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The Art of Recording Drum Samples

Now, we've we've got a drum sound with a court drum sound. How do we make these in the samples? Well, sampling, we're talking about using its reinforce impact and to create mohr consistency and a better image of our snare and or kick drum. So there's a difference between one shot samples and multi samples, and what I mean by this is that typically a lot of the records that I grew up listening to? They use a one shot, snare sample and or kick sample throughout the entire thing, meaning that every single time that's never hits it's, triggering the same sample, same velocity, no difference. As as time has gone on and sampling is been more heavily developed, we have the ability to have it trigger multiple samples instead, so the reason why we do this is that, say snare als or something, they're very dynamic, they don't need toe have the hardest hit at all times, they need to have options, so we need to record very solid one shot hits, and we need to also capture enough of the dynamics in t...

he velocities, so we have all of the dynamics of each drum represented were kind of accents, so the other next aspect is you have to respect a left hand and a right hand jars of two hands, both hands, sounds different. When you're doing a sterile each town this right hand hits sounds different this left hand so you need to make sure you record the samples using left hand and right hand and specifically being smart enough to allocate them in your pro tools so that you know which one is your left and you know which one is right there for when you get into replacing snap rolls or things like that you're respecting the drummers performance and you respecting each hand you're not just saying oh he hits here what hand does he hit it with let's have more respect and let's try to make sure that we fully are capturing our drummer and representing the dynamics of performance and everything so with that being said I only use one shot samples I don't use multi samples because I'm only using samples to create mohr impact and mohr decay and or indians want to sound closer I wanted to sound fuller I want to stand there so I'm always like using one shots and I don't I don't particularly use multi samples but I did record multi samples so we have those options so I'll talk about that little later but it's important to mention and have the discussion about what the difference is between one shots multi shots left hands right hands and how we're going to capture this so here's where we come to our recording checklist this is my this is my list that I like to follow for recording samples now if we talk about like tune track who makes like drums superior and stuff like that those guys they're art of sampling is a ten day process of hitting drums every possible ways that they can make that drum sound exactly they could make it feel like a real drum set when you program drums or something uh unfortunately we don't have that luxury and I also don't want to add it all those things and I wouldn't need any of those so I would keep it very simple everything I usually record isn't for four therefore it probably needs four to eight hits it's all we really need that way we have four consistent different hits and or eight of them if we need it so what I like to do is like I like to get forty eight hard kick hits and after that we started doing our multi velocity what I mean by that is that with the first hit he's going to hit it as soft as he possibly will when he actually cords and over the eight hits the last kid is going to be the loudest one so to start with to do do do do and that way we have the velocity so if he's doing things like a song like that you can change that kick and you can make sure you respect his dynamics and you're not putting this kid turn that goes that that data it's gotta have a little bit of decay it's gotta have a natural velocity difference so that's how we record the kick saying basically goes with snare except we start doing hands so you gotta get four left hits four right hits to get eight really hard stare trumpets same thing with velocity you'll do the multi velocity okay two three four just keeping in higher a matter as you go so saying exactly what tom's that's my recording checklist that's what I basically did it capture samples any and every single time I set up my record drums I make samples of the drum kit sometimes jumpers are like they're like why am I making samples when we're doing so I have a technique and have fake this and how to get these hits without even letting him now when you're getting drum sounds after you've gotten your drum sound press record and then check all your mic sketch hey can you hit that catcher on for me he's going to hit that picture and pretty hard and you're going to get a bunch of sounds of that and it is milan this near blew all the time especially all you need if you get if you can get just hard hits that's really all you need if you want to have a lot of respect and are planning on triggering and using samples you might want to capture the multi velocities and consider using those on certain parts cool all right, so now we're going we're going to get into the video of the actual recording drums and a process so first of all the first video that we watched it was with my friend devon he plays in used planes such gold he plays in damn iron lung you know its place in trash talk so that's devon thanks devin for doing this uh the one that we're about to watch right now my friend carrie austin he plays in a band called trouble coast let's play with another band couple limousines very good drummer so let's watch this cool video of him hello everyone meet carrie austin he plays in a band called trouble coast and he's about to perform a song from trouble caused called nineteen sixty seven now that we're ready to record, I'm gonna give him accounting and we're going to do this. Okay? So now that we've captured our drum performance, we've got a great drum sound. Now we