| Home recording and general music post from the archived Yabb Recording Website Message Board. Some of the info here may be outdated but many of the audio recording and home studio tips are still good. Note: The only tags I made and attempt to convert are italics, bold, center and underline. So if you see some gibberish surrounded by brackets, just ignore it.
Recording Website Archived Yabb board Post
Febuary 2001 Yabb Message Board Archive
Subject: real drummer - hip hop drum sound
by BananaHead | 04/08/01 at 18:52:36
Anyone have any techniques for recording a real drummer to make it sound like hip-hop/rap drum machine type sound? I've done the thing where you use a sampler to trigger a low synth tone before, I'm not sure if I'm going to have sort of equipment available for this project. Probably lots of overcompression? Mostly I just want to mic up some major sub-sonic lows from the kick drum. Any ideas?
Subject: Re: real drummer - hip hop drum sound
by pcrecord | 04/09/01 at 07:26:52
Well alot of technics are good but if you want a cheap and fast one, I'd go with triggers ! Yep, the drummer might be insulted (I'm a drummer) but what better way to have electronic sounds then electronic stuff. Of course the quality depend of the playback unit (beat box or sampler). So I'd record it in midi file (do some quantising when the drummer is in the washroom) and play it back with the sound source you want.
If you don't like that idea, I'd say start with special tunnings of the drum and the rest will be easier.
;)
Subject: Re: real drummer - hip hop drum sound
by JR#97 | 04/09/01 at 09:16:56
Try drumaggog. It's a DX plug-in that can "replace" existing drum tracks with drum sounds of your choice. It's kinda hard to tweak just right, but it works. You could also use Acid and create your own drum loops/track and mix it in with the existing drum track. I've done it with good results before.
Subject: Re: real drummer - hip hop drum sound
by Dolphin | 04/09/01 at 14:07:58
You're making a lot of extra work for yourself. Why not just use a drum machine.
The "real" drummer could maybe add some "real" fills to the track.
Subject: Re: real drummer - hip hop drum sound
by BananaHead | 04/09/01 at 18:13:49
Ya, but everyone already does that. Taking a real drummer with real feel and then bluring the line by adding tones you're normally hear from a drum machine is less done. Like check out Medinsky Martain & Wood for an excellent jazz drummer who plays sorta hiphop like. The engineer has played off that in the recordings by adding a lowsynth tone or something to the kick to get that club single boom.
I'm not gonna put it through a computer and butcher his playing, just tweak it in the micing and mix slightly. I dunno, I'll probably just overdrive the preamp to get crackle and run 3 compressors in series. Someone from another board mentioned the Sansamp, which I've done, gets great crunchy drums. ;D
Subject: Re: real drummer - hip hop drum sound
by DanS | 04/10/01 at 10:37:15
[quote author=BananaHead link=board=rec1&num=986777556&start=0#4 date=04/09/01 at 18:13:49]
Ya, but everyone already does that. Taking a real drummer with real feel and then bluring the line by adding tones you're normally hear from a drum machine is less done. Like check out Medinsky Martain & Wood for an excellent jazz drummer who plays sorta hiphop like.
Ya, and sorta plays the same beat in every song!
I really liked the first couple of MMW discs I bought, but they lost me with The Dropper. Just weird for the sake of being weird.
I'm not gonna put it through a computer and butcher his playing, just tweak it in the micing and mix slightly. I dunno, I'll probably just overdrive the preamp to get crackle and run 3 compressors in series. Someone from another board mentioned the Sansamp, which I've done, gets great crunchy drums. ;D
There's a VST plugin by Craig Anderton called FuzzBox (?) that has some funky settings for drums. I haven't been brave enough to try it yet, but give me time8)
Subject: Re: real drummer - hip hop drum sound
by Jon | 04/10/01 at 10:43:48
Last time I checked, real hip-hop drum sounds were samples from vinyl. If I were you, I'd try recording at a lower rate (not too low) and find a plug-in or something that can emulate that warm record feel. I think there are actual plug-ins that can add hiss and cracking/popping similar to vinyl.
Subject: Re: real drummer - hip hop drum sound
by JR#97 | 04/10/01 at 11:40:20
There's plenty of places on the net you can grab vinyl sampled drum loops. I use those in Acid all the time. Pretty groovy baby.
Subject: Re: real drummer - hip hop drum sound
by BananaHead | 04/10/01 at 15:19:41
Ha, right-on to vinyl crackle!!! I've sampled & looped vinyl crackle before and put it as a texture throughout a song. But since this is going to be for vinyl release it's probably gonna already get it's own crackle after a while! :)
Maybe I'll try sampling and looping one bar of the drummer for one song. Then he can do some fills over himself.
Subject: Re: real drummer - hip hop drum sound
by Silent_Bob | 04/10/01 at 18:08:45
Close mic the drums & EQ everything opposite of what you'd normally do. BTW, were do you get vinyl done? How much does an LP normally cost for short runs?
