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Thread: recording drum machines/modules - any tips or tricks?

  1. #1
    Forum Member TL5's Avatar
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    recording drum machines/modules - any tips or tricks?

    I'm often frustrated trying to make a drum machine or drum sound module sound less like a module and more like drums.
    Sometimes I even forego that approach and take a "dangit' it's a machine make it sound like a machine" attitude.

    DO you have any tips/tricks to pass along?


    Here's a fairly recent clip of a MIDI track from my Alesis DM5:
    about a :20 clip

  2. #2
    Gravity Jim
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    Re: recording drum machines/modules - any tips or tricks?

    I've been running synth drums through preamps (on an Aux send/return loop) and getting very realistic sounds. It works great run through the line inputs on my POD Pro (on the Tube preamp setting). If you can do it, delaying the return a few milliseconds sounds great. Then you can blend the original signal with the "amped" signal for a huge sound.

    I just remixed a piece that was originally for video and was now going to be used in a live show... and the original mix didn't have enough "oomph" to rock the subs. I ran the drums tracks through the POD, delayed the return, blended it with with original and ran also the return through a big room reverb... instant John Bonham trash from a Roland JV-1080!

    It just occured to me... this is an audio thing... are you talking more about performance tips?

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    ZoneFiend photoweborama's Avatar
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    Re: recording drum machines/modules - any tips or tricks?

    Waves TrueVerb will make them sound better. Fezz turned me on to this and I use it all the time now. TrueVerb is not really a reverb module; I consider it a room ambiance plug-in.

    Another thing that will help if you are not already doing it, use stereo panning of the different drums and cymbals. That does wonders.

    After that if you use ACID and real drum samples… that works..
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    Forum Member TL5's Avatar
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    Re: recording drum machines/modules - any tips or tricks?

    It just occured to me... this is an audio thing... are you talking more about performance tips?
    Either/both is OK.

    Although I do realize if the programming is "machiney" there's not much you can do about it. The clip I posted above was actually played on an electronic kit, not "programmed" per say.
    The audio is probably more what I wanted. A lot of the times my MIDI drum tracks sound "flat" very two dimensional, not 3 dimensional like a mic'd up kit. I think this is becasue the sounds are all coming from the same place. The panning is essential, but creating the 'depth' seems to be the trick.
    I tried a couple things to 'rectify' that on the example I posted, comments are welcome.

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    ZoneFiend photoweborama's Avatar
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    Re: recording drum machines/modules - any tips or tricks?

    TrueVerb sounds like the thing. Check out my "another Blues" track in the jam zone. The second take, not the first one. The second one is the "joke" track.

    All the clips were dissimilar, but TrueVerb gave them all continuity between them. Well up to a point..

    Sounds like what Jim is doing with the pod is similar. TrueVerb is just doing it digitally. But the POD thing will add an analog dimension to it due to slight generation loss. Which is a good thing in this case.
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    Forum Member TL5's Avatar
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    Re: recording drum machines/modules - any tips or tricks?

    Trueverb is a waves plug in? Available individually or part of a set?

    I'm still using an old VS880 V-Expanded at home, no plugs allowed. Although I do have CoolEdit Pro2 on my PC.

    I guess I could, record on the 880 - transfer to CEPro and back again.

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    Re: recording drum machines/modules - any tips or tricks?

    Quote Originally Posted by TL5
    DO you have any tips/tricks to pass along?
    Yeah, play the drums from a MIDI controller and make your own loops for the piece you're recording, using a software drum machine with velocity-layered samples.
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    ZoneFiend photoweborama's Avatar
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    Re: recording drum machines/modules - any tips or tricks?

    TrueVerb is in a package, though I don't remember which one.... I don't know if you can get it indivually.
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    Forum Member TL5's Avatar
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    Re: recording drum machines/modules - any tips or tricks?

    Quote Originally Posted by Bongolation
    Yeah, play the drums from a MIDI controller and make your own loops for the piece you're recording, using a software drum machine with velocity-layered samples.
    question 1) How is this better than a module like the Alesis DM5 or the samples from a Roland synth module such as the JV-1010 or the JV-1080 that Gravity Jim mentioned, provided you are programming from a MIDI controller?

    question 2) Why would you make "loops"? Why not play the track through to the end?

