Lessons

Lesson Info

Superior Review with Q&A

This recap some things for you guys construct menu is basically your hub is where you put everything together you got your drum set where you choose your drum ex strong's your envelopes your pitch your you can sample your velocity is there you can play the grooves via this player you can mix this stuff basically there's a little bit of each menu in here so this could be your headquarters for everything you've got your mixer which basically looks a little bit like a pro tools mixer and behaves a lot like one the on ly difference and ah I'm sure this is going to come up in a question and it was a question that I had originally was is there automation on this and the answer is no you can't automate any feature within superior that's another reason to bounce the stuff out if you want to automate your drums and funny enough had some engineer come from a big studio recently and wanted to talk to me about automation and told me that when he was super amateur he wanted to not automate anything...

he absolutely hated automating and then he worked with some really great guys and learned they had toe automate absolutely everything so if you're going to automate like the really good mixers do you get these tracks out of superior because there's no way there's lots of plug ins where you can automate certain settings with in pro tools but not within superior, so you have a bunch of plug ins you can use bunch of presets, bunch of routing options, you've got the bleed function, which is I'm sure you guys know by now one of the most powerful things about it, I'll get to know it really well comes with grooves, which are drum performances played by drummers, you can map stuff. This is the page where when you add drums, you decide whether or not they're going to be separated out, whether or not they're going to be on top of each other layered, you're going to decide what happens at which velocities is where you get in detail with that is the bounce menu that we just covered and then computer stuff. So I think I'm ready to answer questions about this, and I think that I've covered the most important things there are to know about superior so far. So you guys wantto ask me some questions? I'm ready. Awesome! We're going to check anything in the chat room. Let us know if you're getting questions there anything in here? Uh, in the studio it's been a really good dad, I've really enjoyed hearing all this stuff really enjoyed learning it on and it's really cool seeing like both sides, but the physical yesterday and in the virtual today seen both sides of that is really can you see, like, you know, as somebody who's, you know, not engineer, obviously can you see how superiors the same thing as what we did yesterday? Yeah, it's just it's. It's well, it was funny because I kept leaning over to you and asking questions so like, so when you're saying that it's like setting the mike here and change that and it's exactly the same thing, and like you said earlier today, it's don't think of it as sampling think of it as a full production, yeah, and the approach and if you think about the tone pie, which we keep on talking about view, go back to the tone pie and realized that completed tone comes from a bunch of different places, like we keep saying it's, an accumulation of subtleties if you approach superior drummer like that and look at all the different details you can get whatever sound you're looking for pretty much if you just go with the what's already up there and don't tweak it too much don't be surprised if it doesn't sound the way you want it to sound, and but that's the same as recording acoustic drums, you have to tweak every little thing, uh, to the f degree, so I think you guys should get it any questions yeah we've got a great one from the door nellie here why do you send extremes and new channels every time is there any particular reason why not use the suggested routing to keep the track countdown so I think he's a little confused about how the how the mic assignment dialogue is working sure let's talk about that this is something that correct me if I'm wrong superior just does in order to get this on the mixer you need to give it a microphone assignment you can't hear a drum without a microphone uh so let me I'm just going to jump in if you don't mind which is because we talked about this yesterday so if you look at this window the thing that's confusing is it it looks like the green mikes are being mapped against the channels on the laughter they're not so anything these air two lists exactly they're two separate lists so he's not changing the routing unless you drag one of those mikes to a new channel you don't hear it so that's that's why he's doing it and this is the new channel right here nothing would be coming out if I didn't if I didn't grab the dark green guy well, I mean I could grab a light green one but you have to grab the suggested microphone and bring it down to new now one thing about this and two, I guess, take it a step further is maybe that's one of the pros about bouncing out via oxes. You can choose how many tracks you want to bounces down, too, so you shouldn't be mixing within superior. You should be mixing with in your dog, and you should be thinking of getting your tracks out of superior and into your dog. So say you want to reduce your track count and you want less snares, then you route them out to your dog. Basically, the's snares would all be routed to say channel for, say, if I got a good blend and then I only have one snare track or say I wanted just the ring, the ones on one and the punchy ones on another, I'd say one would go to four and the other would go to five and that end up with two, but I was more just showing you guys what what options you can have via bouncing with all the bleed? I don't think I would actually do that in real life because it's just it's too many, too many options and too many options will kill your mics going forever. Sure, what's up, you talked earlier about how you know you'll spend hours and hours selecting the the voices and setting up a kit? Is that something that you