Fix-in-the-mix conun-drums challenge

  • Thread starter Thread starter abbazabba
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id get em in and re record it myself. those cymbals are really screwed.
 
Hubbawho said:
I have a suggestion worth a try...it involves using drumagog.

First double the track, then take 1 of the tracks and place an eq on it. In the eq, take everything out except the bass...I mean everything, so that it sounds completely like God awful shit. Now, you should only hear a rumble or a "woof" in place of the kick drum. Now the track has a bass drum isolated enough to be triggered. Add drumagog to that track and locate or produce a very punchy bass drum tone with a lot of mid and high end...make sure it has very little low end in it. Now combine both tracks together and tweak them until u atleast have improved the bass drum sound. (by crossfading the two tracks.) You may have to reverse the phase on a track, I forget.

As for the snare, you can probably isolate that with an eq as well by cutting everything except mids...and try to improve the sound a bit by repeating the same process much like the bass drum. (only eq it differently ofcourse) However I have yet to personally try that and it probably is much harder to accomplish.

But if anything, you can at least use a clean and triggered snare track to add some reverb, and then just turn the effect channel all the way up and turn the triggered snare all the way down. In other words, filter out the dry triggered snare so that you are only hearing the reverb from that triggered snare. Now mix that reverb track back into the overall mix. The reason being is that now the reverb effect will exist for a snare drum but it will be a clean reverb because it originated from the triggered snare track, rather than originating from an overall drum mix and just making the drums sound muddy. This could help fatten up the snare while giving the illusion that it's a bit cleaner sounding than it actually is.

Other than that...once u improve the bass drum and snare drum, try adding a small high pass filter on the original drum track. Mix them all together, and see what you get. lol I don't know, just some suggestions.
Click to expand...
I did use drumagog on the one that I did.
 
Thanks a lot guys...I like both tracks -- everything is a lot cleaner and Drumagog-ing the kick improves it infinitely. The cymbals are a lot less harsh than they were before as well. A lot more usable. I understand there's only so much you can do to improve a recording as mangled as that.

I guess the question I have now is...well, you've told me what tools you've used (TransX, Maxxbass, Drumagog, etc), but I'm wondering more specifically how you toyed with it.

What kind of settings on the expander did you use? What kind of EQing did you do? When listening to the track, what sound qualities set off certain alarms in your brain? Like, "the ______ sounds _____ to me, so I'm going to approach it ______ this way". What could someone like me do that only has a moderate set of tools to work with? (I do have access to a basic Waves package by the way, but not TransX.) I realize this is an extreme situation.

The band is across the country unfortunately...otherwise I'd definitely re-record it for them.
 
Hubbawho said:
I have a suggestion worth a try...it involves using drumagog.

First double the track, then take 1 of the tracks and place an eq on it. In the eq, take everything out except the bass...I mean everything, so that it sounds completely like God awful shit. Now, you should only hear a rumble or a "woof" in place of the kick drum. Now the track has a bass drum isolated enough to be triggered. Add drumagog to that track and locate or produce a very punchy bass drum tone with a lot of mid and high end...make sure it has very little low end in it. Now combine both tracks together and tweak them until u atleast have improved the bass drum sound. (by crossfading the two tracks.) You may have to reverse the phase on a track, I forget.

As for the snare, you can probably isolate that with an eq as well by cutting everything except mids...and try to improve the sound a bit by repeating the same process much like the bass drum. (only eq it differently ofcourse) However I have yet to personally try that and it probably is much harder to accomplish.

But if anything, you can at least use a clean and triggered snare track to add some reverb, and then just turn the effect channel all the way up and turn the triggered snare all the way down. In other words, filter out the dry triggered snare so that you are only hearing the reverb from that triggered snare. Now mix that reverb track back into the overall mix. The reason being is that now the reverb effect will exist for a snare drum but it will be a clean reverb because it originated from the triggered snare track, rather than originating from an overall drum mix and just making the drums sound muddy. This could help fatten up the snare while giving the illusion that it's a bit cleaner sounding than it actually is.

Other than that...once u improve the bass drum and snare drum, try adding a small high pass filter on the original drum track. Mix them all together, and see what you get. lol I don't know, just some suggestions.
Click to expand...

Nice trick. (This is one of the most awful drum tracks I have ever heard. I would rather mic a wind-up monkey.
 
MadTiger3000 said:
Nice trick. (This is one of the most awful drum tracks I have ever heard. I would rather mic a wind-up monkey.
Click to expand...

ha...to hear a track where I did in fact mic a wind-up monkey (and other wind-up toys), listen to this:

 
I took one copy of the track and used it to trigger the kick with drumagog.

