Jun 15, 2010 12:58 am I uploaded the second version with drum layering
Steven Slate Drums...what's the big deal?? [caution spoilers within]
Posted on Jun 14, 2010 08:23 pm
Quincysan
http://www.unitedmusicians.info
Contributor Since: Nov 11, 2007
Everyone in the music industry online, in person, in third person, EVERYONE seems to rave over Steven Slate's drum samples. I don't think that they suck, I think they sound like well recorded drum samples. BUT I also don't understand why everyone is going around claiming they are the cure all solution for professional sounding drums. I have a modest kit at my house and I still prefer the recorded sounds I get to the sampled drums I've heard on Slate's kit. It's not that the samples are inferior to my live kit, its just that they're samples and I don't see the point in loading samples when the kit sounds good to begin with...
I'm especially confused to see many experienced engineers with quality tracking space using this sample library and telling everyone it changes the sound possible in their studio.
All that said, I think most users also describe using the Slate drums on top of REAL recorded drums. So we're left to assume that a.) the real drums sound like crap b.) The real drums sound ok but they are improved by laying Slate's kit on top. I've listened to the demo's Slate has on his website, the drum solo kits by themselves sound like sequenced samples, not exactly what I'm going for in most musical contexts.
Everyone knows that any instrument, when overdubbed, sounds fuller and more complex than if single tracked. Drums I assume are no different, but because the performance is so often impossible to duplicate I think slate's drums, in combination with drumagog or soundreplacer or manual editing, are an efficient way to thicken drum tracks by layering, given that the original performance is left intact.
Tonight I'm going create additional tracks for toms, kick and snare, then I'll mic my kit a little differently before recording a light, medium and hard hit on each track. Next I'll layer the 'slightly different' hits underneath the kit as originally performed. I'll do my best to match up the three custom velocity layers so that the layers are honest to the performance. My guess is that the difference will be a larger than life kit at a less than Steven Slate+Drumagog pricetag...I'll be re-doing the Truck Commercial track in my profile.
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Jun 15, 2010 12:58 am I uploaded the second version with drum layering
Jun 15, 2010 02:06 am You upped some of the other levels in this one too, right? Most of all, the bass. It sounds good man. Much better overall, it has a sense of power now when it kicks in. the drums themselves. They do sound pretty good, idk how critical you were looking for here so sorry if i'm being nitpicky and overlooking the big picture here, but something still didn't sound quite...large enough for me. Especially the snare and possibly the brass (though that may just be taste, i was kind of expecting a more "open" played cymbal, ya. thats probably just taste).
One thing though, aside from some level matching (i realize this isn't finished yet, and trust me quincy you have so much more experience than me :P just being honest here), ONE thing didn't *feel* right.. I'm not exactly sure what it was, but something felt *wrong* in the second version, that was *better* in the first one. Overall, #2 totally wins. I'm not real sure. :\
One last thing, i'm a little confused. Did you basically create your own "sample program" taking samples of each individual drum and matching them up with some sort of groove-software (or by ear/sight even?). Just curious what you're up to in that mad, mystical lab of yours.
Jun 15, 2010 02:24 am I love the sound of layered samples over well recorded drum sounds, depending on the genre/song of course (fast, dense mix is where I hear it the most I guess).. The bridge in Motion City Soundtrack - Feels Like Rain comes to mind (whole album in fact), + lots of other things by CLA. Oh, also Andy Wallace used samples on top of well recorded drums on nevermind, probably a heap of other records as well.
A neat trick used is to trigger a reverb with a sample and leave the original dry.
Would love to have SS's drum samples. Excellent drummer, excellent + professionally tuned drums, excellent recording chain, excellent engineer. Doesn't seem too expensive :-).
Jun 15, 2010 04:08 am i honestly think if youve got a decent kit or drum sampler/software then you should be able to make them sound good.
its just a matter of practice and then some more practice.
When i first got ezdrummer dfh i thought the samples were very average and so did alot of other people, and most still do.
even with sd2 people are whineing about the samples and this and that.
Thing is there's nothing wrong with any of em IMO.
A bad workman blames his tools and all that.
I researched learned and kept researching till i figured out the whole drum thing. there are tricks to it no doubt, especially with alot of mics. Im only still scratching.
