felix stein Posted July 25, 2001 Share Posted July 25, 2001 Hi Ho I think sidereal posed the question of getting an acoustic snare to sound electronic. And we have all heard Acid Loops and the flange on John Bonham's snare, etc. Has anyone had any success (punchy, usable, musical, mixable tone/signal)using heavy effects to emulate triggered drums or not emulate them. I was told yesterday that one of the current trends in metal these days is using triggered drums and I have been asked to record this way. So being the anti-trendy person I am I posed the question, before I get all triggered out, if the "producer" could compromise triggered sounds for a processed acoustic kit. any ideas or thoughts? Here's the equation: Speed Metal/Acoustic Drumset+ Signal Processing Equipment(X or unknown variable)= hip sound for genre. Hip being the key variable. What is hip anyways? LOL don't answer that one. Good luck and thanks. felix's band Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lee Flier Posted July 25, 2001 Share Posted July 25, 2001 Well, the trouble with producers going down the Evil Road of Triggering is that the reason they want to do it is so they don't HAVE to decide how the drums are going to sound until later. You lay down the part and then they sit there and jerk off with sample libraries from now till next month and make them sound how THEY want them to. Which generally means, completely devoid of any dynamics or tonal variety, but boy it sure sounds BIG. (yeah, right.) When you are told that the "trend" in metal is to use triggered drums that really doesn't say anything about the actual SOUND they are looking for. That's the point. They don't have to. So, sure, you may be able to process your acoustic kit to sound like fake crap. You can compress the crap out of it (even the overheads) till there's no dynamics left, add a ton of "hall" reverb so it sounds like you're in a stadium, double the snare track and detune the doubled track with pitch shifting so it sounds REALLL PHATT.... hey, maybe they even want gated reverb on it, let's bring back the 80's Phil Collins sound! All of these things and more are possible; you can definitely mangle the sound of your acoustic kit beyond all recognition. But first you have to have some idea exactly HOW the powers that be want the drums to sound. That is usually the toughest piece of information to wangle out of them, and they would really rather just trigger samples than commit to anything before mixdown anyhow. Especially when you consider that if they agree to a processed acoustic kit, they might actually have to take the time to record your drums correctly so they have something that sounds good to start with. But hey, it's worth a try. http://www.musicplayer.com/ubb/biggrin.gif --Lee Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
felix stein Posted July 25, 2001 Author Share Posted July 25, 2001 I just need a starting point. Don't think 80's drum sound for metal either cause this guy's stuff get's into slayer like tempos hence the name of his label "J. Rippenfast Music"....pretty funny huh? I need definition in my approach on this one. I am thinking of eq and compression and quite possibly Ian's suggestion of breaking out the notch filter and Electric's box. What sounds "natural" and what sells are entirely different issues...I just work here! felix's band Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lee Flier Posted July 25, 2001 Share Posted July 25, 2001 Well... Definitely start off by compressing the living crap out of everything, and I do mean everything. EQ out everything around 350-500Hz. Boost the crap out of 60Hz and 10-12KHz. Pitch shift all of the drums down. Then as I mentioned earlier, make a copy of the snare track and pitch shift that down even lower, like a fifth lower. Slide it out so it's maybe 100ms delayed behind the main snare track. Mix it in so it's subtly behind the main track. Find a big hall reverb setting and cut the tail on it so it's very short (at least on a fast number) but sounds huge for the duration. Give it 40ms or so predelay so the impact of the hit is not lost. Use it on the snare, toms, and overheads. If you have a second reverb unit I'd suggest using a different verb on the snare vs. everything else. On the snare drum, if you did the doubling thing, try putting the verb only on the lower track and leaving the original dry or nearly dry. Try using short delays to make everything bigger. The delay should not be audible, only enough to extend the impact time. Hopefully those ideas should get you started. If I think of more I'll post them. --Lee Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrummerCafe Posted July 25, 2001 Share Posted July 25, 2001 I think all of Lee's ideas are great. If you can't get what you want or need from all those suggestions ... you're SOL. Drummer Cafe - community drum & percussion forum Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sidereal Posted July 25, 2001 Share Posted July 25, 2001 So, sorry I'm just trying to understand, you want to be able to help the producer get the sound he's looking for.... There's so much you can do in the studio. I'd suggest you track fairly dry, or maybe with some compression, then alter it in the mix. If you fly everything into Pro Tools you can do whatever the freak you want. You can resample it with something called SoundReplacer, or you can apply any downsampling plug-ins like Lo-fi or D-fi. You can use outboard too, if you're just working with tape. Rent an Oroville Eventide and all your problems are solved. Not sure if this helps. I'm not sure I understood the question, but I still haven't had my coffee yet this morning. http://www.musicplayer.com/ubb/smile.gif Just for the record. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