I took another copy and used it to trigger the snare using the sidechaining in drumagog. I used a snare sound with a big transient just to get the smack into the track

I took another copy and high passed it at about 189Hz to get rid of the kick and notched it 9.8db at 2408.9Hz with a Q of 8.9. This is what I am getting the real snare sound along with the toms.

All of that was panned dead center

I took 2 more copies high passed at 2890Hz. One of these was phase (polarity) reversed and both were hard panned.

That's it.

I put it up as an mp3 as well

 
Hmm...I guess I'll have to look into Drumagog then...besides your other tips, any others for someone who *doesn't* have Drumagog?
 
I tried not using drumagog at first, but there is nothing you can do with the kick that is there. The snare is almost cool sounding and I don't mind the pumping, but the kick is just screwed.
 
Farview said:
I tried not using drumagog at first, but there is nothing you can do with the kick that is there. The snare is almost cool sounding and I don't mind the pumping, but the kick is just screwed.
Click to expand...
Farview, can you explain a little about Drumagog, for those of us who know nothing about it?? Is it a program that triggers the samples? What do you need to do this?

Thanks.
Ed
 
www.drumagog.com

If you tracked live drums (it works best if you mic'd everything separately) and you don't like the sounds, you insert drumagog on the track (in cubase, nuendo, etc...) and the audio triggers an new sound of your choosing.

The cool thing about Drumagog is that it has dynamic multisamples.

For example, a snare drum sounds different depending on how hard you hit it. If you hit it softly, you get a buzzy sound. If you hit it hard, you get more of a pop. The historic problem with triggered sounds was that (like a drum machine) every hit sounded the same, no matter what volume it was hit.
Drumagogs samples are recorded with different velocity layers so a soft hit triggers the sound of a soft hit and a heavy hit triggers...

The other thing that made sampling sound electronic was that even if there were different samples for soft and hard hits, there was only one sample for each layer. So if the trigger signal was consistent, the same sound would be triggered every time giving you that 'machine gun' effect. Drumagog gets around this by having a bunch of different samples in each velocity layer. The volume of the audio determines what velocity layer will be triggered and one of the samples in that layer will be randomly played. This way, even if the trigger signal is consistent, every hit sounds different than the one before it, more like a real drum.

There are a lot of other features like positional multisamples, midi, synthesis, etc... but that will sound even more like a commercial than this post already does. I hope I explained this well enough.
 
Farview said:
www.drumagog.com

If you tracked live drums (it works best if you mic'd everything separately) and you don't like the sounds, you insert drumagog on the track (in cubase, nuendo, etc...) and the audio triggers an new sound of your choosing.

The cool thing about Drumagog is that it has dynamic multisamples.

For example, a snare drum sounds different depending on how hard you hit it. If you hit it softly, you get a buzzy sound. If you hit it hard, you get more of a pop. The historic problem with triggered sounds was that (like a drum machine) every hit sounded the same, no matter what volume it was hit.
Drumagogs samples are recorded with different velocity layers so a soft hit triggers the sound of a soft hit and a heavy hit triggers...

The other thing that made sampling sound electronic was that even if there were different samples for soft and hard hits, there was only one sample for each layer. So if the trigger signal was consistent, the same sound would be triggered every time giving you that 'machine gun' effect. Drumagog gets around this by having a bunch of different samples in each velocity layer. The volume of the audio determines what velocity layer will be triggered and one of the samples in that layer will be randomly played. This way, even if the trigger signal is consistent, every hit sounds different than the one before it, more like a real drum.

There are a lot of other features like positional multisamples, midi, synthesis, etc... but that will sound even more like a commercial than this post already does. I hope I explained this well enough.
Click to expand...

Ok, that seems cool, but what if I don't play drums. I have some samples, and a drum machine, well 2. Could any of these be used to trigger Drumagog samples, and make better sounds? I went to the site, and saw things that made me think they would, but I could have misinterpreted the info. Since you know a bit about it, could a non drummer make this work? (meaning a simpleton like me....) I want some better drum sounds, and could buy some samples, but they will always be the same, and you know what drum machines sound like... :D

Anyway, any info is appreciated.
Thanks.
Ed
 
You can use audio to trigger drumagog, you could tape a 58 to a table and beat it with a wombat skull and use that audio to trigger Drumagog. Also, if you get the pro version, you can use it via midi. Drumagog can also convert audio to midi (percussion-wise)

I do use it to replace drum machine drum parts on some things that I get in, it works pretty well. With some realistic reverb (along with what you would normally put on drums) I can fool a lot of people.
 
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