Lessons

Lesson Info

Drum Sample Creation and Editing

We're going to start talking about right now is how we actually start we've captured all the material it's all on pro tools I'm gonna show you how we how we worked with this and how we create our samples so there's a couple of guidelines and rules that I follow number one I always like to edit my samples at one twenty bpm the reason being gives you enough space to kind of just the standard bpm that starts with pro tools anyways it's a decent tempo data have your drummer try to attempt to play s o if you give him a clique of one twenty pm, that should be plenty of space that he'll follow and have enough sustain on each sample from there. The big tools that were used today stab the transient that's a pro tools on ly feature I think I'm not really sure of any other d a w on these pro tools, so I'm going to use in cabin transient, which is pretty much the most important thing for us to be editing our samples and working with the samples. The next thing is all about fading, cutting, printin...

g and choosing which ones we actually want to make samples so yeah uh then finally we're just going over naming an exporting and we will have samples created so let's get into this let me switch over pedals here, okay? So uh last on incitement to where we ended up I basically said, uh showed you the kick I showed you the snare I talked about the times a little bit let's get into our room mikes and let's just do a little bit of an overview of what we're working with here. So this is this is lps, drums recording in west. All right, so basically a first of all, we want to listen to those room likes that we have in the corner the first night we should notice is one drum sound further away to the kick and snare has some very good punched in good mid rant like some good low mid punch and that the symbols aren't harsh two reasons being one we're using ribbons so they don't have all this top and the second one being that we got some goes directly in front of, so they're not being blasted so I don't have an example without goebbels but a little more let's go back to listen those towns I'm a firm believer and that a lot of tom town really comes in a room like you so it's especially important to listen tio this section here and just notice how much impact and how much bottom come out of his way to that that same section they were listening to just the times same thing again and let's put those remarks in there lots of punch, lots of big difference there, so the room makes are really being captured. Tio are really being used to capture all this ambience and this death and this big impact that we hear inside of the room that we can't get inside of her close max because of close make their living two fingers or three fingers, in part, by the way, real quick about that the two finger rule it's there, it's a it's a nice way to just make sure that it's set up. The reason my three thing or rule happens for tom's is because tom's suffer from proximity effect, and you get a little bit too much bottom and not enough attack. So that's, where if, if I did two fingers, I'm gonna get way too much it's going to sound like, really, like farting out of the barn, so if you pull it away a little bit it's gonna have way more attack on the time, and you're going to be able to represent the low and as opposed to how to be overloaded with loan. So generally, tom likes like to go a little bit further away, then typically a snare mike, I'm not, like opposed going, like four fingers sometimes, and things like that, but usually it's the issue that we're battling with tom distance is symbol bleed, and we want to make sure that we eliminated enough cymbal believing that we get enough depth and enough attack and enough bah tomorrow, tom nights. So onwards, I talked about the hallway, mike, which is basically the coolest wildcard mike and the entire thing. So it's going to sound really interesting, it sounds bad, but cool. All right, so let me so let these drums here each and I will play come back without this hallway, mike, and I'll show you the difference, especially on a snare like there's, a lot of impact that's happening, but the problem is, is that we're getting a lot of symbol wash going on there, so this is where making samples is really cool, because I like how that snare sounds, and I like how that room sounds, but if I increase this in my mix, introducing a lot more harsh symbol top so let's, get the snares sounding toe where I think it sounds cool, but then I will then change the level to make sure that my symbol sound all right, and we'll notice that we kind of liked where the snare was, but it also feels easier on our years and it's, not ice picking us, I live here that's where when we make our samples here in a second, I'm going to really focus on those andy it mike's and bringing mohr of those into our mix, eh? So that we can basically use our room nights without getting all these other harsh overtones that happens let's just, uh, just play along with let's just play the drums again, played back, and we'll kind of get drum sound here. Basically, what I like to do before we start working on the samples is I'd liketo play through the song, make sure that I get levels sounding good so that the playback is the drum sound perfect. I have my tone's going with the mix, so want to edit the samples? I'm ready to actually start printing those samples because I've already got in my sound, so let me just play around with us for a little bit I'm going to bring in the backing tracks was a vocal stem and I have a guitar