Thing i notice is, as you mention Quince, there's always a new and improved software claiming to be the be all and end all, but if one doesnt work out for himself how to use this **** then it guess its on to the next one.
I have heard a few sample of the SS softy, no better than any others as far as i can tell.
one big thing when trying to get yer kit sounding evil, tight and punchy is, the heads and skins. they gotta be quality heads and tight as a you like skins. Not the stock ones that come with it IMO.
Jun 15, 2010 11:25 am I missed an opportunity to grab SSD for $20. I wish I had, because I realized shortly thereafter that my existing drum sequencer doesn't work in Win7. Booooo to EMU and their ditching of Proteus! Doesn't even work in compatibility mode except on a few of my libraries.
And they wonder why people pirate software? If one day my car didn't start, and the company told me to get lost, and every mechanic in the world refused to work on it, I'd probably go steal another.
Anyways, rant on the ethics of software life cycle aside, I'm curious how these sample libraries sound. If I could have had it for $20, I couldn't have possibly been disappointed. I saw he had a Bonham kit, and some others. Plus a feature to get rid of that "machine gun" feel to fast hits on the same piece of the kit...does that actually work well?
I don't think I'd pay $100 for SSD but if I see it on special for less than that, I might jump on it.
Jun 15, 2010 12:42 pm I guess my point is that doubling drums is the technique that makes drums sound good , not 100% replacement with Steven Slate's drums specifically. Layering is really the technique that should be so popular on drums if someone is going to rave about the results.
I did change a few other things in that second mix, I need to bring that bass back down. Sounds cool and heavy on my monitors/phones but sounds pathetic on computer speakers.
For $20...totally worth it, hah! I just see $200 pricetags floating around more often than not. And if those are legal copies for $20 then it sounds like SSD has an understanding of long tail consumers, which appeals to me further...however! I like the sound of doubling my own drums just fine at this point.
@ Colonel: You mean using sends on individual tracks out to a aux input reverb tank? I do that in all my mixes, but in this particular mix I used one aux in for a big hall verb and another aux in for a long plate reverb. The long plate reverb is only on the snare.
@ Frag: I think it's that bass...
And for the Deon, you make sampled drums sound better than real drums for your application. Sometimes I hear samples and get annoyed (when previewing samples on SSD website for instance) other times I hear sampled drums and I have no desire to hear a drummer recreate it because the dynamics, panning, and technical performance are all there. I guess my point is kinda moot in a technical metal context, and I guess sort of irrelevant overall as a result. I can't help myself when I hear so many people saying something is just so very "it", makes me want to squawk about how wrong they are even if they are kind of right.
Maybe I'm frustrated because the salespeople who have tried to sell it to me spoke of it like they had just discovered the holy grail. When I refused its glory I was given this elitist snob attitude, "You definitely can not get drums that will compete professionally without Steven Slate's drum kit" That comment x2 was enough to inspire this post, haha. Weird that two sales people went with that ***hole approach to sales.
Jun 15, 2010 01:45 pm I fixed the bass level thing in v3. Let me know if that fixes the one thing that was bothering you Frag. Maybe I need to put the drum kit in a bigger reverb tank to get that grandiose quality the first one had. Still not sure this is done yet...
One handy thing I learned this time around, I ran that first big live snare hit through an RTAS verb and gave it plenty of tail, then I used an RTAS compressor on that signal to give the snare that long sustaining crack. Handy little trick.
Jun 15, 2010 02:14 pm Via drumagog those samples are fantastic and there is alot more than 3 levels of velocity going on. I work with some pretty fast drummers (not bpm, but bouncy rolls) and many gog files just cant keep track and still sound natural. These among a few other do and they perform well even up to 65% wet.
I also use them to fix a broke *** drummers crappy skins or a drummer who can't tune when I was not the initial engineer tracking. When I record my kit I use nothing but a blended kick for the heavier rock as I have decent skins and they are in tune for the most part. Now, I do hate my most recent snare head (evans ec2 reverse dot, so dead sounding) but I have more important things to spend money on, for now I replace that at around 35% with a similar sounding sample that has a little life/air to it.
