Drum Samples, Replacement, Triggers FAQ

[006]

So I noticed there isn't a sticky for using samples and replacing drums 'n all that good stuff. Well, I've decided to make a little FAQ for it and hopefully it will help some people out Brett should be making it into a sticky and putting in the FAQ links soon.

Where to begin...well I will just take it one at a time and base it off of questions that I have seen in the past. Here goes:

What are samples?

Samples are pretty much exactly what you would expect from the name - a sample of something. In this case, we're talking about drum samples specifically. Usually you can find one-hits of kicks, snares and toms floating about the internet. There happens to be quite a few here, including a big zip file containing a lot of good kick samples. Sometimes you get multi-samples, meaning there are multiple samples of the same source (let's say a snare) where each sample is of a different velocity or sometimes the same velocity, just another hit. This is good because every time a drummer hits a snare he doesn't hit it exactly the same. Sometimes you will find multi-samples of the same kick drum or toms. The more the merrier.

Why would someone use samples?

Lets say you are recording a band, and the guitars sound amazing, the vocals came out perfect and that bass is kicking you in the chest, but the drums just fucking suck. So despite the ungodly sound of everything else, it doesn't matter because the drums are bringing down the house. Using samples can save the day. Samples are recorded (usually) really well and have no bleed in them. Because the person taking/making the sample(s) can take all the time in the world to find a good mic position, unlike your situation where the band wanted to hurry because they could only afford 4 hours. So you get to take advantage of somebody else's leisure. And because there is no bleed in the samples, you can get a much cleaner drum sound. So that you can really hear what is possible with drums samples, I would like to direct you to Steven Slate's website to check out audio demos with before and after examples (with and without samples added). That's pretty much the epitome of examples as far as I'm concerned. Another reason to use samples is to get consistency in the drums. Sometimes the drummer may start the project off pounding his drums like a pro, and then by the last song or two he's hitting like a whimp because he's tired as all hell. A key factor in getting great production on drums is consistency.

How do I use them?

You are going to need a few things. One, a DAW/host that uses VST/RTAS(PT)/AU(Mac) plug-ins (Cubase, Nuendo, PTHD/PTLE, SAWStudio, Vegas, Acid, Sonar, Logic and Digital Performer are all hosts). Two, a set of samples for what you want to replace. So if you want to replace a kick drum, you need some kick samples - duh. Three, you will need a sound replacement plug-in. There are a few out there, I'll break them down real quick:

Drumagog - this is what you would call an OG plug-in. Cost: $200 (for basic version)
--Pros: Does the job, has some cool features like visual reference, and if you get the Pro version you can use MIDI input
--Cons: Major resource hog, may be a bit too complicated for some

apTrigga 2 - good all-around sound replacement plug-in. Cost: $60 (for full version)
--Pros: Also does the job, has some cool features and takes very little resources, i.e. if your computer sucks then you will be better off with this one
--Cons: doesn't have all the bells and whistles like Drumagog (visuals and whatnot)

Sound Replacer - this is a popular one with ProTools users, mainly becuase it's exclusive to PT. Cost: $395
--Pros: Very straightforward GUI
--Cons: Only three samples can be used at a time, it's the most expensive one, and it's AudioSuite format only

KTDrumTrigger - this is a plug-in that converts audio to MIDI data, I'll explain how this is useful in just a second. Cost: FREE
--Pros: Easy to use, free,
--Cons: Not necessarily a replacement plug-in in the traditional sense

I personally have owned and used Drumagog in the past and never really had a problem with it. However, for the past year or so I have been using apTrigga 2 exclusively and have found that I can get results faster and easier than I can with Drumagog. That said, many other users can say the opposite is true for them with Drumagog. You really need to demo both plugs and see which one you are more comfortable with.

