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Post by ninworks on Oct 26, 2022 20:18:14 GMT -5
I am mixing a track for a client who used real drums on it. They were recorded reasonably well but the drummer's bass drum track was incredibly inconsistent in how hard he hit it. Sometimes loud and sometimes not very. Other than that the performance was fine. The problem with acoustic drums is that when you hit the hard they have a much brighter attack and punch than when they are hit softly. I have never had to do this before but I am going to replace, or at least augment, the acoustic kick track with a kick drum sample from Superior Drummer. It will be more consistent and sound better. I messed with it a little today just to learn how to do it and it sounds promising. I'll tackle it for real tomorrow.
I hope he doesn't have a problem with me doing that but to me it's all about the sound. I was hired to make it sound good. The track just doesn't punch with the kick drum level and sound being all over the place. The client is the drummer. I think I'll just do it and if he asks about it I'll just tell him the original drum track was heavily processed. If he doesn't ask then, it did what I wanted it to. To me replascing the drum with a sample is no different than doing extensive editing on the track as well as processing the crap out of it to make it sound better. I already tried that with questionable results. This will sound MUCH better.
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Post by reverendrob on Oct 27, 2022 2:21:24 GMT -5
"I made it sound right" is all it should take.
Especially if you're not replacing him whole-cloth.
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Post by ninworks on Oct 27, 2022 6:54:47 GMT -5
I ended up not replacing the existing track I just enhanced it with the sample. It sounds a WHOLE lot better. It's amazing how much better the entire mix sounds by fixing just that one thing.
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Post by Auf Kiltre on Oct 27, 2022 7:53:00 GMT -5
Back in the day I'd use a program called Drumagog, primarily for kick drum replacement. Audio file that would trigger any selected sample. I actually still have a functional version of the program, but since getting EZDdrummer (the lite version of Superior Drummer) I don't really use it anymore.
I've (painstakingly) redone the entire drummer's tracks on a project I did years back using EZD. In addition to a kick drum that sounded like a tympani they just weren't recorded well. I first mapped out the entire song in Pro Tools to setup markers on whole notes based on his meter, then took it from there. I don't think I'd have the focus and patience to do that again, lol.
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Post by ninworks on Oct 27, 2022 10:35:22 GMT -5
Superior Drummer made it real easy but I did have 8 isolated drum tracks. All I needed was the kick drum track. It had a little mic bleed from the rest of the kit but not enough to give SD any problems figuring out where the trigger points were. I imported that track into SD and chose a sample. Then I set the level and exported that as a .wav file. Imported that into Pro Tools and all I had to do was line it up with the existing track so that everything was in phase. It worked perfectly. It was a lot easier than I thought it was going to be.
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Post by Auf Kiltre on Oct 27, 2022 15:12:56 GMT -5
Yeah, the biggest problem I found with kick replacement is sloppy ghost hits and setting thresholds to eliminate them. One could argue this is altering the human aspect of performance, but if performance is sloppy, then...well...
Once the product is in production and no option to do retakes then us nerds behind the board are left with technology and decisions on how to use it.
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Post by Auf Kiltre on Oct 27, 2022 15:23:01 GMT -5
I'll also add, in the case of doing this for a client and not your own project, I personally would provide them 2 mixes to evaluate, the intact original and the corrected one.
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Post by ninworks on Oct 27, 2022 17:00:24 GMT -5
If he asks I'll do that. He may not even notice. He may think I'm some kind of audio magician whot pulled a rabbit out of the hat to make his kick sound great. I chose a sample that sounded a lot like his kick. I's just a lot more consistent in velocity and tone. If I need to run off another mix all I'll have to do is mute the sample and maybe adjust the volume of the original kick track a little. Then bounce it to a stereo track. Everything else will come up as it was before.
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Post by reverendrob on Oct 28, 2022 1:25:56 GMT -5
Yea, this is a case of "don't speak up" - you're keeping the essence of his playing.
What I might do if anything is "Improve your base recording with X, Y, and Z and it'll be more 'natural' like {Drummer he likes}".
They always fall for that.
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