Jun 15, 2010 04:12 pm Ok ok ok, Cpt convinced me...I want drumagog...maybe SSD too if I can find it for under $100.
Jun 15, 2010 05:00 pm The place I saw it for $20 was at www.audiomidi.com, as one of their no-brainer deals. Looks like SSD is currently on sale there for $80, so you might want to snatch it up before the sale ends.
Jun 15, 2010 05:30 pm Yup, bought it. Kind of funny that I started this thread to rant about how unnecessary the sample library was. I think going through my Truck Commercial drums and manually layering them convinced me that the task was tedious enough to warrant a software shortcut. And on second listen those SSD sound pretty fine (though I still think the snare sounds really machine gun'd in their drum solo samples).Not sure when I'll pick up a copy of Drumagog...what I NEED to do is stop purchasing plugins and build a new recording PC. My sessions are getting unwieldy on my pc, need to chase down the bottleneck...
Jun 15, 2010 05:42 pm Hehe, don't let me sell you on them man, I like the program but use it alot less than when I first purchased it.
Plus, a new version "is coming" out which has many improvements and a sweeter looking interface (version 5), I have not been able to upgrade yet and can offer no insight there. I did sign up to beta but did not get in :(
And actually, one of the sample sets I use quite often were freebies on the drumagog forums. Andy Sneap has a couple "ok" sounding gogs but I did like his snare tone. Not enough velocity variation for busy drummers but works well for the ole boom boom clack drummers. Another free set is from pipeline audio and performs well all around.
And yeah, you can make your own but... I would want to be quite in depth if I did that as there are so many variables you can add to increase the realism.
From drumagog site....
Multisample Support
"Drumagog supports dynamic, random and positional multisamples for the ultimate in acoustic realism. Each instrument can contain several dynamic multisamples, representing distinct volume levels. Drumagog will automatically choose from one of these samples to match the incoming audio volume perfectly. Random multisamples are also supported, allowing Drumagog to randomly choose between two or more sets of samples of the same volume. Using random multisamples allows a level of realism previously unattainable with other samplers. In addition to dynamic and random samples, Drumagog also features positional multisamples, where different areas of a drum or cymbal are represented by different samples. All three of these sample types can be combined for a single sound resulting in a very complete representation of a drum or instrument. With Drumagog's advanced multisample support, even complex drum rolls sound realistic."
Pair that description with the below pic (all those samples are just one drum, some velocity based, some positional) and you can see why a well planned and executed gog creation process can really kickass where using on a couple samples will seem just like that.
Jun 16, 2010 12:10 am Quote:
You mean using sends on individual tracks out to a aux input reverb tank? I do that in all my mixes, but in this particular mix I used one aux in for a big hall verb and another aux in for a long plate reverb. The long plate reverb is only on the snare.
Not really... Eg. Have your original drum tracks + mix, then trigger a snare sample and only send it to a reverb track, not the mix. You get your original drum mix with a 'perfect' snare reverb.
Jun 16, 2010 10:36 pm So leave the recorded snare dry but send a sampled snare from say SSD out to the reverb tank instead of the recorded snare, but the sample in the tank needs to match up with the transients in the real recording? Imperfect snare hit + perfect snare reverb right?
That sounds pretty out there to me man...what's it sound like in application? Got a track I could peek at?
Jun 17, 2010 12:34 am Thats it! Drumagog matches the transient automatically, but the best mixers I've seen line the samples up by hand. I'm starting to head that way too because IMO drumagog lacks consistency.
Smells like teen spirit? :-), I'm pretty sure. You could do it with a gate triggering white noise as well for a high frequency, bright sort of reverb. Try it in a mix!
mixonline.com/mag/audio_andy_wallace/
Jun 18, 2010 07:47 pm That article with Andy Wallace was a great read, thanks!
I've heard about that triggered white noise snare trick too but haven't given it much thought, that makes sense that you would only want the white noise in the reverb tank. I was having trouble imagining how white noise could be an acceptable snare tone...
Sounds like I have some more fun projects for this weekend...
(totally unrelated but UPS tells me my new Intel X25 SSD is at my house right now, which is my main project this weekend...I'll post a new thread when I've figured out how well it works vs a mechanical HDD.)
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