KTDrumTrigger is an audio to MIDI converter that can be used to transform your audio snare track into MIDI data for you to use with something like ToonTrack's DFHS, EZDrummer, BFD or even Sonar's Session Drummer. If you have a sample library like one of those then this particular plug-in would eliminate the need for Drumagog/apTrigga since the library and MIDI data will work hand-in-hand to replace the sound(s). For this plug-in you just put it on the audio track that you want to convert, and make sure to tweak the settings so that it is picking up all of the hits. Then you add a MIDI track in your host, and set it's input from KTDrumTrigger. Go to the beginning of your project (in the timeline), record enable the MIDI track you have assigned and hit record. It will then play through your project and record a MIDI note every time the snare, kick or whichever drum you are converting. You can then have the MIDI track's output going to EZdrummer, for example, and now every time the drummer hits his snare in the recording, you will hear EZDrummer's snare. You can then try to blend the original and EZDrummer together, or just mute the original audio and hear only EZDrummer. If I remember correctly you can also set the note that KTDrumTrigger sends out. For example in EZDrummer, typically the map has the kick as C1. So if you are trying to convert the kick drum, you would set the note in KTDT as C1, so that when it records the MIDI data you will automatically have it set to trigger the kick in EZD.

Ok, I have samples and apTrigga/Drumagog/SoundReplacer, now what?

Well, for this explaination I will use apTrigga as the example plug-in. What you will do in any host is apply the replacement plug-in on the track that you wish to replace the sound on. Lets say the kick drum. Once you've added it you can open the plug-in and see the GUI. In apTrigga you will see at the bottom there is "load smp". Click on that and browse to where your samples are and select the sample you want to load. Once you do that, you will notice another tab appear next to waveform's picture labeled "2". If you click on that, and then "load smp" again, you can load a 2nd sample. apTrigga allows up to 9 samples to be loaded at one time. Drumagog allows a few more (I think 12), but I've never really found the need for more than 8 myself.

Now that your samples are loaded, you need to set your blending and threshold to what you are trying to accomplish. If you only want to hear the sample, you are going to turn the dry knob to 0 (zero). If you want to hear half original sound and half sample, turn the dry knob to 50. apTrigga's blending knobs can be a little confusing since they both go from 0-200, but mess with them and you'll get the hang of it. Drumagog has a single 0-100 knob for blending. So once you've set the blend amount, now you need to set your threshold so that you are only hearing a sample when the kick is being hit. If you have a lot of bleed from other drums in the original track, I would suggest editing it out or using a gate before apTrigga/Drumagog. Once you have a clean kick track coming in, look at apTrigga's level meter and you will see the peaks of the kick drum. Slide the threshold down to just below the lowest kick drum peak. That should do the trick.

Drumagog and apTrigga have similar triggering modes. In apTrigga there are a few that I use most often. Those are Dynamic, Stack and Random. Dynamic is just as it sounds, it uses the information from the input to play back a sample that you have designated to play at different levels above the threshold. So if the kick hit is just barely above the threshold, it will play back a sample at a comparable level. If the kick hit is way above the threshold, it will play back a full blast sample. Stack mode is cool if you have a few samples that sound good when played together (on top of each other). My favorite mode is Random. This is good when you have several hits of the same velocity and the style music isn't really dynamic. When it triggers a sample, it will select on randomly from the ones you loaded. This helps to avoid the machine-gun effect.

I only have one kick/snare/tom sample to use. Won't that sound like a drum machine?

Yes. But you can do something to help that. Typically with kicks it isn't a big deal, unless the music is a little more dynamic/organic than say, tech-death or something where the same samples played repeatedly is the sound you want to have. For snares and toms, however, it's always best to have several samples. If you only have one, there is a trick that I have used, as well as others, to create more samples from the one you have. Take the sample you have and pitch it down just a few 10ths of a cent, just a few. Then load that one in. Take the original sample again and pitch it up just a few 10ths of a cent. Then load that one in. You now have three samples from the one you originally had. If you pitch it up or down too much, though, it won't come out quite right. The slight pitched up/down sample will effectively recreate the little human element of hitting it harder or softer every few hits or so. Having different timbres, if you will.

