Emulating a band's drum sound

[ruined]

Hi, I'm going to be tracking some drums for a local punk band. I asked them what bands they thought had a drum sound that they were looking for. They said they would love to have the drums sound similar to on Strung Out's album "An American Paradox". I'm actually pretty familiar with Strung Out, however I've been having a hard time determining what exactly it is that makes the drums stand out to them, and how to draw influence from it. I suppose I should have asked them specifically what they liked about the drums, but there wasn't a whole lot of time, and I guess I just didn't think about it. Is there anything that anyone on here notices that I might want to take into consideration? I'm drawing a blank... Thanks guys.

 

[scrubs]

1. Good Drummer
2. Good Drums
3. Tuned Well
4. Good Sounding Room
5. Room Mics + Close Mics

When all that fails, sample replace where needed.

 

[Myriad_Rocker]

When all that fails, sample replace where needed.

And there is your quick solution.

 

[TerraMortim]

From what I've notices, esp in "punk" these days, is that the drums are almost always reinforced with samples. I must say that there can be some nice results from doing that when you have less than adequit time or budget to spend getting a great sound. Some sample libraries i'd recomend are BFD, and Heavy Mental Drums (if you want something a bit beefy).

hope that helps.

 

[ruined]

Cool, thanks guys, now I think I'm going to make sure to also throw some triggers on the kick and snare during tracking, and see what I can do with that. I better remember to show up with some decent samples, I'm doing this at school and all we've got there is a D4...

 

[Myriad_Rocker]

Cool, thanks guys, now I think I'm going to make sure to also throw some triggers on the kick and snare during tracking, and see what I can do with that. I better remember to show up with some decent samples, I'm doing this at school and all we've got there is a D4...

Just use a plug to replace the hits after the fact. It's much easier than worrying about messing with triggers.

 

[ruined]

Well at home I use Drumagog with Audition, which usually works pretty well for me, but at school I'm stuck with Pro Tools HD, which everyone seems to like, but I hate it, and we have like zero plug-ins for it. I think I'm just going to take my hard drive to school, grab all the wavs from the session and just re align them in Audition at home, instead of trying to mix at school. I was just going to record the trigger impulses for later use, since the triggers are at my disposal there, I figure I'd get more accurate triggering that way than with just the miked tracks like I have to do at home, but I don't really know for sure.

 

[LeeRosario]

It just really takes constant practice and experience to handle what you're dealing with.

You satisfy the client, but at the same time you keep it in context and there are times where you find yourself making a judgment call to avoid dissapointing results for you, and for the client.

I know that contradicts what most engineer's will say, which is fine. It depends on what level of artist you're dealing with.

Like for example, there seems to be this atomsphere here in gainesville with the Muse drum sounds with alot of the hardcore rock drummers.

I keep telling them, "Look man, don't get me wrong, the sounds they get on the recent Muse albums is great, but it just dosn't fit the style of music you play, man".

Like if you've ever gotten a tattoo, you know that if it looks like it won't look good on your body, then you bet your ass the tattoo artist is gonna express that. But always with the intention of making it better. It's like putting mag wheels on a school bus, it may seem cool in concept, but it ends up looking goofy as shit.

Personaly for me, I try to listen to the client thoroughly, assess if it's feasable to do what they are asking (which most of the time you have no choice) and then make the judgment call.

That's just my style, though. Something else may work for you.

 

[MessianicDreams]

I think I'm just going to take my hard drive to school, grab all the wavs from the session and just re align them in Audition at home, instead of trying to mix at school.

just make sure to export as whole wavs, so that you have one single file per track...

 

[ruined]

Hmm, maybe my simple idea isn't so simple after all. Isn't there a way to just copy all the audio files from the folder pro tools keeps them in and use them? I realize it will be a lot of work re placing all of them, but whatever, as long as it works. Damn, I just realized there are bound to be some files that don't start at the beginning. Maybe I can add silence to the beginning of all the tracks in pro tools, or is that what this "whole wavs" thing is all about?