Help With Bass Drum Triggering

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_mat_

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I've been trying to avoid asking this question for awhile, in hopes that I could work around it somehow, but atlast I can no longer hide it. I use drumagog basic and have been getting frustrated trying to figure out how i can somehow correct a good deal of bass drum mistakes. I record primarily metal bands which use consistant double bass patterns, but a lot of times they screw up and I am left with trying to cut and paste little bits and pieces together in order for it to sound somewhat decent. I'm getting annoyed with having to cut the actual drum samples, rather than somehow writing the pattern in using a midi instrument, which would save me a ton of time. I use pro tools 6.7 (soon to have pt 7.0) with drumagog 4 basic. I have a pretty good amount of plugins, mostly all native instruments. Is there any program and/or method to being able work around the problem i stated above. I'm just looking for some type of a resolution to this problem, any way i can get it. Thanks for any help i can get.

Mat
 
I'm not familiar with drumagog... However.. It would seem to me that you'd end up with a much better result with the splicing technique you mentioned... Here's why I think that..

1. If the drummer does multiple, but compositionally identical, double bass patterns in the song, you have many different "slices" to choose from. I would be concerned with using a random midi drum or sample for this application. An alternative would be to pick a random but hugely similar collection of single hit samples, and then sequence them using Reason's ReDrum (via ReWire) or any sampler (Kontakt, for example)....

2. If you do splicing INSTEAD OF sequencing (in shuffle mode [ProTools wise]), then you'd almost be guaranteed a more realistic but better sounding run of the drums...

Not sure if I'm breaking the ice on this topic... Let me know...

Edited: fixed sumthin
 
Actually.. Lemme revise that...

"you have many different "slices" to choose from. "

should be

"you have many different "slices" to choose from (and you shouldn't use the same one twice in a run)"

It wouldn't be a big deal to copy from verse to verse... But within a stretch of 4 or 8 bars, I wouldn't do it... It would sound artificial to someone with really good ears..
 
I was thinking of continuing to do the splicing. I mean it works, but like i said it's just super time consuming and sometimes it never sounds like i'd want it. I also recently sort of learned how to use reason's redrum technique which I did with rewire into pro tools. I think that might be another alternative. I also have kontakt, but haven't tried using this type of method with it yet (i only purchased it a few days ago). I'd like to try that out in that program to see what type of headway I might make with it. Also, the one thing about metal that a lot of people may or may not notice is that, the bass drum patterns sometimes sound almost inhuman and something out of the ordinary due to the speed and patterns that are performed. I don't think that having parts that sound fake will matter too much, just as long as they follow the music and the samples used are still the same, you know? I'm more worried about conciseness, and not so much the realism. If i have to sacrifice a real drummer for something i create, then so be it. I just hate hearing tons of double bass triplet patterns that have skipping going on in them. It ends up ruining the mix. But thank you very much peritus. I'm going to try out redrum a bit more as well as kontakt and see what i can do in there. Any other ideas of how i can configure the software to work well with the drums i already have recorded?

mat
 
i've tried using beat detective, but never really gave too much attention to it because a lot of what i was recording wasn't standard timing and also was a bit sloppy, so it never really picked up what i had selected for it. But once again, that was awhile ago and I might be able to do better with it now..who knows? I'm going to read up on it a lot and see what i can about it and maybe i'll get somewhere with it.

mat
 
I'm just used to Neil Peart drummin'..lol.....No more ideas at the moment.... Unless you consider overdubs or kicking the drumming for not practicing ideas...
 
Look up Propellerhead's Recycle... there's an idea... :)
 
If the drummer is playing to a click, you can just manufacture the pattern and copy and paste.

What I used to do was: take a 58 and place it between your knees, play the patterns with your hands on the 58. Use Drumagog to replace your handy-work with a kick sample.

BTW unless you are getting paid by the hour to fix the drummers performance, don't bother. The drummer won't have a need to play well if you fix everything for him. In fact, make the drummer beat on the 58 to fix his mistakes. That'll learn 'im.
 
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