The drummer is very dynamic with his kicks and snare, and uses a lot of ghost notes which his snare. How can I replace that?

With a good set of samples and a lot of patience. The more dynamic the music/drummer, the harder it is going to be to replace. If the drummer uses ghost notes on the snare a lot, you may have to go in and manually place a ghost note hit sample over the original. It all depends on how intricate the track is. Drumagog has a feature where you can set up certain samples to play for certain velocities, this is a situation where that comes in handy. apTrigga has a similar feature where you assign which samples are triggered dependent on how high above the threshold the input goes. So you would load samples, either downloaded or made yourself, that are of ghost notes. Set up your replacement plug-in to play back those samples when using Dynamic triggering for those lower level hits. In cases where the drummer is more intricate I usually try to get a really good original drum recording. Also, even though using samples to enhance or completely replace the original tracks can make drum recording/mixing a lot easier, I always strive to get the best sound possible without using samples, only using samples as a last resort.

I can't find any samples that the drummer is happy with. What can I do?

You can come to a compromise by making samples of his own drumset yourself. Just mic up a single piece at a time and have him hit it at different velocities and far apart. I would say about 5 hits per velocity or so. 5 hits at full blast, 5 hits just a little lighter, 5 hits a little lighter, and so on. Make sure to allow enough space between each hit so that the samples aren't being cut off early when you go to edit them. After you have a good set of hits, chop each hit up. If you zoom in enough you'll see exactly where the transient, the very beginning of the sound, is. That's the start/front of your sample. Then scroll over to the tail of the hit, and right when it goes completely silent, that's the end of the sample. Bounce each one out separately. Now you have multi-samples of his own drums and there is no bleed.

What about triggers?

Triggers are a little device that you attach to the drum(s). They have a piezo element in them that picks up each hit from the drummer. Typically the way to use them is to treat them like a microphone, because they essentially are just that, and plug them directly into a mic pre. What you will be recording from the triggers are these ticks or pops. These are extremely useful, even if you aren't going to replace the drums. They can help out tremendously with drum editing because they are a more precise representation of the drum hits. On the other hand, they are much better to use for triggering samples than triggering from an audio track of the mic'ed drum, again because they are more precise. Obviously with a trigger track, a track of ticks or pops, you are going to want to replace 100% unless you like the sound of somebody flicking a mic really hard.

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So that is all I have for now. I hope I covered everything and if not, well I can always edit. Feel free to ask questions and make suggestions, etc.

~006

[Joematthews]

Thanks 006

Just want to add, there is a free drum replacer called KT Drum trigger which is a VST, and sends midi to be used with a drum machine like Sonar's Session drummer etc. Its OK if you are a skinflint like me

Joe

[Machinated]

Nice job 006, thanks for taking the time to do this - I'm sure it will save the efforts of many to come!

I'll add one more thing here: A lot of people will use samples as for example with metal you want the sound of the drums being hit hard and consistently, which is physically impossible. So for example you may have a setup where when the drummer hits hard your drums sound perfect. When there are some soft hits thrown in, its not quite sounding right. This is a useful time to use samples - so you can achieve consistency in the power of the hits.

Just think thats what Lars Ulrich was doing on ...And Justice For All by playing each song in small sections as hard as he could, and then taking breaks before the next section - so that you can get the consistent sound of the drums being pounded!

[006]

Thanks guys, will add those!

~006

[AdamWathan]

Cool FAQ. One correction though, apTrigga accepts MIDI input like a champ. I always trigger from MIDI tracks with apTrigga with absolutely zero problems. I take my original kick track, put ReaGate on it so that only the hits are getting through and set ReaGate to send a midi note every time it opens, then I record that MIDI to a new track, delete/add MIDI notes where the gate misfired and then add apTrigga to the MIDI track. Works like a charm!

[006]

Really? I had no idea, I guess reading the manual does have it's benefits haha.

