Hot answers tagged drums
7
There is of course no set way of doing this, but a typical workflow would be :
-sort out the Click Track and tempo changes
-record scratch guitars(or whatever instrument needs to be present as a guide)
-record Drums
-delete scratch tracks, do all drum editing and comping
-record next most important rhythm instrument, bass, guitar or whatever.
-record ...
6
Cymbals
The regular way of micing cymbals on (R'nR) drumsets is by using OverHeads (OH)
Usually a set of 2 comdensator microphones.
It depends on how many cymbals and their placement, how you best place the mics.
The exact placement is highly a matter of engineer preference I think: I'll describe what I do.
With a standard R'nR kit, I usually place the ...
6
To send the MIDI messages from the drum kit to the computer you will need a MIDI interface. Also, since for playing drums live you want very low latency (sub 10ms), you will need a reasonably good audio interface (most soundcards intended for recording will come with ASIO drivers that allow working at low latencies).
The Avid mbox would be fine since it ...
6
Well, there area lot of things that can affect this. #1 is what you're listening to your mixes on. I wouldn't say it matters, so long as the "what" is not just one thing.
On ALL testing speakers, you want to use something as a reference. Some professional recording that you think does a good job of accomplishing what you want, and then your tracks.
On ...
5
This is going to depend greatly on each individual person's creative sensibilities.
For myself, I'm always doing rough mixing during the creative process, because I want to see how a new sound "sits in the mix." So the mix is an integral part of my song-making. But this works better on "old-school" equipment (outboard synthesizers, effects and mixers), ...
5
Why? I can only take some guesses. The only person who can really answer your questions is the engineer.
Possible Reason #1
MIDI data is easier to work with that audio data. The engineer was ensuring he captured data in a format that he could easily manipulate after the fact. Far easier to fix a miss hit by moving a MIDI note around than it is to re-track ...
5
Well, I don't know for sure, but I wonder if the statement is even correct.
How often do you see a piano where the player face the audience? In most cases people encounter real pianos (ie at home) the piano faces the wall and the player has his/her back to the audience. In concert situations the pianist usually sits with his side to the audience, so there ...
5
This isn't specific to Logic or MIDI, but I like to have all of the different drum sounds on different tracks so that they can be processed independently. This isn't a necessity unless the sound you want is based on having this separation (for example, some electronic music where you might want to put a special effect on the hihats but not the kick and ...
4
I will give a specific example based on Cubase, but I'm sure the competition has similar options. In Cubase, you can detect transients in a track and map the to so-called hitpoints. You can either use this information to quantize the track, or to synchronize the tempo of the entire mix. Or you can convert the information to MIDI data, which you can then use ...
4
That characteristic drum and bass sound often comes from a sampled drum break that's been sped up. To imitate that you'll need to go beyond a 1/16th note grid.
I believe Redrum allows you increase the resolution to 64 steps per beat -- that may be enough to get you started. Try squeezing a full-measure funk pattern just in between the 11 and the 13.
...
4
It's common and good practice to mix the drums to a group track, in pretty much any situation; that group track might well have a compressor (possibly even multiband) on it, but I still wouldn't call this mastering. Unless you're limited by CPU performance, it's not useful to bounce that group track to a fixed file; just leave the group track as it is so you ...
4
On mixing drums down,
The top pro:
Once your drum mix is right you don't need to worry about individual levels - it is just done
The main con:
A particular song might require pulling out some tones from a particular drum to give some headroom to another instrument, but your only alternative is to use an equaliser
We tend to mix down prior to a live ...
4
Disclaimer:Most of my experience is from live work but the principles are the same.
How you mic drums depends on how many channels you have got available and what the drum kit is. As an example the last time I miced a drum it was a 6 piece and I had the following channels; kick, snare, Hat, Tom 1, Tom 2, Tom 3, Tom 4, Overhead Left, Overhead Right.
If ...
4
From what I've read, the popular technique seems to involve getting the djembe off the floor (whether in a stand, or otherwise) so that a kick drum mic (like a D112) can be placed inside the center of the base. Some kind of condenser mic will give you more detail on the head than an SM57 will. Of course, then you have the typical drum mic'ing tradeoff of ...
3
Obviously, you need to find the correct frequencies – what gives definition to the kick is actually something like 6000 Hz rather than the bass frequencies. But the most important thing is, trivially, that the kick is simply loud enough. It is the only instrument you should allow to reach 0 dB. Don't try to get your mix loud by giving too much power to the ...