do? Per album once you kind of have a feel for what the music is or is it something where you have some several kits that you've built and then you take one of those presets and modify it based on the specific project you're working on? Well at this point I have a bunch of kids that I've built so in the interest of time I'll definitely go to one of my go to kits like if I know I'm doing some band with a bunch of breakdowns that want to sound a certain way and I've got a kit that already sounds a certain way I'm going to go to that and then start tweaking from there but that's the same thing as having five different drum sets and knowing well this drum set has thunder tom's like these air the thunder times this's the snare that cracks the most so I'm going to pick these drums for this drama and that's basically like your acoustic preset yeah so I definitely have my own presets ous far as superior goes but I think that like jesse can and set in his class presets are good if you use them as a starting point uh if you know that it drops that's going to work for somebody by all means or something being a certain band start there and tweak it from there you never know where you'll get and if it doesn't work well got lots of options here, co thumb more questions, so we've covered a ton today and actually what I would love to hear I'd love to go back and before we end, talk to the folks here, we started off the day by asking if you had any thoughts of how you would use virtual drums in your own work, and a lot of people were like, I don't really at the moment, so I'm curious if you guys now, after seeing this, have any new thoughts or things that you've thought of ways that you can do it, let's start over. Um, yeah, I mean, I can see tons of applicable uses now, mainly one of the cool things that I've taken away from this is like, this seems like a really awesome replacement for having, you know, the the drum room where we have all of the different snares and symbols and things and realized two cheese from have this seems like a awesome tool kit on one spot, or you can experiment with that without having, you know, tens of thousand dollars worth of gear, and you can always make a hybrid of acoustic drums with superior drummer. We're going to talk about that tomorrow as well, but for instance, say you have a terrible room while you can use the superior rooms with your acoustic drums and you'll never be able to tell that those air not riel rooms there's ways to do that you could record riel symbols on programmed kicks and snares and that works really well for certain bands that's actually a really popular sound these days for whatever reason it it actually sounds really good so there's a bunch of hybrid uses for it and that heir not just strictly virtual drums or rial drums so that as well as the fact that yeah, not everyone can have fifteen snares and cymbal collection that this wide and on awesome drum room some you know, this will replace a lot of that need yeah, just listening today I've I feel like I've developed my palate for, you know, snare tones or what to listen to when when comparing them against one another and that's pretty cool video if you learn a lot more about that tomorrow too I enjoy elektronik beats and beat making and ah, but I think a lot of time you know the ada wait sounds kind of it's get stale I think it's really interesting seeing just the amount of parameters you have the amount of control you have over your drum sound and I guess you know, after seeing this for me I would just be curious to experiment I really enjoyed layering like littering the snare I think that's just a really interesting use of technology but you know, having these ah you know, handcrafted sounds like the audio library is really pretty cool well just to let you know I don't know it's available right here doesn't well, they have an elektronik kit and they also have one call number one hits which isa bunch elektronik sounds too and it comes up like a bunch of pads uh it's actually the old superior drummer view but it comes up is a bunch of pads like drum machine pads and actually really cool sounds so right here actually is the classic view that's the way it used to look that looks more like a traditional um drum machine but yeah, you should check out number one hits its actually pretty cool sounds like a winner I was I've never really messed a lot with programming beats at all but um after going through this it seems this feels less like programming beach mainly be I think you know, because it's different than like that traditional drum machine type thing like the view you just showed I I can see potentially using it as kind of a hybrid thing along with real drums or as kind of a previous tool for preproduction toe work parts out I can see how it be really useful for just putting something together for the guitarist in the band to work against in working out parts and stuff too yeah absolutely it you saw from yesterday, if you're going to do on all out drum production, it could get very tiring to do that while writing and if you're doing a stripped down drum production with acoustic drums, you may not have the control over all of the individual instruments that you want for writing because of all the bleed and the fact that you're not going to be able to take out certain things. So I think that this is a better alternative than recording pre pro with acoustic drums unless if you have a drummer like sean who can do stuff and one or two takes like that, this is a much better option so also on the subject of hybrid and just want to say that there's a lot of drummers who will trigger superior drummer live and that's what you'll hear through the p ay have rial symbols and then triggers on the drums or what not like the same hybrid options that exist for the studio people are doing live so for those of you who arm or into the single take type situations that this is africa will to that as well you wanna you wanna talk? Um sure uh, I will probably remain a stubborn old man about this sort of thing um but in the context of recording a more technically demanding metal band or whatever, I