~006

[JBroll]

Win.

Jeff

[izzyrock]

Cool idea.

I would add tho that the best thing to do when dealing with ghost notes is to just bring the natural snare up (bottom snare mic).
Also, one thing that works great in most cases is to create a duplicate track of the snare, put drumagog on it with the sample and then play with the best bleeding btw natural snare and sampled snare. IMO that works better than using the "blend" option in the sampler. I've found that its just doesnt get the aligment/phase right. And also, its just not right to do it: think of it like using a reverb. The right way to do it is to use a FX track set at 100% and then play with how much verb you want for the dry (original) track. Same thing here, leave the un-sampled track alone and just create another track for drumagog.

If you mind, I'd like to add some tips for getting those replacement skills good and avoid the awfull "drummachine" effect.

- For kicks, specially on double kick parts, it works very good when editing the drums, if you set one kick slighty louder than other (at the original kick waveform, before drumagog processing), that way, when using drumagog, if you set it to Dynamic, but not all the way if not more like 10-30% , it will feel and sound better, and less like a machine
Now... how do I do it?
Before I go into any drumagog stuff, I want to get the drums lined up real good and tight. So for example, in double kick parts, I just edit to grid one measure of doublekicks pattern, with one hit slightly louder than the other, and then I just LOOP it for the whole section. Obviously you must get the snare hitting at the same time for these parts, but after a few time, you can get your drum editing skills pretty good.

- Same thing for snares and toms, if you just set it to a slightly dynamic mode, for fills and fast parts you can directly edit the waveform so you can accentuate some hits so drumagog will read it more humanly. And if you want to get more detailed: You can automate the dynamic percentage so in some fills it really gets "real".

- In cases that you don't have a great library like Slates, you may want to use the natural snare along with your sample. And if you only got one hit, and you did 006's tips about getting some a little bit higher in pitch, and you still feel that it doesnt sound right, well, try to get a nice blend between the natural and the sampled one. IMO I do it even with steven sounds, because even if they sound great by itself, It wouldn't be so cool that we all end getting the same drum sounds for our records in a few years (or having all the guys with the same shirt in a party )So think about it as a creative effect and a tool to get your own sound for your drums.
Even if you use Slate's for all your records, if you still use whats left from the natural tracks, they all will sound different from each other


Now, if you are pertty happy with your natural drums, adding a bit of a sampled snare or kick may get your drums too sound fatter, because the low end specially, gets summed.

[Manicompression]

Very cool addition to the best forum ever

[Joematthews]

Originally Posted by Manicompression

Very cool addition to the best forum ever

[-Noodles-]

Great topic, but I thought I'd add in this video that i found online.

You Tube

Really helps to understand how to achieve audio to score with Logic 8.

[wishtheend]

GClip is great for evening out the dynamics of a trigger. I'm working on a demo right now where the drummer does a lot of blasts that are very soft, but then he'll crack the snare. I tried using a transient designer - but it was making weird artifacts that caused some double triggers. Gclip hasn't had much of an effect eve with extreme clipping. I just set it to about 90% w/ x2 oversampling and 0% softness. Then bring up the gain so the softest hits are nice and present. The boosted signal triggers a lot easier for me, especially with drumagog.

[Machinated]

Also, expander's can do a great job at getting rid of unwanted bleed without affecting the signal too much. Can't really offer much else with that, other than try it out!

[006]

Nice! Keep the extra tips coming guys, seriously making this sticky a mecca for drum replacement info

~006

[dr_love6977]

Could someone point me towards the drum samples that the OP mentioned were on here?

[ahjteam]

Originally Posted by Joematthews

there is a free drum replacer called KT Drum trigger which is a VST

There is also this:


INFO: http://www.boxsounds.com/replacer_info.html
DOWNLOAD: http://www.boxsounds.com/vst.html

[006]

Originally Posted by dr_love6977

Could someone point me towards the drum samples that the OP mentioned were on here?