3
Posting information about the current status of Triggering, Midi, Positional Sensing, and Drum Modules in 2013.
A commercial drum "brain" module does a few things:
Plays the drum sample so you can hear it
Converts the input trigger voltage to a MIDI note
Detects how hard the drum/cymbal was hit (velocity)
Detects where the drum/cymbal was hit. The common ...
3
If you don't care about the sound the acoustic drums are making while you trigger samples on the PC, then consider using the drum kit from the Rock Band video game instead: How to use Rock Band Drum Set as MIDI Drums.
Buying a used Rock Band drum kit might end up being more cost effective than getting the triggers and a MIDI controller for your acoustic ...
3
Thank you for asking this question, because I have been wondering about this myself. A few reputation points is all the motivation I need to actually go find out. :)
I managed to get drum notation by just successfully doing what you tried to. The magic trick is not to double click the style scheme for the track. Just click and hold, and a menu will appear. ...
3
A popular technique to do this is to layer breaks into the beat. These really help fill out the frequencies and give the whole beat a 'groove' as these breaks tend to be sampled from older tracks where the drums are played live. For instance, in drum and bass, a big % of the tracks use breaks such as the Amen, The Think Break, Apache Indian, Funky Drummer ...
2
You can also try an xy overhead mic arrangement, with two matched small diaphragm condensor (SDC) mics in an XY arrangment like so: http://www.wikirecording.org/XY_Stereo_Microphone_Technique . To go with this approach, you'd also want to pic up a stereo mic bar - google "stereo mic bar" for an idea, they can be had for under ten bucks.
There are some ...
2
0123 4567 89AB CDEF
---- ---- ---- ----
B B
S S
HHHH HHHH HHHH HHHH
This is the most basic DnB rhythm.
Divide your measure up into 16th notes. Each group of 4 above is one beat.
Start with the kick, notated with B. Make your bass on the downbeat, and the up of the 3rd beat. Add your snare right on beats 3 and 4. Put ...
2
I can't speak to your specific situation, since I can't think of any reason an engineer would use them specifically against your wishes. Mic'ing a drumset is significantly more difficult than triggering it, but isn't that part of what an engineer does?
In general, the main reason I've heard bands cite for using triggers is to keep a really even level ...
2
If you have a Mac, GarageBand is probably a good place to start.
Reaper is an inexpensive (only $40 for the home license) program that will work on either PC or Mac. They have a 30 day fully functional trial, so you can see if you like it. It's pretty easy to use and there is a guide on how to setup MIDI in Reaper.
2
Great question. I offer custom drum tracks via online collaboration - so this question comes up a lot. The absolute best order (in my opinion) is to lay down scratch tracks first and foremost to get a feel of where the song is headed. Then record the drum tracks TO the scratch. From there, you can record your finals to the drum tracks.
2
You can use Cubase or Sonar (and probably other DAW's) to allow the beat to move with the groove.
In Cubase, the Quantise function lets you go from being precisely on the beat to some way off :-)
In Sonar it is "Groove Quantise"
This will at least feel more realistic, but really what you want to do is try to play the beats you want to hear and feel where ...
2
For me I found that when I started using the DFH superior sounds I felt the "sound" aspect had been more or less taken care of, as the sounds in that library ( which is pretty old at this stage so there may be even better ones now ) are very hard to tell from the "real thing"
... as regards the feel, it depends on what genre you are recording and which ...
2
There is a lot of stereo panning back and forth on the hihats supplemented by the clicks left and right. There is also some tight echo on the hats - notice also how the rest of the musicical instruments (apart from the scratches) do not impose on the mid upper and upper bounds of the spectrum thus leaving the hats and clicks to stand out proud and not ...
1
I'd definitely use the Cajon+BD+overhead route, with a condenser microphone for OH (cymbals and percussion never sound nearly as clear as they should, when using dynamic mics). The main possible issue is that the snare might not be powerful enough, but it should be ok if you align the microphone well. As an example for IMO astonishing drum sounds recorded ...
1
You can get an amazing nice natural sound using 3 mics on a kit - 1 in front and two overheads, however if you take this approach you'll definitely want isolation from your other sound sources.
Check out this page on wikiaudio. It has some common placements using 1 - 4 mics. Alternatively, if you opt for a higher channel count Shure has a great guide to ...
1
These two questions should help you out a bit:
For cymbals - Basics of micing drumset cymbals?
For the bass - Urgent: Micing a kick drum with a large diaphragm condenser?
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