felix stein Posted July 25, 2001 Author Share Posted July 25, 2001 I'm glad you brought up PT sidereal...I have to talk to you about that...like how easy is it to convert tracks to .wavs for a pc to be able to process. Great ideas Lee Flier...any recommendation for a pitch shifter or just get a plug in? Making the jump to pro tools this fall from cake walk and cubase...can't wait felix's band Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lee Flier Posted July 25, 2001 Share Posted July 25, 2001 felix.... pitch shifting comes standard in most DAW systems, but I gather not in Cakewalk. But yeah, I imagine you can find a plugin that will do it. And yes, you can export WAV files from Pro Tools. --Lee Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sidereal Posted July 25, 2001 Share Posted July 25, 2001 yeah, Lee's right... in Pro Tools there's very comprehensive file format exchange capabilities. There's a pull-down menu right at the top of the Tracks listing in the Edit window. It allows you to do direct imports, or convert them first. You can even audition them. Which goes back to your original question. If you have SoundReplacer and say you have some recorded snare hits from other sessions that you absolutely loved, you can replace them, like in a new session where the snare wasn't sounding quite right. It allows you to match transients, do peak aligns, completely replace, or mix the original with the replacement. And there are three threshold settings. So if you've got three snare samples, one with a nice crack! one with a little less, and then another softer hit, you can import all three. You can set it so the loudest hit you did in the session can be replaced by the big cracking snare, the mid volume ones get the mid-intensity sample, and the softer hits get the low-intensity sample. It's all very cool, I must tell you! And then if you download some electronic sounds off the web, or something, and mix them in, you've got our electronic snare. Just for the record. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ian1642605905 Posted July 26, 2001 Share Posted July 26, 2001 I've gotta stay out of this one!The last time I spoke my mind on this topic WWIII nearly broke out!LOL!...As a matter of fact I believe my notch filtering technique was shot down! Good luck! ian* ian* Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sidereal Posted July 26, 2001 Share Posted July 26, 2001 Ian, I'd love to hear it actually. Nothing wrong with being shot down... it's already happened to me a couple times here. http://www.musicplayer.com/ubb/smile.gif Just for the record. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrummerCafe Posted July 26, 2001 Share Posted July 26, 2001 Now Ian ... your notch filtering wasn't shot down. As far as my comments were on that topic ... I merely said that I don't start EQing right from the beginning. I first try to get a great natural sound. If I have to notch out "bad" frequencies ... then I do that. It sounded like you were notching out no matter what; I was only cautioning against doing that ... like out of habit. That's all I ever meant from that disaster of a thread. http://www.musicplayer.com/ubb/smile.gif ------------------ Bart Elliott http://bartelliott.com Drummer Cafe - community drum & percussion forum Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sidereal Posted July 26, 2001 Share Posted July 26, 2001 I would like to read this thread. Just for the record. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sidereal Posted July 26, 2001 Share Posted July 26, 2001 Just found it. http://www.musicplayer.com/ubb/smile.gif I did a search for "notch." I'll go away now.... Just for the record. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
felix stein Posted July 26, 2001 Author Share Posted July 26, 2001 yes, I wish I could just throw up some mics and play. but see how open minded I can be! felix's band Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lee Flier Posted July 26, 2001 Share Posted July 26, 2001 Hey felix, Didn't you know if you keep your mind open people will throw a lot of garbage in it? http://www.musicplayer.com/ubb/biggrin.gif --Lee Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ian1642605905 Posted July 26, 2001 Share Posted July 26, 2001 Bart, I think you know I love ya anyway! ian* ian* Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
