Do you guys pitch shift drums at all?

[bryan_kilco]

Just curious. I seem to have troubles with my snare being too muddy and bass-y, even though I have both snare tracks HP'd pretty hard and have some highend (around 3k) boosted....

I was messing around with the "Rate" settings of my songs in Reaper yesterday, playing back the songs in higher speed / chipmunk land.....and noticed the snare had a great sound to it. Was wondering if, instead of having to dump a shit-ton of high end into my snares, maybe blend a pitch-shifted sample with the original?

Seem to have the same issue with my kicks being too muddy and boomy. I hate boosting a lot of treble frequencies, but if it sounds good, it is good, right?

Makes me curious as to how much post processing goes into some of these drum samples I hear around here......

 

[DaveBlack]

I love doing that with drums! You're right, it's almost as if it cleans them up a little but I can never commit to it. I would have to be doing something thrashy or some old florida death metal sound that used those tight snappy kits. And I would necessarily layout the whole drum track and tune it up. I would do it to the actual kit and leave the overheads or cymbal/hat/ride samples in tact.

 

[szymon]

as always - it depends on the song. I don't want to go cliche, but maybe snare isn't the problem itself?
or post a clip
blending pitched and original samples could work - i'd only be worried about some possible phase problems.

 

[BLUElightCory]

Why not tune the snare higher?

 

[bryan_kilco]

Why not tune the snare higher?

Pretty sure he has it pretty tight already....I'll double check today though.

 

[-Loco-]

I use the piccolo snare in superior all the time and i'm never happy with it at the stock pitch so I always detune it a tiny bit to get a bit more 'beat' out of it!

 

[Trevoire520]

Been using Slate's Kick 10 on a project I'm mixing the now and I've detuned that about -9 in Trigger to get a deeper sound.
Using the same snare with a normal pitch and detuned pitch is likely to cause phasing issues though. So pick one or the other, or add in a different sample to detune.

 

[TheWinterSnow]

Pitch and harmonics are two separate things. Increasing pitch take harmonics with it whereas eq increases/decreases the volume of harmonics. You need to listen to the snare and decide if you simply don't like the tonality/harmonic signature or if it can be eq'd to taste. Most likely if it can't be eq'd to taste, then its probably the issue of harmonic signature. You can change the pitch but that won't get rid of the tonality of the snare, it will just move it up in pitch. try it though, it might work better in the mix and might enable to eq better. If that doesn't work, you should try sample replacement.

 

[Seth Munson]

Pitching kicks, snares, toms is pretty crucial when blending samples with live drums or even other samples. Just do it until it sounds good to you

 

[Sonic75]

If you like it, do it!
:Shedevil:

 

[Charles J]

Pitching kicks, snares, toms is pretty crucial when blending samples with live drums or even other samples. Just do it until it sounds good to you

+1. I do it on every project. I like to stack multiple samples and mess with volume and pitch and the resulting phase anomalies that can and do occur.... shit is essential! =D

 

[Seth Munson]

I seriously cringe when I hear toms that are clearly blended samples that aren't in tune to each other just as much as I would cringe to an untuned guitar

 

[Loren Littlejohn]

Yeah if I'm blending samples it's pretty much essential to pitch them in tune.