Sample augmentation, how much work is it?

JG96

Active member
I am thinking of getting drumagog and using samples of my drummers set to help spice up the sound. Basically I would replace the tom mics with samples of the toms. I would also augment the kick mic with a sample of the batter side along with a home made sub kick. What I am curious about is how long does it take to work with samples: alignment/prep work etc. The whole album has to be recorded and mixed in under a month and I don't know if samples are worth the time or not.
 
Samples are generally a lot quicker than spending the time to get the actual drum tracks sounding right. If you have pretty good tracks with minimal bleed, detecting the transients should be seamless and the hardest part will probably just be getting the samples to sound realstic by messing with the velocities (which isn't all that hard).

A month is a really short amount of time though. Most pro records take longer than that. Why the rush?
 
Steven Slate Trigger is the quickest, easiest, and best way IMO. Trigger EX is cheap, and worthy. Need an Ilok as well to use tho. So it is like $140 total. It just uses the audio of the original tracks, to trigger samples.

Samples of your actual sounds are quickly made with a separate program, that comes with TriggerEX.
 
Sweet, I have gotten very nice kick isolation and I might just use tom triggers going into the interface. Me and my band mates are high school seniors and for the last month of school we get to do an independent project of some sort. We have chosen to record an album. Although its not a lot of time we are going to be recording/mixing almost every day. We need something presentable at the end of the month but if the album doesn't sound perfect I will spend more time tweaking it. :D
 
Cool, well - just a thought - maybe a 5 or 6 song EP would be a more manageable project? You could do a whole album if you wanted, but you might be unhappy with the final product and in my opinion it sort of takes the fun out of music when you have to be rushed to finish something. You could always go back and record the rest of the songs for the full album once the school project is over. Just something to consider...
 
Steven Slate Trigger is the quickest, easiest, and best way IMO. Trigger EX is cheap, and worthy. Need an Ilok as well to use tho. So it is like $140 total. It just uses the audio of the original tracks, to trigger samples.

Samples of your actual sounds are quickly made with a separate program, that comes with TriggerEX.

I will plus 1 this hard. I have used drumagog and like the fact that trigger has the side chain gate thingy. I like it for quickly turning hits to midi notes as well.
 
Cool, well - just a thought - maybe a 5 or 6 song EP would be a more manageable project? You could do a whole album if you wanted, but you might be unhappy with the final product and in my opinion it sort of takes the fun out of music when you have to be rushed to finish something. You could always go back and record the rest of the songs for the full album once the school project is over. Just something to consider...

Good point. Some of the mixing can probably get put on the shelf till after. Bass and drums are tracked together live. Sometimes 2 people record parts in separate rooms to separate computers. I'm guessing that the tracking can get done in about 2 weeks. Leaving 2 weeks for mixing. Definitely a tight squeeze so perhaps your right about the EP. I will put together a thread about it when the time comes. I'll try to get lots of cool studio pics while I'm at it.
 
Hmm. At this point I'm thinking that since I will tracking drums over the corse of a few days with my own samples. I might just use the demo of drumagog and bounce the samples to new tracks. That might be a little too naughty though. :spank:
 
Steven Slate Trigger is the quickest, easiest, and best way IMO. Trigger EX is cheap, and worthy. Need an Ilok as well to use tho. So it is like $140 total. It just uses the audio of the original tracks, to trigger samples.

Samples of your actual sounds are quickly made with a separate program, that comes with TriggerEX.

+1 to this as well. Especially if you already have some really good drum samples you want to use. The Steven Slate Trigger program is really good for doing this kind of thing.
 
Sampling is very easy and very quick. I'd suggest sticking to the "augmentation" idea and not going with the "replacement" idea. ;)

As for the recording time, I'm not sure why everyone says a month is too short. 6 days of 10-12 hour days per week for 4 weeks...24 days. 12 of tracking, 12 of mixing. Track drums in two days, bass in one, guitars in two, vocals in two. That leaves 5 days to fuck around to add the fun stuff or as a buffer in case the guitar player forgets how to play his parts.
Then you have a day per mix for the mixing stage.

How much more time does one need?
 
As for the recording time, I'm not sure why everyone says a month is too short. 6 days of 10-12 hour days per week for 4 weeks...24 days. 12 of tracking, 12 of mixing. Track drums in two days, bass in one, guitars in two, vocals in two. That leaves 5 days to fuck around to add the fun stuff or as a buffer in case the guitar player forgets how to play his parts.
Then you have a day per mix for the mixing stage.

How much more time does one need?


I was considering that since they are still in school, they won't be getting 10-12 hour days for recording. Unless I'm wrong... maybe their school is allowing them to spend the entire day each day working on their project? I would figure they still have classes they need to attend during the day though, just my thought.
 
No school! :D We pretty much just have to make some sort of presentation about our project.
Jeffro good points with the timing and the tracking. The rhythm guitarist/vocalist is a bit of a perfectionist so a buffer is definitely a good thing. He has done 15 vocal takes back to back. And I agree that straight samples never sound right. With the toms there will be a good amount in the overheads. The kick samples will just be to add some beef and thwack to a mediocre bass drum.
 
Thank you! Its a pretty excellent program I must say. When the time comes I may be flooding the MP3 mixing clinic.
 
OK, what am I missing here.

From what I understand, you want to take the time to record samples from the same drums that will be triggering those samples? Why don't you just record the drums, then?

This really makes no sense to me, but I have a feeling I misunderstood what's going on.


It's not you, it's me. :eek:

:D
 
RAMI-Basically I have a limited number of inputs and mics. For example I do not have enough inputs to record an inside kick mic and a sub kick. However, I can augment the sound of a subkick later. I will record triggers on the toms to a separate field recorder and then align with the overheads to compensate for drift. The actual tracks being recorded are stereo overheads, snare, kick, and a room mic. So the majority of the sound will not be samples.
 
RAMI-Basically I have a limited number of inputs and mics. For example I do not have enough inputs to record an inside kick mic and a sub kick. However, I can augment the sound of a subkick later. I will record triggers on the toms to a separate field recorder and then align with the overheads to compensate for drift. The actual tracks being recorded are stereo overheads, snare, kick, and a room mic. So the majority of the sound will not be samples.

Ah, OK. So, I wasn't that far out in left field, but now I understand your reasoning. Man, I'd still look into getting more inputs if possible. Or forget about sub-kicks and batter side, etc....But that's just my opinion.

Also, and this is more of a question than a statement because I really don't know. But, generally speaking, won't the overheads and room mics cause problems when one uses samples? The reason I ask is because you can't replace samples in the overheads and room mic. So, won't the drums sound different in the overheads if the individual drums are going to be replaced by other sounds?

I know that in your case, it might work since your samples will be the same drums. But I wonder how it works when using other samples.
 
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