felix stein Posted July 26, 2001 Author Share Posted July 26, 2001 Uh, another PT question. Sorry, don't feel like starting a thread at the moment. So if I burn .wav's on my mac -a pc can read it? Uh, doesn't sound Kosher to me. We had a big problem with conversion on a demo I did a couple of years ago where the tracks were done in PT and I had to submit wav's readable on a PC...lots of time I remember sitting around smoking cigs waiting for the numbers to crunch. Thanks Lee Flier...I printed out your recommendations and will try them this fall when I get started on the project. felix's band Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sidereal Posted July 26, 2001 Share Posted July 26, 2001 Hmmm.... I need more detail felix. Are you talking about moving from the Cakewalk world to the Pro Tools world? Yes, you could bounce all your CW files down to WAVs and then import them all into PT... but what a drag. If CW has OMF export capabilities, just convert your CW sessions in their entirety to OMF and they should open intact on PT. But I've never done this before (!) so I'm not sure exactly how it's done. If you're talking PT to PT across Mac/PC platforms. Pro Tools now opens complete PT sessions regardless of what computer you're using or have used. And it works for both TDM and LE. If you work on a Mac now and are moving to a PC to run PT, don't do that! Mac's are still king in the PT world (just more expensive). WAV is a *very* ubiquitous format. Almost anything reads WAV files. PT didn't used to be able to import them without first converting. Now it's much easier. But I think your question revolves around transferring complete non-PT sessions into PT. That's tough to do. I'd recommend a batch convert utility software like BarbaBatch (is that what it's called?) or look into OMF transfers. Once you're in PT though, it's a happy world lemme tell ya. Just for the record. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sidereal Posted July 26, 2001 Share Posted July 26, 2001 Sorry... just read your post again. Yes, WAVs will open on any computer platform. Just for the record. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
felix stein Posted July 27, 2001 Author Share Posted July 27, 2001 thanks felix's band Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ian1642605905 Posted August 28, 2001 Share Posted August 28, 2001 Hey Felix, I just recently found this site!Very informative!I must warn you though this guy has the same approach that I do.If you check out this site you'll see why I approach mixing/processing the way I do.A MUST READ!Let me know what you think! http://www.musicplayer.com/ubb/smile.gif ian* http://www.geocities.com/shailat2000/MixingDrums.html ian* Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
felix stein Posted August 29, 2001 Author Share Posted August 29, 2001 Uh, pretty basic stuff. I kinda would have liked to have seen a "breaking the rules" section there. Thanks though...nice review. felix's band Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ian1642605905 Posted August 29, 2001 Share Posted August 29, 2001 My whole point was to let you see the massive use of EQ!LOL ian* ian* Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sidereal Posted August 29, 2001 Share Posted August 29, 2001 Ian!!! ....... I don't even want to go here again. But if I'm not mistaken, he's talking mixing technique, not tracking, which was the original debate. Just for the record. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ian1642605905 Posted August 30, 2001 Share Posted August 30, 2001 Sorry you don't want to go there!So why did you respond, since I wasn't addressing you anyway!And I WAS previously speeking of mixing in general!!!This has been an on going topic for some time now!Not just this thread! ian* This message has been edited by ian* on 08-29-2001 at 09:32 PM ian* Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sidereal Posted August 30, 2001 Share Posted August 30, 2001 Ian my man.... you've gotta start picking up on senses of humor http://www.musicplayer.com/ubb/wink.gif Just for the record. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ian1642605905 Posted August 30, 2001 Share Posted August 30, 2001 How am I supposed to respond when I am constantly not taken seriously! Were there any other derrogatory remarks you'd like to toss my way?If so stifle the urge "my man".The "know it all" mentality that has become a driving force on this forum is quite frankly driving me away! Please know that whether or not you would prefer to discuss a topic or not has no bearing what so ever on anyone else's desire to discuss it (or not)! I don't know if you've noticed or not but we don't respond to very many of the same threads anyway, which would indicate to me that we have different areas of interest.If I come across a thread that I don't want to discuss I'll pass it by,and I'd ask of you the same courtesy rather than make meaningless remarks of no consequence!(oxymoron for ya Felix)LOL ian* ian* Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sidereal Posted August 31, 2001 Share Posted August 31, 2001 amazing...... Just for the record. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ian1642605905 Posted September 5, 2001 Share Posted September 5, 2001 if you only knew ian* Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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