Making Sampled Drums Sound Really Real

I've got a question for you: I'm assuming quite a few of you use sampled drums for your recordings. Does anyone have any advice as to how to make these sound realistic?

I use Spectrasonics Stylus Vinyl Groove Module, and also their Backbeat drum library, but they're just so crisp and too well-produced, and professionally played. They often lack realism.

For example, right now I'm recording a track that's leaning towards bluegrass and I want some drums that fit. I want to achieve a sense of them being a drumkit played in a room somewhere in the soundscape, with space around them; not necessarily a completely accurate recording of a drum kit that costs thousands, sounding like it never really existed in the real world.

Let's hope you understand what I'm going on about!

One idea I've had is to sequence the sampled drums and play them back in a room with a mic picking up the recording. Then I'd use the recorded track in my music, hopefully missing that clinical sound.

Has anyone ever tried anything like this? Or do I just need to get a drumkit???

Dave Lawrence www.soundclick.com/davelawrence

Sorry Dec, RSS? It sounds useful but I don't know what it stands for!

Dave Lawrence www.soundclick.com/davelawrence

dec cluskey screef:

A few weeks ago I popped in a Billy Joel disk: A live recording of his
Leningrad concert.

Now I *knew* that in the past 20 years the compressors have been used more and more and that a lot of mastering-gurus complain that louder-than-loud is the only sound a CD is allowed to have these days. But when I heard that album it just blew me away.

I could *feel* the bassdrum. Ouch! That hasn't happened to me for a long time. I was getting convinced that was only possible when I actually visited a concert.

Then I put on his "river of dreams"-cd... a nineties production. Still very convincing drums.

So my point is here: "put it on a seperate mixing-desk and compress it to

One thing that comes to mind is using a "groove" quantization feature on your MIDI track which will intentionally move certain beats (which you specify) slightly out of "perfect" rhythm to make them sound more realistic.
Also, you could apply dither to the track to make it sound more "lo-fi". To create the "room effect" of course a good reverb plugin is the first thing that comes to mind. All of these three combined should produce a great sounding track, of course the real trick will be to find the right samples.

If all else fails, send the rough cut on over to me with a midi drum track a little loud in the mix and I'll record a real drum track over it.

Great to see you around here man, I was beginning to think you hit it big and ran off.

dec cluskey screef:

I knew that. But it gives overall tips (also to producers) irrespective of the products used that can apply to the discussion. E.g. "Use high-quality monitors" is certainly not a TC-finalizer /mastering-only tip.
You were writing about pumping a complete drum-mix through compressors. I then noted that you were a little un-subtle. Now you talk about
"individual compression". That's what I meant.

I can believe that.

Partly you are right. Partly not. Some gear should not be "heared" but
"felt".

Anyway; you think that Joel used a sampled kick on his live set. I severely doubt that, because:
- it was a live performance from around the days of 1985. I'm pretty sure the live kicks sounded much better than the Jan Hammer-Miami Vice kinda kicks.
- the drummer was a "rough shot". He played in a *very* rough style, e.g.
sometimes purposefully moving slightly out of rhythm in a fill. Think the muppet "Animal". I don't think Animal or his human collegues of that time had any interrest in having *their* kick replaced by a sampler. Note that in those days synthesizers and samplers were often looked upon with some contempt by real live performers (allthough, or might I say: *because* the charts were drowned in electronic-only music).

What I meant to say (and that is irrespective of wether or not a bassdrum is a sample or not) is that rock-albums of the early days of CD tend to sound much better than present-day rock-albums (regarding their dynamics).
Using compression can beef a sound up. But there is also the risk (and here comes a hint from that document) it makes the sound sound "wimpy loud".

Subtle can most certainly make a lot of money. You yourself give the example of a Robbie Williams album that was mastered conservetavely.

Arian.

This has all be hogmoganously useful guys. I'm playing around with a lot of techniques now.

Something I'm finding helps is to tune down some of the drum samples in the sampler, the snare particularly. This seems to make it sound more real. I think they must have the really expensive kits tune up as tight as a gnats arse, and loosening them up a little loosen up the whole feel.

Thanks a load for your suggestions.

Mr Dave www.soundclick.com/davelawrence

Well the only problem I have with this analogy is that most people that sample drums are indeed sampling a kit, so they are sample ON THE
KIT. That means when the drum is hit to sample it the other drums will indeed resonate. The only way they wouldn't resonate is if they were taken off of the kit and struck, so I don't really think this applies.

