Kick drums at a consistent level

  • Thread starter Thread starter ausgrindslaught
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I'm not sure what the problem is with drumagog. But like Farview says, the guy who wrote it is a one man helpdesk. It's ideal for your situation here because triggering the sample eliminates all the background noise on the track without the hassle of editing envelopes and getting rsi. I use drumagog because I can't get a particularly good kick sound in my room
 
ausgrindslaught said:
Bah. Messing round with Drumagog 3.0 (I use Cool Edit sadly for mixing). Dont know what the hell is wrong with the thing, but even when I select another sample to use the track renders with a bloody snare sound.
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That will be the Drumagog demo you are using. :)

Eck
 
BTW 99.99% of all bands that use blast beats are triggering the kick for this exact reason. The faster the kicks are, the more attack you need to hear them clearly. Unfortuantly, the faster a drummer goes, the lighter he hits the kick. The lighter you hit the kick, the less attack it has. Triggering the kick solves all these problems. There are only a handful of drummers in the world with enough strength and stamina to hit a kick hard enough at that speed.
 
Farview said:
BTW 99.99% of all bands that use blast beats are triggering the kick for this exact reason. The faster the kicks are, the more attack you need to hear them clearly. Unfortuantly, the faster a drummer goes, the lighter he hits the kick. The lighter you hit the kick, the less attack it has. Triggering the kick solves all these problems. There are only a handful of drummers in the world with enough strength and stamina to hit a kick hard enough at that speed.
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Using Drumagog for this reason can easily make a kcik sound fake and too precise though.

Eck
 
ecktronic said:
Using Drumagog for this reason can easily make a kcik sound fake and too precise though.

Eck
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Only if you are a dimwit at using it.
 
ecktronic said:
Using Drumagog for this reason can easily make a kcik sound fake and too precise though.

Eck
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Not if you have multi-sampled kick gogs.
 
Multi... samples ey? I'll have to look into that. I know whatcha mean but how to do it exactly escapes me. I've had a bit of a qualm with the bit of gogging i've done making the kicks too mechanical.

I HATE those bloody clicky, lifeless, thin kick drums!!

Unforunately not every drummer can be Gene Hoglan or Flo Mounier (I was going to say John Longstreth but he triggers everything ridiculously).
 
Jason Bittner is one of the guy I've seen who can fly at 190 BPM without triggers.

The thing with building gogs is you have to have a bunch of hits. You need a few velocity layers. (grouped by how hard the drum was hit) and a bunch of multi-samples in each velocity layer. Every time you hit a drum, it sounds a little different. That is the thing that gives away drum machines-every hit is the same hit.

By having the different velocity layers, it gives the same life to the dynamics that the real drum does.


By grouping together 4 or 5 of the same type of hit, Drumagog will randomly fire those samples, thus making it sound more natural.
 
I think in grindcore and deathmetal it's kind of accepted/expected that the drums will sound a little fake or mechanical. Like farview said, most of the bands in those genre's are using triggers.

drumagog is definitely a good way to go though. the trial period for drumagog really isn't long enough for you to figure out how to use it or decide if you like it. I shouldn't admit to this, but I used a cracked version of it for a couple months before buying it.......I did end up buying it though.

If you can afford it, I would get it. Once you have it, they've made something like 4 gigs worth of samples available for free. It's a damn good buy.

the chances that you'll end up with drum sounds as good as the ones you get with drumagog are slim. it takes a lot of trial and error learning and a good room with good drums and better gear than most of us can afford to get sounds that good. You should still try to get better sounds, but there is nothing wrong with using drumagog.

it can also help with your dynamics issue. you can turn the dynamic tracking down. In most music that's an awful idea, but in the case of grind and death metal it's perfect. there's not much volume dynamic in most of that stuff that I've heard, so the lack of dynamics in the drums is kind of a non issue.
 
A good portion of the samples that come with Drumagog are ones that I built.
 
Cheers guys I've been messing round with it. I might post the drums later today and get some feedback.

I think in grindcore and deathmetal it's kind of accepted/expected that the drums will sound a little fake or mechanical. Like farview said, most of the bands in those genre's are using triggers.
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Well... much more death metal than grindcore. Its a little bit of a fo-par to trigger or 'fairy tap' your drums in most grind circles - something I agree with. This use of drumagog isnt permanent - just til my drummer gets in gear. I dont have the time to rerecord. He;s only been playing since January (well, restarted playing after 5 years).

