We did it, boys! A song with real drums...

Since I don't have any good ideas, I'll give you a couple of bad ones...

You could gate the snare with a very short hold time. It'll probably sound crappy. And by "probably" I mean "definitely." :)

There is also drum replacement software. I remember Drumagog back in the day. There are probably others. It would probably be better, but it would require some money.
 
You could do a couple of things, see if you can get the tracks from the drums, hopefully they aren't rendered into on file, and then try mixing all the channels and treat each channel as required.

I am still learning, but I usually take each track and group them so I have a final mix to send to the master (for volume control), but each track is treated as required and maybe but an overall compressor of the final drum group. Might help.
 
Wish I could help but I have never really recorded live drums so take my opinion for what its worth..... Not harping on it, but that snare has more issues than just reverb, at least from the standpoint of the system I am listening on. It sounds way muffled and too much attack. Maybe if you could just brighten it some, it would be better. If its all bounced to a stereo track that may be more difficult than said. On the other side of the coin, I think the kick, toms, and cymbals sound good.
 
You could use the snare track to trigger SD - it's really easy in Reaper without needing any other software.
 
You could use the snare track to trigger SD - it's really easy in Reaper without needing any other software.

If I were to do it in Reaper, I would other software :P

I'm going to try some of these ideas.


Bruthish, I know what you mean. The guy is a speed metal drummer so his whole setup has that really transient heavy sound to it.
 
Wish I could help with the snare. I have my own snare issues, but never had to deal with one that sounds like that. It's also pretty distant. I'll leave the snare issues to the others, seems like you're getting good advice.

As far as the kik, it seems like you're getting that "basketball" sound out of it. It sounds like you boosted around 3-4k, but maybe should have boosted higher, like 5-10k.

Other than that, this does sound good. Who's singing? Love the voice.
 
Replaced the original post.
I got the original to trigger some samples so the snare has less attack and more body now. It's now a mix of acoustic and samples.

Funny about the kick actually, I'm already taking about 5db out of everything above 1.8kHZ! The guy must have used one of those mega scooped kick mics.


And that is our very own NotThatBright on the vocals!
 
I didn't hear the version you posted before you replaced the snare sound, but to me the kick just didn't match the other drum sounds. Snare and cymbals had ambience and the kick sounded dry and right up front. Know what RAMI means about the basketball sound, sounds like that typical speed metal double kick sound to me, nothing against that but it sort of sounded a bit out of place in this piece. Sorry no advice or suggestions just observations.
 
I won't try to knit pick the mix, because mixing is not my strong suit but I thing thus really rocks.
!
Old school man!
Very tight playing. I really dig it!
 
The vocal needs to come way up in the mix. Sounds like it's performed and tracked fairly well. I want to hear it.

Ya...that snare is sort of wrecking things for me. Sorry...it draws my ear because of the previous comments and it's hard not to focus in on it. It's just not a very appealing snare sound. I've always used sampled drums...so my fix would be easy. Personally....I'd be trying VERY narrow and deep EQ cuts trying to thin out the body of that snare tone. A spectrum analyzer on the drum track would help isolate the body of the fundamental tone. You could probably do a lot with just EQ. I wouldn't know what else to try.

Voxengo makes the best free spectrum analyzer plug-in that I know of.

Good stuff....

Real-time audio spectrum analyzer plugin (AU, VST) - Voxengo SPAN - Voxengo
 
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nothing like the sound of real drums. I like the relaxed feel of it. I just am irritated by what the digital is going to those cymbals. I don't remember drums sounding like this in 1994 ish before computers took over
 
nothing like the sound of real drums. I like the relaxed feel of it. I just am irritated by what the digital is going to those cymbals. I don't remember drums sounding like this in 1994 ish before computers took over

Well, I'll be honest with you: it's actually an electronic kit that is triggering samples. It took me a bit to figure it out but really having no overheads should have tipped me off... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The cymbals should fit better now

It's interesting that you mention the relaxed feel since the original is ever more laid back than this.
I was comparing them side by side and I was a bit surprised at how pushy mine was in comparison.

Newest version is up. I feel like I'm almost 100% happy with it.
 
Love this song. Good job with the riffs and overall feel of it. I think I covered this many years ago on a 4-track tape deck, but I can't find it. I'm pretty sure it sucked.

Anyway, I heard a couple of versions of this. One where the real drums had first been mixed in and the snare was super big and weird sounding. It sounds better now, but there's still a bucketload of room/verb/whatever on it which seems out of place. Other than the snare, I think this one is sounding pretty good and may be my favorite of the sabbath covers you've done recently. :)
 
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