based their monastery a track so that sounds pretty good now that we got a drum sound going, we're ready to start editing these samples, so let me pop over here to the samples I got him great out immunity, and another feature I always like to use is a lock feature on pro tools apple el best thing ever you can never destroy anything, all right, so I have the temple scent of one twenty pm here and what I'm just gonna start doing is going through everything and cutting up isn't happy transient so hit tab transient I never had this kick let's put it on her first hit here cool would you tell the trans indian grabs that car it's moved over here cool so these are eight hard kick its so the next thing that we're gonna do at this point let's listen to this and let's apply these fades before we listen to it so what I like to do is when we listen tio kick it like this I want that extra over town this is what I really care about is that initial attack and the overtime of the sustained I do care about but I want that to naturally fade out so the reason why working one twenty is I feel like look at us we've got all of our attack our sustains pretty gone right here it's pretty safe moment to start training so famous listen again listen to loop actually so let's go and apply all these fans real quick um I actually really don't like these fades something on the preferences here and change my fate what is it like this essay? I'm a big fan of the oscars there it is and you can go so now I apply this fade that s for is going to hit every time perfect that way we leave a little bit more of the decay and we have a natural fade out cool now because he has this long space in this kick I could leave an actual long amount of time if I really need to but I don't so let's just faded cool its godlessness so with that let's go ahead and consolidate these now we're gonna get to the multi sample kicks I'm gonna leave an extra amount of space here so I know that I'm dealing with multi samples now the name is cool cool to do the same thing to have a transient perfect all right so now let me change by I don't like how my guys moving on me like that no windows growing all right here we go cool so let's apply some fades onto this so it's not one time before we can solve it now because these hits a really big they're naturally ways even all the way we see that it's giving us just a little bit of space are pretty much the sample is starting right here so that's fine that's cool but right over here if we check this one if I press play sounds weird he's in it all the way because actually is he right there now listen I'm gonna make sure don't cut up there we go so the idea is we want to make sure that we give it maybe like a little a tiny bit of a little tail there but not too much at all. We wanted to start ideally the second it's so that is going to be in phase without kick right? So now those are also that process those now we're on to you our syndrome let's go ahead and get all these scenarios right here spread like this and let's listen to these now I'll play back one with time but what I want to get paid and you do is you should sound a little different summits have a little bit more attack somehow hits have a little bit of bottom the reason why we get eight so that we can choose for where the good ones and are one of the best one so in here I hear a few that are kind of whatever and after I sort these I finished it kind of always up we're gonna go through cheesing that but just pay attention and see if you can understand why I'm talking about a lot more bottom choked that way it all kind of tell we should be able to but we can we can understand that the they all have a little bit of difference is I mean no no it is the same so we want to make sure that we get the best one of this course and I were on the multi samples of the spare so I will name the snare let me process the fades and then we will edit that oh done. All right cool now again because of soft hits don't pick up so well zoom in really well make sure we got that perfect same thing again yeah tab transient is the smartest best tool that's ever been invented. Okay all right let's go ahead and listen to all of these are applied fades on it doesn't sound weird. Okay, cool. So these last two hits that's a really good example of what can happen to a drum if you hit it too hard you can hear that the latte like there's players last four hits the first of the four sound really good in the last year that obviously being hit way too hard so just something you know checking out that bottom and is losing the bomb because it's hitting through it so those of the time common type of issues that drummers have and these are the type of reasons we're using these samples tio make sure that we don't get those heads and we re enforced lots of impact coursing around to the big tom hits I want to leave a lot of space well actually we just didn't get a radio okay, that is our rack tom there kind of part of fades oh and now lastly we're on our tom's here are four times all right so that's what form looks like it's kind of cut enough a little bit that better listen if I don't put them by the tail the fate on clips out that's why we put the date on there and listen to it again the thing doesn't it so we are all prepped with this now so let's do this we're finished renaming these let me consolidate these and let's get ready to start printing these and make it sound awesome cool all right so let's go ahead and let's set this up again so we have next markers form yeah multi says iraq home all right, so before we go much further