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#34 - 04/22/02 09:22 AM People - Let's talk about DRUMS.
epu Offline
Member

Registered: 02/20/00
Posts: 466
Let's be honest - A lot of the Drum sounds on synths and modules suck - Period. In addition to playing keys, I play drums and some other instruments.

A lot of the music I listen to stem from the 70s and 80s (Funk, Old School, 80s Pop, Mid 70s Rock, etc). Drum sounds are crucial to me, so I got a sampler (since everyone recommended pikcing up a sampler for sounds that surpass that of a synth).

Fast forward, I ran out and got a Roland S760 Sampler. After messing around with some sample CDs, I figured out that many of the Drum sounds available on Sample CDs suck just as much, and cost several times more! ($200-$300 for shitty sounds).

What gives?! I'm not referring to electronic drum sounds (which a lot of synths do well). I have a Roland XP60 (Fully expanded w/ Hip-Hop, Bass & Drums, Orchestral and Exp II cards) which has decent drum sounds, but the acoustic sounds are terrible.

Now for the point - What are your experiences with realistic sounds on synths. Have you run into anything good? Is there anything you want to recommend to anyone here? What do you use in your sessions or on your recordings?

The only drum collection that I heard that I thought was mind blowing was the Roland SRX-01 Dynamic Drums Board. This drum collection simply blows everything out of the water and is useful for almost any genre.

What do you all think about certain Drum Sample libraries? Ross Garfield? Bob Clearmountain? I thought those sucked as well. The Roland LCDP1 Drum & Cymbal CD sucks major ass as well.

Let's talk people - Share your experiences.

The Infamous Epu.

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#35 - 04/22/02 09:39 AM Re: People - Let's talk about DRUMS.
optinone Offline
Member

Registered: 11/06/01
Posts: 109
Loc: St. Cloud, MN USA
Hey, I totally agree! ROM drum sounds do suck. I don't have much experience with Sample CDs so Im not gonna comment on that, but I will tell you what works well for me.
I sample my own drum sounds off of a
Korg ER-1, various hand drums, and download sounds off the net. Then I tweak them in Wavelab. This is where the magic happens. I always tweak them in wavelab, you know givem some punch, some originality, maybe even some reverb. Then I put them into my Yamaha A4000 sampler, edit a few parameters, and magically i get kick ass original to somewhat original drum sounds.
So, the way I see it, you can't get away with using drum samples without editing them to your liking, otherwise your gonna have some shitty weak ass drum sounds lacking clarity and punch.
Who makes these samples in the first place? people making weak ass drum samples? forgetit.

What works for everyone else?

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#36 - 04/22/02 09:51 AM Re: People - Let's talk about DRUMS.
tekminus Offline
Member

Registered: 04/20/00
Posts: 1287
Realistic drum samples have always sucked. There's just no way you can add all the little things drummers do, into a sampled set. Listen to the percussion on Autechre's 'Piezo' off the Amber album. That's how sampled drums should sound.

-tek

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#37 - 04/22/02 09:59 AM Re: People - Let's talk about DRUMS.
epu Offline
Member

Registered: 02/20/00
Posts: 466
Interesting Tekimus. See the thing is, I'd rather use drum samples becuase the room I record in sucks and I hate micing my kit. Plus, you get hundreds of kits in a library or in ROM, rather than having one type of drum set in your studio.

Anyway, I'm going to have to look into editing. I already have edited the drum sounds on my Roland XP60 to my liking - I just got bored with those. The drums on that Roland CD ROM suck so much too.

Anymore comments people?

The Infamous Epu.

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#38 - 04/22/02 11:33 AM Re: People - Let's talk about DRUMS.
tekminus Offline
Member

Registered: 04/20/00
Posts: 1287
I'm not saying you shouldn't use them, just that they're not going to fool anyone. Not that they really have to anyway.

-tek

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#39 - 04/22/02 12:16 PM Re: People - Let's talk about DRUMS.
Equalizer Offline
Member

Registered: 02/12/01
Posts: 525
Loc: Scotland
My vibe, like many of you, is to download as much as I can from the Net. The biggest tip I can give is to be creative from where you sample from.

For instance, your average guy looking for drum samples would go to some run of the mill sampling CD or website like samplearena.com or samplenet. The problem, is... most of these loops and samples have gone round the block more times than Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and it's not easy to get excited about them.