could see myself using it as a tool to set out ah metrodome and then have a guitar's track to it and then possibly track real drums or it would probably or of a writing or production tool than anything but it's it's real cool man if you're looking at it as just a straight up pre pro tool, you might just want to check out easy drummer because literally the only options you have are selecting the drum like this menu and the mixer is literally just failures and pans and everything is pre mixed like we said, you don't really have to mess with the tones too much it just sounds good or at the gate and it's just a perfect pre pro tools so that's all you would use it for that might be a better bet it's also way easier on the cpu because coming in and about a gig per drum set his way better than twenty also one not old stubborn old man thing is that I heard things I you could totally tricked me that they were real drums that when we were listening to the metal stuff especially when the overheads are a little bit quieter in the mix that's usually what kind of stands out to me rides in high hats but I thought some of it was incredibly convincing today well that's that's and I'm glad to hear that and that's why a lot of people prefer those hybrid recordings these days is some people just want to hear a new acoustic ride and fair enough if that's what they want to hear so you just mute that out and have the drummer play the ride part over it maybe put some pads down so that they can keep a feel and if the drummer khun do it it works out really well you get the best of both worlds so but that's good to hear that we tricked you some that that's uh well there's a few there's a few pieces of gear where I've lately seen people shift over to accepting digital solutions like the camper amp or something like that were people who are hard core tube snobs will we'll agree that they can't tell the difference anymore and I feel like we're getting there with just about every aspect of recording but I only youtube commenters would agree with them if only that would be the rial the real test of if something sounds good right? I don't waste my time on the fantasies that will never come true so that all the youtube commenters will be happy with something well that any of them will be happy with something yeah yeah well just be happy at all about anything. Yeah that's probably not gonna happen well, cool I'm glad that uh I'm glad that we tricked you that was kind of the goal yeah, so also maybe um I guess just even before taking this class and last, like maybe six months or so as I've like just from no infant and talking them all the time, but this kind of thing just hearing things like that, like albums that I had listened to for months or years or even with real drums there with this kind of thing and I just had no idea just kind of helps play into the whole idea like this is really like the kind of thing that if you're a real dreamer like you should kind of be a little frightened because it's just so convincing. So riel and so I kind of came in this class already with that knowledge, but like, really even more into detail, just seeing you like, endlessly later things in saying that in your real life job that you do things like later ten or fifteen snares, yeah, just to achieve a certain sound, and it just sounds so amazing, so intense, I can't imagine at least in my situation, like I said at the beginning of class, you know, being kind of a bedroom producer kind of guy can't imagine, like not using it to light this on something that he said earlier that I wanted to tack on to that was cool about like the ability to like, establish like it's set is having ah character is just beyond just having character like if you're going if your goal for when you're producing an entire thing is to have a certain feel like it's a sound you hear in your head for the overall mix having this tool as more than just thes e drummer was already kind of compressed and put together is that you can match with the drums were going for with everything else absolutely just really, really cool I really liked that a lot yeah, that that also is something that is a good answer to the question why do you use this this virtual drum instrument over other ones? And the reason is that you do get raw sounds in addition to everything else that I went over those raw sounds are basically the key to this sounding unique I mean what's the difference between that and a snare that he played that sounds exactly like that if there's a million velocity layers and voices like what really is the difference, you know it in my contacts that's like I basically skip over the really like the drudgery of, like putting on microphones and setting up things in a certain area and then I just move on to the part where like I have the raw tracks and then I am tweaking things on my computer is a guy skipped the first part of just one of that part well, the thing I'll say in defensive miking acoustic drums is that once you get the tone via the mikes, you don't need to do as much in the box I mean, you will add samples and you will fix them up and all that stuff, but a lot of the drudgery that is associated with miking drums I feel is exactly the same within this program you still need to go to great lengths to get it to sound the way you want it to sound it just is on a computer rather than on a drum set. I think that the rial problem besides drummers with acoustic drums is just that it's hard to have so many of the right elements in place and yet to have pre amps yet to have a room that have the drum set yet have endless supply heads sticks to get the moon gel so yet to be and you have to be able to experiment with everything so it just has the potential to take forever and the potential to just dry I mean, I was I'm going to repeat myself it just has the potential to take a really really long time when you're working with acoustic drums this I can take a while as well though, so I mean this is just the tip of the iceberg and all the mixing stuff for all the layering stuff will take days if you do it in the real world, no, which is why you have presets.