want to make samples of this drum kit so let's do this. We're going to start with the kick trim and we're gonna make our friend kerry hit this kitchen eight times as hard as he can carry it away great now we're gonna have him do the exact same thing except he's going to start from the softest possible hit that he will d'oh and he will end at the hardest so that will happen over eight hits take away so now that's the kick drum let's move on the snare drum kerry is now going to do eight hard hits he's going alternate which hand he will use each time therefore he will do for with the left for with the right take it away carol great now is going to do the exact same thing but he's going to start with the softest hit and he's going to end with the hardest exactly okay so now we're going to do the tom's because tom's aren't really hit as often as taken snare we don't need as many velocities is them so we're all going to do four hits but it's really important to leave a lot of space in between because tom's have a lot of residents and a lot of decay take it away kay great now we're gonna move on and that completes our sampling process all right, so we're going to have our friend carrie austin play the exact same germs song but we're in a brand new room here we're in panda east it's a smaller drum room next door so reason the exact same mike's exact same germer exact same preempts and let's see how the room sound effects are john performance one of the cool unique features about panda east like the hallway and panda west is that we have this huge warehouse here it's almost like an echo chamber, so instead of putting our home way mike's out in the hallway, we're putting it out here in our warehouse so this is going to have an obvious difference and a very cool effect on drums. All right, now that we've got kerry set up next door in pennies we're ready to record like everybody a counsel's do this. So now that we've recorded kerry playing and panda east we're ready to make drums samples out of his drum performance. Carey kinda get eight hard kick hits out of you please. Great. Okay, that was seven, but that'll work. Okay, so now let's do the multi velocities starting with the softest hit and moving to the hardest hit amongst a pervert. Now we're gonna move on to the snare drum carried can I get eight hard hits on your snare drum with your left and right hand, please? Perfect. Now can I get eight hits out ofyou alternating fromthe left and right, starting with the softest and then ending with the hardest hit please, kerry, can I get for hard hits on your rack? Tom, please perfect. Lastly, can I get for hard hits on your floor, tom, please, and that completes our germ sampling process thank you basically as you see traditionally you want to leave like a lot of space in between when you record the samples because you want to make sure that the room has the ambience and that's all captured obviously those were all pretty quick sounds and the drum songs themselves are like extremely high fast and be pm's so it doesn't really matter that there isn't super bunch of the k afterwards but it really matters for tom's especially so if if we could do anything differently and that video I would have had him wait just a little longer between each things that you guys understand that you need to put some good space in between so you can act accurately capture all that says that that all works perfectly we're going to go on to the next video, which is the other drummer that we did this for and basically this is my home's less lp he's a great drummer he's planning they're called yellow card and now he plays and now has been called this legend. We recorded his new album the other day and I got really good drum sounds so he was like, well, can we make some samples for you're doing everything it was like, yeah, I'm on this so we had to play a song and he's going to one of the other drivers that we'll use it we'll talk about today so let's watch that video all right so now we recorded our first drummer carrie we're using the same microphones a brand new drum set in a brand new germer this is lp everyone plays in a band called this legend and he is going to play a song from this legends new album called get fast all right, so lp let's take it away okay great. Now the next thing we're gonna do is we're going to make samples of our snow drum lp I needed a hit the snare drum as hard as you can with your left hand eight times way didn't make different velocity multi samples for his snare now so I'll be I needed to do eight scary it's started with your left hand then the right you're going to go to do due to go perfect that'll work now let's do for hard hits on your rack tom with your left perfect let's do the same thing but with the florida bingo yeah so basically maintain tio focus on about lp is that he hits really really, really hard he has almost zero dynamics is in his entire plane so his type of songs warrant one shot samples and completely disregard multi samples in the case of him, for example so yeah he's he's a great chairman we got really good drum sounds like a cool note is that that's the trump set from the stories of our sound that we recorded so it's cool that lp from yellow card is playing the story spartans drum kit on that so those are some cool samples that we made and we'll be working with that all day today basically to talk about to touch on everything that we talked about with the act of recording samples and prepping and basically the whole premise is we need to get a get a drum sound you need to get your create levels in a pro tools and after we capture our performance of bedrooms, we now want to make samples for those so we can future proof these things and we could have our drum sounds. So basically, the next thing to kind of really focus on is that when you when you're working with, uh, we're working with sample when you're working with drums in general wei have to understand that tom's have the most dynamics in the most multi samples necessary, whereas kicking scenario you wanted