General Music Chat

This morning I woke in not the best of moods and decided to let it out on my drums. They are electronic and played with sticks.

Anyway for the life of me I could get nowhere near the volume of previous tracks without clipping and distortion ocurring. (I've got it on my MySpace thingy) Nothing fantastic by any extreme but I'm hoping that someone with more knowledge than I can point out what I am doing wrong on the studio/recording end of it?

The drums are key to everything I'm trying to do so its that "Bare necessity, simple bare nesessity, forget about your worries and your......."

Well you get it right?

Can anyone help please?
I'd post this where it should be but rarely does anyone go below the fourth deck here

Many thanks.
Chippy.

Hey Chippy, I put Check your behavior back on my profile so you could hear it.

What I did was compress the hell out of the drum machine, then run it through a 15-band eq, then add a touch of reverb and a pinch of delay.

But the compression and eq were the most necessary to get the sound I wanted. Too much of anything will clip. You need to find a happy medium of Bass-Mid-Treble that won't do it.

Also what I did was add a small amount of 808 and real snare (from the drum machine) to the stick sound to get a real sounding rim-shot sound out of the snare work.

Drums are always tough, but it starts with the compression and eq. Then you experiment from there.

Nothing beats alive drummer!!!!

Hey Shredd thanks!
I've been pulling my hair out for the best part of this morning trying to work on this. Midi is great if you want to spend 10 years programming just to get a feel for the stuff.

I did manage to pull the sound through midi where I could split the tracks (This is really what I want to do) but it sounded horrible and tinny. EQ + Compression huh?

Won't that destroy the real drum sound? [Dulling it?] I know, I know. Nothing is perfect but man I want to be nowhere near CARDBOARD BOX sounding drums if I can at all help it.

Can I ask what 808 on the snare is please?
Thanks for your help, very informative indeed.

Good luck too with your stuff pal.

Chippy.

Nothing beats alive drummer!!!!

Thats for dam sure, never heard a dead one play.




Ba da boom



To me it sounds like your over loading the preamps on the board ie: to much voltage going in. Turn down the output on the drum machine or electronic drum set

You should be able to reduce the input gain and then pump it back up later. My roland unit will aloow me to turn up individual tracks in 3db increments after I record it.

Hey Shredd thanks!
I've been pulling my hair out for the best part of this morning trying to work on this. Midi is great if you want to spend 10 years programming just to get a feel for the stuff.

I did manage to pull the sound through midi where I could split the tracks (This is really what I want to do) but it sounded horrible and tinny. EQ + Compression huh?

Won't that destroy the real drum sound? [Dulling it?] I know, I know. Nothing is perfect but man I want to be nowhere near CARDBOARD BOX sounding drums if I can at all help it.

Can I ask what 808 on the snare is please?
Thanks for your help, very informative indeed.

Good luck too with your stuff pal.

Chippy.

When engineers of pro studios record drums they always compress the drums and vocals. The difference is they usually have tube compressors. Those things are REALLY expensive. You can always adjust the ratio and gain of how much compression is to your liking. The EQ will keep things natural sounding. So with the combination of the two, you should be able to accomplish any sound you like with the drums.

In check your Behavior, the vocals are compressed too. And as you can see they're nice and warm.

Here's a pic of what I use for my recordings:


Nothing in that pic is very expensive. But together, it's pretty effective. The compression is used for Drums and Vocals only.

808 is a deep sounding Booooom type sound that most drum machines and electric drums have in their sound libraries. I'd be surprised if your drum module didn't have that sound in it. Anyway, I took all of the decay properties out of it so it was just a quick deep thump. It's barely noticeable, but it's part of what's giving the snare a lot of snap.

*EDIT: Keep in mind too that Reggae drumming uses a lot of rim-shot technique for the snare. That isn't supposed to sound like a typical snare hit, but a real sounding rim-shot. Hard to do on a drum machine without sounding like wood-blocks.

Wow Thanks Shredd.
Ok I'll have a root around for what I have now and see what can be done in the meantime.

****** This was exceptionally helpful. ******


Have a good Evening Shredd.

Many thanks again.
Keep rocking.

Chippy.

Wow Thanks Shredd.
Ok I'll have a root around for what I have now and see what can be done in the meantime.

****** This was exceptionally helpful. ******


Have a good Evening Shredd.

Many thanks again.
Keep rocking.

Chippy.

Anyone of you tried EZDrummer
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fusea ... id=4194571

I just purchased it as a VST for Cubase. The sounds are great and you can break each instrument out to a separate channel as you're saying here, but I'm not a drum expert so comparing the two is beyond me.

Hi Chris.

From what I've heard it is really good. I have the DR800 which pretty much does the same thing as you saying.

What you get is a time-line and so long as you can think in terms of what you think should be there you can then go back and edit to make the final product. As a drummer I hate both and am not looking into doing what Shredd suggested but I'm not saying it isn't a good thing to look into.

It's just not natural for me. I need mi sticks

Not helpful I know. Soz

Wow Thanks Shredd.
Ok I'll have a root around for what I have now and see what can be done in the meantime.

****** This was exceptionally helpful. ******


Have a good Evening Shredd.

Many thanks again.
Keep rocking.

Chippy.

Anyone of you tried EZDrummer
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fusea ... id=4194571

I just purchased it as a VST for Cubase. The sounds are great and you can break each instrument out to a separate channel as you're saying here, but I'm not a drum expert so comparing the two is beyond me.

It's just not natural for me. I need mi sticks

I see where you're coming from here. The creative process is just as important as the tools since getting in the creative-mood is required to create the piece, and if the tool requires that you take a different creative route, then the ideas don't come and the point of the tool is moot!

What a mouthful.

Good point!
Chris

AS HAYDEN WOULD SAY.......
PUT YOUR DRUMS IN A HOLE ...... YOU LEAVE YOUR BASS IN THE AIR!!

Got it sorted out thanks for the replies folks.

I'm sort of new to this and trust my ears. What was happening was is that my software, (In this case, Cubase) was adding the recorded track into its own file list.

This means that when I converted from Cubase to wav/mp3 there was an extra track on file that mimicked the whole stage area. DOH!

I just didn't look and clicked, yes, yes, yes and so on.

*** Shredds answer to the whole equation I've found to be spot on!

Stuff you do know, stuff you don't, but in-between hopefully there is something creative going on even if a % don't understand what you are traing to do?

Thanks folks.
Very much
Chippy.