I just bought a multi-input sound card (delta 1010lt), and a shure drum mic kit (Beta 52 and 57s), so I can now begin to use my acoustic kit in mixes more, but before now I used looped drum parts to make a realistic drum track. That's essentially sampled drums, but in patterns instead of individual drums (for the most part, I do use one shots too to customize). The key is to think like a drummer would. If you can visualize the patterns in your head you can make the programmed drums follow that prettymuch, and who better to visualize these patterns than a drummer?

I've often wondered why people insist that a steady hyhat means that it's a programmed drummer you are listening to. As a drummer of over
30 years I use a steady hyhat as a foundation of my beats. Of course dynamics is required but it's not nearly so evident in the hyhat as some people seem to indicate. At least that's been my experience. I've heard people say they can tell a programmed drummer by listening to the hyhat, and that is a generalization I don't agree with for the most part. I keep a very steady hyhat as a drummer on an acoustic kit, and so I think this is not really a good criteria. It's probably more like the hyhat is mixed at an unnatural level so as to call attention to itself as being un-natural. For the most part drummers are supposed to be support, so a person would do well to mix them that way, thus not calling attention to the programmed drums. I guess what I'm saying is in my opinion it has more to do with mix than dynamics. Of course when I use loops it is a real drummer playing a real drum kit, and thus will sound real because it is real. I'm just shaping the loops to follow my progression. Using loops of real drummers is the best way short of recording your own kit (not sampling, but recording). Wish me luck with my new gear and setup. It's something I've been wanting to do for a long time, and should make using loops a thing of the past for me... Not having acces to this type of thing I highly recommend loops cds of real studio drummers. It can't be beat....

OK the basic answer is you can't do it, but if you persevere, you might get close enough for few people to know any different. In terms of creating 'real space' it might be worth shoving the words 'convolution reverb' into google and seeing what it comes up with. I am assuming most of the groove/drum programming stuff has been covered in this thread as the few posts I read seemed to be going that way.
Good luck, it can be a tedious process getting drums to sound like you want them to.

What you might want to do is look into drum loops. I used to try to sequence them in midi, but I stunk at it. Even if I were competent with sequencing, I wasn't sure I'd ever be able to get that "real drum" sound, so
I went to loops since getting an actual drummer was not an option.

Wow, loads of useful stuff here. Thanks guys.

What Rick Paul said about me probably having picked the wrong drum samples for the track actually rings true, and may be the biggest part of the problem.

With regard to reverb, I do use the Waves Trueverb plugin, I think perhaps I just don't use it very well. My problem is that I'm a songwriter, a musician, and I know computers well, but I'm not a producer. Therefore I struggle to get 'that sound' that I'm after whereas other people will just reach out and grab it.

I'm checking out Drums on Demand right now, and hopefully I'll find what I'm after there.

Thanks for your help.

Dave Lawrence www.soundclick.com/davelawrence

(snip)

I know something about how it can be done, which is not to say I've done it successfully myself. But here goes:

1. What recording application are you using? I use Digital Performer, but
I'm sure the other big name ones will have the same feature: some kind of drum editing capability. You can dial in "humanize," choosing the degree to which you want to slightly randomize the hits (timing and velocity) so that is sounds like a human rather than a machine or a perfect human. You can also "groove quantize," which will provide you with a choice of things like
"laid back" or "pushing," laying back or pushing on particular parts like the snare or kick, and so on.
2. Careful use of reverb, panning and maybe even EQ to place the drums in the space you want.

I'll add a few thoughts. When you say "realistic", should I suppress the pedant in me who wants to say "...'realistic' is a commonly misused word that actually means 'an imitation of reality', what I think you really mean is 'lifelike'..."?

All recorded instruments are a compromise. When someone is admiring a high end sampled piano and says "that sounds just like a real piano" what they really mean is it sounds just like a *recorded* piano. Even the finest mega-dollar midi piano doesn't sound like a real Steinway in the same room with you.

Even a small bluegrass band can sound different depending on how you record them. You need to decide what kind of situation you're trying to simulate. Are you trying to get the sound of the band through their monitors mic'd with a stereo pair in a club or close mic'ing all the players in a studio? If you're going for the live club sound, then all the instruments need to sound like they're in a club and you'd treat the drums accordingly. The pan and presence will be different than if you're going for a studio mix.

Of course, ultimately you come down to the samples themselves. There are things you can do to the drums you have to come closer to what you want, reverb/environmental treatments, eq etc. but there are drum samples made specifically to sound like a given environment which will make life a lot easier and likely yield better results than trying to make club track samples sound like they're a trap set sitting on the stage in the local honky tonk.

Thanks, Dec, your contribution on this subject, and the others that followed it, have been saved in the hope that I may be able to use them someday.