I might “sample” this samples and use those too. Plus a proper musician friend has given me a bundle of samples he uses too, which I’ve not yet looked at. I do like GrooveAgent. But with all these “play along vst drummers” even with good variation options… mostly I think it seems like you choose a style etc, and that’s a lot of what the song eventually contains. So by their nature they I think are limited in variety. Ones you program, or “hit”, like LM4 and the GarageBand kits, then clearly you can play what you want. But in that case, thats the issue. I’m not a drummer. But I do have hands so I think I’ll likely gravitate to an interface which can be “tapped / hit”. Maybe the iPad will do, we’ll see.
So there we have it. (Ps as I wrote this I decided I’d write it long hand so that maybe I’d use the word as basis for a future post for me, create once, use multiple.😉.
Great context! I've got a colleague that does a lot of music work with an iPad, pretty amazing what you can do with them these days! And yeah, there's no point getting bogged down with drum systems that require a whole lot of tinkering if it's going to pull you out of the creative flow - using those auto drummers like they have in GarageBand / Logic is a great way to get something decent sounding while still concentrating on the actual song.
From what I gather, Cubase is still a great piece of software with heaps of high end features and regular updates, and the obvious advantage of being both PC and Mac compatible, which is the downfall of Logic and GarageBand for anyone with a PC.
Good luck with the journey, keep us updated with how you get on!