Recently, I've discovered that with a bit of imagination you can come up with some pretty cool drum sounds, if only you go beyond the usual crud sample libraries that everyone by now has used and abused at some point.

Here's a concrete example from my recent experiences....

about a month ago I was making up some drum sounds for a cover song and I needed a cool 4/4 intro. I sat back and thought for a second if there were any songs I could think of with a cool sounding 4/4beat that I could sample and then chop up. In the end I went for the intro from ZZ Tops sharp dressed man- perhaps one of the most memorable 4/4 drum intros of all time! Then I wanted a cool hi hat sound. I thought about this too and in the end decided to sample Mich Michell's hi hats as played in the intro for Voodoo Chile. Another thing I wanted was a really hard ass kicking crash. So, did I screw around with some crud sample CD? No, I went straight for the jugular and sampled a Jon Bonham (Led Zep) drum solo, zooming in on his crash sounds and helping myself to some real kick ass cymbals.

In the end I took all of this stuff... chopped it up, pasted it together, changed the tempo, added a few fills and some reverb to make it sound like it was all in the same room. The result was, I think... a pretty cool drum track.

Optinone talks about tweaking everything in Wavlab and says that's where the magic happens. For me, there is no need to worry about time consuming tweaking- I leave the tweaking to Jon Bonhams drum engineer (or whoever it may be I'm sampling from). As, I say, the only thing I ever need to tweak is reverb so that the parts that make up my kits sound like they're from the same kit instead of having half my kit in the Albert Hall and the other half in some studio.

If anybody wants to come forward and say that my drums sound thin or tinny or something then they are basically slagging some of the best drummers in the history of popular music, so screw them.

As for copyright? Well, by the time you've chopped it, changed the tempo, added your own fills, added reverb and submerged it in your own music then there's no way on Earth anyone could ever pin you down for it- unless they have ears like Spock!

[This message has been edited by Equalizer (edited 04-22-2002).]
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David

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#40 - 04/22/02 12:50 PM Re: People - Let's talk about DRUMS.
Leon Offline
Member

Registered: 04/14/99
Posts: 585
Loc: British Columbia
I'm using the on-board percussion on my T3 in conjunction with my Roland R8. I might choose to create patterns or I might hand-bomb them in measure by measure, depending on the intracacy of the piece.
Just my thots....
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...L

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#41 - 04/22/02 12:53 PM Re: People - Let's talk about DRUMS.
optinone Offline
Member

Registered: 11/06/01
Posts: 109
Loc: St. Cloud, MN USA
Thats what Im saying! Taking drum samples from other loops, tweakin' em! With Sampling real drums/drum machines, the sky is the limit with a sampler. I'll never use a drum machine again(except for sampling)ROM synth Drum libraries suck! Well, there are probably some good ones, but I'll never use em.
As for Realistic drum samples <-- they do suck, thats why I like to F#&% Samples UP! Thats what the software is for isn't it?

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#42 - 04/22/02 01:00 PM Re: People - Let's talk about DRUMS.
epu Offline
Member

Registered: 02/20/00
Posts: 466
See, that's the thing about getting samples off of records - When you sample and process them, a lot of them sound chopped off and somewhat un-playable since they have chopped off tails. Do you guys get my drift?

Do any of you have examples on the web of the stuff you sampled off of records and used them in recordings?

Remember, my music is reminiscent of the old disco-funk sound. Realism is crucial. Chopped off tails sound terrible when isolated. What do you people think of the Roland SRX01 Dynamic Drums board? That is one hell of a kit collection.

As a matter of fact, my sampler is getting so unused since I'm not getting what I wanted out of it. I was even thinking of swapping my VS840 and S760 to get a complete VS1680 setup. Besides, there aren't may Roland compatible sounds out there on the net.

The Infamous Epu.

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#43 - 04/22/02 01:43 PM Re: People - Let's talk about DRUMS.
Equalizer Offline
Member

Registered: 02/12/01
Posts: 525
Loc: Scotland
Opti- I can dig what you're saying. Respect.

Epu- who said anything about chopped off tails??? If you spend more than ten minutes on this you can get it sounding very convincing indeed. If you're using Cubase check out the functions "get M points" and "snip at M points"- that'll give you a clean break.
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David

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