to be more consistent with impact and that's where one shots really come in as opposed to multi samples. I personally never even trigger tom's. I've never had a trigger towns because I find that tom's are used so infrequently that if you don't get good hits out of them, you're going to replace that anyways and you're gonna have him go in and do that take against that you can get great hits out of it the other thing, too, is that when times are being played it's in a very quick moment and it's, usually with him having complete focus on hitting those things where as one of trump's playing there, thinking about hitting like the kick in the snare, and then when it goes to tom's it's just tom's in hand, so there's a lot of focus on it. So it's really easy to make your tom sound great, whereas it's really easy to get ah, couple of whack hits when he's actually playing an entire part so that's where I don't use tom samples for that reason. And also the other important thing is that when we do, uh, when he is working with tom's, if you're playing to tom, be like, dude, you got to do it's not going to do, could you do do do do it doesn't have this single sound and needs a lot of dynamics, so tom's themselves, I feel they don't really warrant needing to be sound replaced and or sampled because they don't really need any definition or further separation of mix. Also, the other advantage to is that tom's air always panned they're always over to the left or to the right. Where's your kicking snare their living in the middle of this mix and they're having to fight so much stuff to get through there, whereas the tom's, they don't really have toe fight all this other materials. So it's really easy to make her tom's boost out and it's really hard to get your kick and snare tube is doubt, so that's where kicking snare is what we're really going to focus on it and what is the most important thing to really sample and the reason that people sample? When did you talk to, like most most of my engineer friends? If I asked them this question specifically the past week were just like, hey, man, jean use samples, and I'm like, yeah, like on what? Kicking snaring, no one ever really talked about tom's, and we don't really use tom samples unless we're working with, like a mini trump said, or something like that. So, really, the focus on sampling is on kicks now and creating the ambiance and having more consistent impact throughout your performance with samples cool, cool, that's awesome is that? Is that is that the end of that section that's the end of that section, we're readyto pro tools and start getting into these drum sounds and having a lot fun, cool, that's awesome, we have about twenty five twenty five minutes left in this segment so we can keep going into that stuff. We have one question, though. Branson lee wants to know what that cool controller is. I talked to you about it already on break what's that controlling this thing a while ago, I was snowboarding with my girlfriend and she crashed into me and broke my wrist, and I couldn't use the mouse, and I can't give you a thumbs up on the way anyone so there's a thumbs up, but basically I couldn't use the mouse for a good six months, and I had to keep nixon records and working a records, so at the time I have done everything with a mouse. I was only a keyboard and mouse, and I mixed everything with a mouth because I couldn't use my hand. I immediately went online and picked up two of these controllers, which this one is actually the emcee control, so it only has four failures and it's got this unique plugging interface. I actually don't have this one. I have the one with eighth graders and have two of them so that at sixteen theaters, so that way, I I'm just always hands on with all of my volumes of my knicks, I find that having failures. Is one of the most important things that's happening by mixing career to be ableto have a tangible volume to touch and to be able to touch multiple volumes with other fingertips is the best advantage ever aa lot of the things that I'm going to be demonstrating today is going to be me having to kicked around on like, say, feder won, and then the kick sample on fighter to a lot of times will happen is you'll bring the kick in and it will get loud and all of a sudden reaches the loudness point, and you're like, ok, well, maybe I wanted to live quieter than that, but you don't really know, because all that's happening is you're just increasing volume, and you're not compensating the difference. So as the sample goes up, the inside might comes down and the sample I like to play between these two theaters and find a good in between the ability to literally just go like this is the most important aspect of mixing for me, so it was really important for me to have a controller like this, I could be able to show how we blood samples and that's, why this guy's one of my favorite use things, it's very cool, cool, yeah, branson lee is probably great right now, so we had some questions sam about does the alternate left and right hands when he records multi samples or just two left, then right, so so I do always when you're doing that, you always alternate or do you do just right hands just left hands? And how do you track those? Can you tear difference? And you just know that that was a left hand hit? Yeah, you do that. So basically the respect to left and right hands in the video that you saw I had lp only hit his snare with his left hand because he's usually doing really hard hits on the left and all I'm really trying to reinforce is his his hard hits, whereas and carries a song that you'll see there's a lot more dynamic that's happening and there's a couple of parts where there's some scenarios that happened and I want to be ableto have those left and right hands to be able to rely on if the one shot sample isn't sounding natural, so I like to get left and right hands for coverage. I don't necessarily use them all time, but I like tio I would strongly suggest recording left and right hands that you have those options.