Here is the thread with all the samples in it. A few of the links are old/broken by now, but the main ones to grab are the Chimaira tom samples and the link that says "My Kick Drum Collection", that one is chock full of good kicks taken from commercial releases. It also tells you which band the kick is from, my favorite right now is the Dissection 2 and 3 kick The Andy Sneap samples are up there too, and there are a LOT of snare samples that are good in that thread.

I'm surprised that thread isn't stickied...I'll send a message to the MOD and see if he can sticky it.

~006

[dr_love6977]

Originally Posted by 006

Here is the thread with all the samples in it. A few of the links are old/broken by now, but the main ones to grab are the Chimaira tom samples and the link that says "My Kick Drum Collection", that one is chock full of good kicks taken from commercial releases. It also tells you which band the kick is from, my favorite right now is the Dissection 2 and 3 kick The Andy Sneap samples are up there too, and there are a LOT of snare samples that are good in that thread.

I'm surprised that thread isn't stickied...I'll send a message to the MOD and see if he can sticky it.

~006

Sweetness, thank you much!!

[coneyis]

+1
Awesome thread... I'm still learning new tricks, keep em coming... thanks guys!

Just to add my 2 cents: My personal preferance is Drumagog. For a snare track that is hard to find the right trigger settings I sometimes will make 2 passes at it. First pass with the setting that I get the best results over all then bounce the audio out to a new track. Next pass adjusting the settings to get the subtle hits that weren't accurate and bouce that audio to a new track. I then splice the two new tracks together and presto! Nice new perfect sounding track. I've tried other methods but this one was the least time consuming.

[beyond dead]

no mention of battery? i find it to be really simple to use, just drag and drop audio files into it. and you can edit the sample, and add effects, aswell as send individual samples in the same kit to different busses.
excellent thread! i particularly appreciate the link to the old sample link thread!!!

[006]

I didn't mention Battery simply because it's not a sound replacer, but more of a VSTi that you can load drum sounds into. However, if you had something like KTDrumTrigger where you were converting audio to MIDI then Battery would definitely fit the bill, just like EZDrummer, DFHS, BFD or Addictive Drums.

~006

[HatewerK]

About ghost notes: I usually make a copy of the already compressed + Drumagog'ed + EQed + maybe reverbered snare track, and mute it all except for the ghost notes (or low volume drum rolls) parts. Then I mute those parts in the main snare track. Next thing is to lower the sensibility in Drumagog (in the copied track) so that it catches all of those mofo snare ghost hits. Should I do this thing on the main snare track, I'd have a flam mess all along

Sometimes I also tend to add a bit of short delay (23-30ms), 20-25% wet mix and no repetitions (or a simple doubler, maybe even better), especially when I don't have proper drum roll samples. This way, even single-hit low power snare hits gain that "brushing" sound. Last thing, I raise the volume of the modified track by a notch or two: with 4 guitar tracks, screaming and growling vocals, OH and such, you want to make sure those drum roll parts don't come out as if the drummer stopped playing


On my band's MySpace page (in the signature below) you can listen to the raw mix of a new track, where I used this method for the ghost notes and drum rolls. Let me know what you think!

[HatewerK]

Oh, and BTW: for metal, especially if you have a pussy-hitting drummer, make sure you put a compressor + noise gate before Drumagog (the Steinberg dynamics plugin will work wonders, we're not striving for sonic quality here cause our sound will be eventually sampled, so better to keep the CPU usage low) - it will give consistency to your parts, helping drumagog use the right (=hi power) snare hits during the song, keeping the lower power hits for subtler passages.

[Loren Littlejohn]

This is kind of on topic. Well maybe not but it's a good video so I'm gonna post it:

BEAT DETECTIVE:

MySpace

[cobhc]

I just wanna add that the pro version of Drumagog, will do with midi what you mentioned KTDrumTrigger can do (can be fed into DFHS/EZDrummer).