I've been trying to find some vids of some of the unbelivable Aussie extreme drummers... Matt Skitz (Damaged) and Dave Hayley (Psycroptic) but theyre no where to be found :( Skitz was an absolute fucking animal in the early 90's. He was respected as one of the most fastest hard-hitting, aggressive and powerful drummers in metal. He just obliterated the drums, and never sacrificed speed for power.

Jason Bittner was impressive though. I'm going to pass some of his dble bass instructionals onto my drummer, hehe.
 
Yeah Derek Roddy, great drummer. His fills and blasts are awesome. Dont like how much he uses those bloody symbols those in that video series. Still not the kind of grind drummer I'm talking about. John Longstreth - another great extreme death drummer. The guy from Spiritual Dissection also rules.

I spose a good example would be Kai Hahto from Rotten Sound - one of my favourite current grind drummers. His solo here is decent https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=si98nw4w2Ns or recording their latest MCD here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kQVV-6zG_4

But more importantly go and watch/listen to this clip from their last full length https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBsk0MjTCcg&mode=related&search= . Speaking of, that amazing production is what I hope to make a caricature of. Very compressed drums?

Heh, as a side note these guys rule too; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RNO3YLQZd8
 
Farview said:
A good portion of the samples that come with Drumagog are ones that I built.
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I don't know if you thought I was saying that you wouldn't be able to get those sounds.......I was saying that most of us homerecording guys wouldn't be able to. You of course aren't a home recording guy.
 
donkeystyle said:
I don't know if you thought I was saying that you wouldn't be able to get those sounds.......I was saying that most of us homerecording guys wouldn't be able to. You of course aren't a home recording guy.
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I was just pointing out that a good portion of those samples are ones that were sampled for the Rock Drums collection. These didn't make it because of disc space, so I let Drumagog give them away.
 
Massive Master said:
Volume envelopes - and copying and pasting to some extent - are your friends.
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My usual method In Samplitude;

1 - copy a good hit (drag over it, cntl C)

2 - Make seperate objects of the weak hits (drag over it, T)

3 - Raise the level of the medium weak hits (click and drag the volume handle)

4 - Replace the weak weak hits (del, cntl V)

This takes me just a bit longer than dialing in a compressor, but sounds much better. Then I can compress the overall track to flavour, not to fix the track.
Sometimes it's best to leave the weak hits still slightly weaker, as often they were intended to be. Replacing the weak weak hits fixes both the level AND the timber.
 
i want paris hiltons head on a stake too!!
if you have any spare money (i sure as hell dont but) it might be worth getting an old alesis d4 or any drum module that has trigger to midi conversion. that way you can record the midi (if your recording it again which i gather you are) and make it trigger a sample you have that you like or a sample you want to use etc.. instead of using drumagog (never used it but i gather it takes the audio and swaps it for a sample) or something. i have heard great stuff about drumagog but it might be worth triggering the kick aswell as recording it this way you can adjust the velocity of the midi so it is all even.
 
Alright I know this track is a piece of shit so far, but I'll post it anyway.

Heres what I dont like about it:

1. The kick drum needs a bit more of a defined sound, less boomy and more clicky/sharp.

2. The snare sucks, its remarkably unaggressive. Suggests on how to fix this would rule. Also too much goddam overhead leakage in the snare mic annoys me.

3. Overhead mic... need to find a way to phatten the toms up a bit - but I'm guessing this is impossible.

Recording was with kick mic, snare mic and condensor overhead (panned mostly right).

Any and all comments, ideas, suggestions would be appreicated. This mix has a looooooooooong way to go.

 
ausgrindslaught said:
Without a doubt mate. Unforunately the kick volume varies too much. Cant be helped. I refuse to rerecord for the moment. I'll have a go at using volume envelopes, but the sound leaking isnt the biggest problem really. And yeah, where possibly I wont use cheatagog.[/QUOTE]
I have no problem at all using drumagog. They use, in may cases real sampled sounds. I have many times created my own kick sound and used it in songs. Or, sampled the drummers kick while its quiet, no bleed and use that. I see no difference in this than eq. or comp. or anything else we use to alter the natural state of sound. I can present you tracks with and without drumagog and no one here will be able to tell me what was what. Its a tool, use it.
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