Subject: Re: real drummer - hip hop drum sound
by Jon_B | 04/10/01 at 20:52:46
Give the drummer a full frontal lobotomy and some methamphetamine (don't try to do the operation yourself) and have the snare trigger a sample of a .40 cal Glock firing into a garbage can full of scrap metal in a long, narrow alley. That's what I always do, anyway.
Or, use a drum machine. ;D
Seriously, the easiest way would probably be to program electronic drums.
Subject: Re: real drummer - hip hop drum sound
by pcrecord | 04/11/01 at 07:12:31
I'm sorry Bananahead,
It seem that alot of us think there's nothing like a machine to do a machine's job. But I understand your desire for human feeling along the way. If somebody wants to make a drum machine sounds more human, he(she) has to play alot with velocity so the notes are not always equal. The fastest way to do it is ask a drummer to play on triggers. You can find a used alesis d4 for around 100$ and making triggers is very simple. You just take a 1.99$ piezo from radio scrap, open it and connect an 1/4 cable, easy and effective. Oh yeah, just forgot; you can take an acoustique sound (tape track out or direct out) and put it in the d4 as a trigger sound. I did that to replace some old, bad kick we could'nt work with, good chance the customer had it on a seperate track on hir old analog 8 tracks. You can also just add a synth sound to your acoustique bass drum, just merge them if you will.
Of course a good 4 bands parametric EQ on an acoustique Drum can be of some use but hey ! Have you heard anything but sampled sounds on rap music ?
Maybe it's time for a change tho !
:D
Subject: Re: real drummer - hip hop drum sound
by Mark | 04/11/01 at 09:04:19
[size=3][color=Orange]BH, I'm thinking run a stereo mix of the drum tracks (or better, a loop of live drums) through a PA, eq, overdrive, and/or compression-pump to taste, and mic the speakers--I think the Beasties do this. I know a lot of hip hop producers do the Sansamp thing, but usually to drum machine tracks--to make them sound more real! So you'd be kinda doing the reverse.
Recently, when I use my drum machine to demo stuff I run it through an old amp on an overdrive channel and mic the amp. It sounds much better than direct.[/size][/color]
Subject: Re: real drummer - hip hop drum sound
by BananaHead | 04/11/01 at 14:00:57
Heck ya Mark. Amping drum machines is the poo! Check this out. Recently in the studio I ran a DR660 (oh so bland) into an old tube marshall combo in a good room... blasted the old junker till it was ready to blow, then micd it from 10 feet out with a coles4038 into a urei1176. Ha, it turned the bland 660 into some sort of fat vintage machine and put some space around the sound. Bombastic.
Good idea about runin the track through a pa. I have a small one I can use. Do some low end boost till the speakers are really pumping and them mic that up. Ya, I've already got the sansamp ready... it sounds good on real drums, I've done it... gives them drive and grit.
Subject: Re: real drummer - hip hop drum sound
by pcrecord | 04/12/01 at 06:53:13
What about the stereo image ???
Is there one anyway ??
Subject: Re: real drummer - hip hop drum sound
by db | 04/12/01 at 20:19:10
How's this, take a keypexII, or keyable expander/gate, send a sinewave though, LF maybe 60hz, use the Kick mic as key to trigger the tone. Adjust attack for beater sound, release for ring. No compression needed, very smooth, Boooooom all the way. Same thing for snare, compress the piss out of it, then make it tight with a gate, sounds just like a drum machine, do the same with toms, as was done with the kick, just select the frequency, if you have sweep gens, then you can tune them perfect.
--db
Subject: Re: real drummer - hip hop drum sound
by BananaHead | 04/17/01 at 14:36:02
It's good to have you around here... you know your stuff!
So here is what I could do. Have I got this right? I've never done this. So in the mix... I'll run a constant low wave from a Nord Lead II patch... I'll run this into the input of a gate... I'll run the output of the gate back to the desk onto a new channel... I'll then split a copy of the kick channel out via direct channel outs and run that into the gate's sidechain input and gate off the real kick sound? No compression on the synth obviously, just gate it right and mix it with the original real kick to add some low end boom.
I'll probably have the drummer play sparce with the kick so it doesn't turn into a mud bath.
Subject: Re: real drummer - hip hop drum sound
by db | 04/17/01 at 15:45:36
You got it, depends on your gates flexablity, if you can fuss with threashold, attack/release/ range/ratio, you will find exactly what you need. I even used this technique on a Country western shuffle once. Of course, with much tighter settings. With short attack, you can create a beater sound, or mix the real one in. Also, useing modulation,you can bend it a little. Like the cars that go by, a dollop of doppler. HEE HEE
--db
Subject: Re: real drummer - hip hop drum sound
by pcrecord | 04/18/01 at 07:17:46
Well you got me there, that's nice trick !!
Thanks db
:D