  10. #10
    fezz parka
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    Re: recording drum machines/modules - any tips or tricks?

    For what you're using (the VS880), Jim's approach is spot on. Run the DM5 thru Pods, SPX90's, even stomp boxes. The most important thing is the room sound from the reverb. If you want to drop the tracks into Cool Edit, then the TrueVerb is really the shizzle. So is the Antares mic and tube modeler. Bongolation's approach will give a more human feel.
    Check out "Why Can't You See Me" and "Shufflin' Bee" at the link below. I use this stuff to make fake (sampled) drums sound sorta real ;) ...


    Stuff
    Last edited by fezz parka; 06-04-2004 at 11:26 AM.

  11. #11
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    Re: recording drum machines/modules - any tips or tricks?

    Have you tried recording them to two seperate tracks and then panning them just a little off center, one a little left the other a little right. Maybe boost the decibel level a slight bit. I use a Zoom RT123 and sometimes I run it through my amp and mike the amp. Other times I run it directly into my recorder. Have had pretty good luck using both methods. I almost always track to two seperate tracks though. This seems to add a little dimension.

  12. #12
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    Re: recording drum machines/modules - any tips or tricks?

    Quote Originally Posted by TL5
    question 1) How is this better than a module like the Alesis DM5 or the samples from a Roland synth module such as the JV-1010 or the JV-1080 that Gravity Jim mentioned, provided you are programming from a MIDI controller?

    question 2) Why would you make "loops"? Why not play the track through to the end?
    Very good questions, ones I had myself not long ago and which took me forever to get answered (I hate that!) on various fora.

    I don't know anything about Jim's Roland JV stuff, but...

    There are a couple of problems with less expensive drum modules: They usually don't permit upgraded samples and the samples they have are simple, lo-res and non-velocity-layered.

    There are quality freeware or - in the case of Steinberg's LM4-MKII VSTi - orphanware software (or "virtual") drum machine modules of pretty high quality that will use velocity-layered samples, which can sound very, very real. Velocity-sensitive keyboards or drum pads or graphic programming or whatever will give a louder or softer drumbeat, but it's just the same sound with more or less volume. Velocity-layering is when you take an ambient recorded sample of the drum or, especially, cymbal, being whacked at several different levels in a drum room and stack them up to be invoked as the MIDI velocity levels increase on the "same" drum or cymbal.

    You just barely tap the key for your crash cymbal and it gives a soft little tiny pingy sound like you're barely touching the real cymbal with the stick tip, and as you increase the volume level by tapping the key harder, the recorded sound not only gets louder, but the timbre changes because a different sample is invoked. When you're really hitting the key, the cymbal has gone through the five or six layers of samples to the one of the crash cymbal really being swatted by the drummer. CRASH!

    Relatively speaking, it's extremely realistic compared to a typical drum machine. There is an increasing number of hi-res commercial, freeware, shareware, orphanware, warez or whatever "drumkits" that can be loaded into these velocity-layered virtual drum machines.

    So, if you have some cheapy little MIDI controller like the hugely prevalent MK-149 (sold under various different names around the world) that sometimes sells for as little as US$69.99, you can make just about state-of-the-art MIDI drum tracks with whatever software and samples you can scrounge (plus you'll be able to play keyboard softsynths as well).

    2: For reasons that I can't competently explain (so I won't try), the pros on r.a.p say that MIDI-programmed passages should be kept as short as possible as longer MIDI pieces are prone to exhibiting various playback and timing glitches. So...even if you don't want to actually loop in the literal sense - repeat the same recording several times in the song, say, the same drum track repeated for each verse - the drum track should be be made up of relatively short discrete blocks of MIDI rather than one long MIDI track for the whole song.

    Then, of course, you can start massaging the sound of drumtracks with various plugins.
    Last edited by Bongolation; 06-07-2004 at 08:13 AM.
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