I want to talk about a couple of things here number one all my drums you can see we got nothing going on on it we just have a trim plug in now we haven't ssl plugging by the way that I also have to plug ins that an active here because this computer doesn't have it but basically this is my my basic signal chain on everything I d'oh it's the trim plugin followed by the crane song phoenix luster plugging that's basically emulating tape and then it goes into ah the slate vcc which is basically the virtual concert collection so I'm and I have the ssl emulation on their own and then the last thing is the ssl channel ship so I'm I have every single track feeding essentially, from tape to our council and I have my channel strip where if at any time I need to make a move on any of these things, I have most convenient plug and that has a gate it's got to filter it's got the and it's got a compressor, so this is my go, teo this's always set up everything. The next thing I want talk about is panning law and how I approach panning everything that I do is drummers perspective I when I was a kid growing up, listening to bands, I wanted to be in the band and that's. Why? I like listening to records, so when I listen to a drum, when I listen to a mix and I'm playing air drums and I've got to hit those toms and it's the floor, tom over like the time here on the floor time here, I'm like, whoa what's going on, it doesn't make sense in my mind. I'm I'm a drummer, and I'm not a drummer personally, but I think drums and I approach drums from the drummers perspective, so everything I do is high hat to the left floor, tom to the right, unless you're a left handed drummer, that it's, exactly the opposite is hot on the right four times on the left, so basically, every single mike is we start off with the overhead night, we have my left overhead, mike, and we have my right overhead. My left goes in the one wright goes into two that way, when it comes back into here, everything is dry at the drummers perspective instead of the audience perspective. So when I said it, room likes its exact same way to the one that's sitting over there and that corner facing this high hat that one is going to be number one, this one's going to be number two, not going to plug it in an audience perspective, ever I'm not gonna cross paths want to make sure that what is in the left side of the room lives in the left side of my mix. What is on the right side of the room lives on the right some things. Okay, so the next thing is we got all of our tracks and I bust all these tracks toe one drum bus. So up here we have our our drum bus it's got nothing on it, just completely dry drum bus, but I'm also using a send and I'm sending to a parallel drum bus compressor usually I use my outboard eleven seventy six is, but for this demo, we're going to use this eleven, seventy six, playing for our parallel compression, so I'm gonna play back the drums without this. And I'm just going to show you how our drum sound and I want to introduce and show the parallel compression and how that works. Well, not liar samples was father jumps out. Wait, it's, cool, it's. Just way so that's my basic routing on drums and how I approach drums. I put nothing on my main drum bus and I have only a parallel compression on the side of that. And usually they run at the exact same bill and they're usually at on this fader thing here. I like to use the numbers a lot. This is another reason why this thing is an important tool to me. Basically, it's got twelve, six, zero, five, ten pretty much everything is gonna live right in between there so for very quick start points will be, like, great to put the kick and snap. But six let's put the overheads and negative ten let's put the rooms like I can really follow that guideline of that s o basically, these tracks usually live in a negative five. All of these both these buses are being sent to a b bus and then explain the routing system up here, everything that I d'oh. Gets ratted into three buses I haven't a bus have a b bus and have a c bus the reason why is that in the end of its basically aiken aiken newt my drum bus I continued everything else and I could only I can start focusing on mixing my stands so my a bus is always vocals now the nose goes of that maybe some percussion or something like that it's just all the really important high frequency high mid range material that is needs to live up in front of the knicks the next bus is the b bus and my drum bus and my bass go to the b bus together that way if I if I sold the b bus it's on ly drums and days and that's it lastly of my c bus see bus gets guitars and that's it nothing else doesn't that so everything ideo is this exact routing system after that the a b and c bus that all route into our mix bus which every single plug and I've gotta have on air every single track starts with the trend plug in because I want to make sure that I'm coming in I'm not overloading I wanted to stay conscious of my head room I want to make sure we're getting the best low and transit response and not overloading anything in potables want to truth or drum towns we wantto have paid the utmost respect to capturing them and processing them correctly. So with that let's play back these drums with these guitars and let's, make sure we got a good level, and then we're going to start writing these buses to track that we're gonna print the samples. Leave us a less is going with vocals right now. Cool. So now that we have a good town going, everything sounded good. I like these drum towns. I'm stoked on him. Let's, start training these.