whats the deal with drum samples?

  • Thread starter Thread starter kidkage
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kidkage

kidkage

Bored of Canada
up to this point, everytime ive heard "drum sample" ive thought of someone pressing buttons on the drum pad, or programming drums some way like that.
i was doing some reading today and read about people putting samples on (what im pretty sure were real/acoustic/mic'd) drums during mixing; mainly the kick and snare and that its done in a large percentage of commercial music.

three questions:
really?
, why?
&
how?
 
Yes.

Because it gives you more control over each drums sound.

There are numerous ways to go about it. I have only tried these: For free you can use kt drum trigger to send midi notes from a drum track. This will trigger a vsti (ezdrummer). Steven Slate Trigger EX can get you much better (real sounding) samples for $130 + ILOK. I upgraded to the Platunum. Definitely worth it for rock/metal drums.Software

Remember that triggers wont help unless you have recorded a separate track for each drum to be layered or replaced.
 

1. You can choose a new snare/kick/etc. sound for the drum being replaced if you didn't like the sound that was initially recorded.
2. If there are any drums hit with inconsistent velocities, you can straighten those out and make the song have a tighter, more professional feel. (Especially the kick drum, some drummers tend to hit it harder on the 1, softer during fast songs, etc.)
3. Samples always sound great (as long as you get the right ones) and sometimes you might not have a really great method for tracking drums. If you were ever forced to use a subpar mic on any certain drum and don't like the outcome, then the drum track can just become a trigger track and your once bad-sounding mic can be changed into a great sounding sample track.
 
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