Recording each drum individually and then playing them like a drum machine

wallystripes

wallystripes

New member
Ok im not a trained drummer, I just have a kit home for band rehearsals. My last band is on a type of hiatus since one of the guitar players and the drummer are out of the country for a year.

I do know how to play drums, but im far from being great. Ive been trying to record a beat but I just cant nail it plus my OH sound awful since my room is not treated. I was thinking about close miking each source and them arranging them on a drum machine.

Has anyone tried this? Should I quit it? Should I use other samples instead of recording my own? Any advices on making it sound natural?
 
To be honest It'd probably be a lot easier to practice and become a good drummer.
I'm not trying to be funny but even using a package that provides all the samples for you can be hard enough when it comes to making it sound natural. (Addictive drums/ezdrummer).


You'd have to spend hours recording every possible snare hit from light to hard, centre to rim etc.
Same goes for every drum.

Try it out if you want, experimenting is cool, but I think you're up against it if a natural sound is your goal.


Maybe you could just use loops from some software, or even do a collab with someone on the forums?
 
Yeah it's doable.

I have not done it, but not with complete drums though, no idea how you would pull something like that off with cymbals.

But here is an audio example with a supraphonic snare (OH mics are being triggered here as well, I agree with Greg, without those mics I think it will sound weird):



I used Slate's Trigger plug for the Supraphonic. It's superior 2's drumset, I did the sampling of the Ludwig snare though.
 
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It will suck on many levels. As stated, the overheads won't have the whole kit in them so it will suck. And you'll have a next to impossible time hand placeing the individual drums and having them sound like a drummer is playing them. The very few times I tried something like this I eneded up investing a LOT of time and was never happy with the end result.
 
Yeah, that's what I was fearing. I agree, drums without OHs suck, so I guess Ill have to treat my room before anything else
 
But actually I heard Jack Conte from Pomplamoose records his drums that way. I think it works well for him, perhaps not with every musical genre and anyway I think it involves lots of practice and experimentation
 
I wouldn't be sure about that, although I don't have the facts to argue.

I know their videos are heavily edited and done in that 'funky' way but you see him playing a kit in loads of them.

What they do do is take video clips of each drum hit for some of the videos. Maybe that's what you heard?
 
Why not just use a drum machine or something like BFD? With some decent practice you can make your drums sound really good depending on what you are looking to achieve with them.
 
Don't let me stop you from trying. If it's a simple groove, 2 and 4 or whatever, you can get away with it by hand. But I'm tellin ya, a real drummer in the pocket just has no compitition.
 
I think ill drop the idea. Ill get angood drummer and ill treat my room. It works fornpomplamoose with thier funky style, but i doubt it will work for the krautrock beat i have in mind
 
You can compose the drums entirely digitally (using a keyobard and a drum sample library) without actually laying them, and still make them sound "real". If all your drum "hits" are the same velocity and are strictly on the grid, it will sound like a machine gun, but if you make them all slightly varied in velocity and slightly off-grid, it will sound more like a human.
 
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