Question about triggers and sample replacement

[Ericlingus]

I am recording a more old school sounding metal band that is a mix between Pantera, Type O Negative and Moonspell and was wondering how to go about adding drum samples. I am going to add drum samples to the snare and kick. I have Slate Trigger. There is a lot of bleed in the trigger tracks and I am getting a lot of false triggers. How do you get rid of all the false/missed triggering and also what do you guys use for velocity? Do you have it trigger the hardest possible hits for most of the hits? What do you do to control how hard it triggers the sample? Also, do you guys have any type of samples in mind to get a type of negative type of drum sound. I do know they used a drum machine on October Rust. Thanks.

 

[Studdy]

Duplicate the track. Find the dominant frequencies of the kick and snare, on snare maybe 200hz and 5k or whatever works, kick 80hz etc.. Boost those frequencies and/or cut a bunch of everything else. Now add a transient designer and boost it. Throw on a sample replacement plug and set it up properly. Should work, I've done this with some really bloody tracks and it worked perfect. You can also play with gates or tab to transient and do it the old fashion way. Cheers.

(Lol "tab to transient is the old fashion way". Some of you guys from the old analog/tape days would slap me.)

 

[Ericlingus]

what do you do about velocities? Right now the trigger track is really boosted so all the hits read at max velocity. Do you just keep it that way? That is what I am doing. On the fills or blast beats I just use a different trigger track and use weaker hits.

 

[Studdy]

Try doing what I suggested , in moderation at first. Try removing unnecessary frequencies and maybe just throw a transient designer on subtlety. Trigger , drumagog , etc. allows you to deal with velocities. You can manually adjust the gain of the hit before replacing to give it more or less dynamics. I'm not sure if that's what you are asking. Hope this helps.

 

[Fox Mulder]

I'd try using an expander followed by a gate, aggressively enough so that all I'm left with is a really short transient which would be used to trigger samples; Maybe even print a copy and edit out unwanted hits as well. Hope this helps.

 

[Ericlingus]

what about the the types of hits used? Do you generally keep it so all the samples are the hardest hits?

 

[The StabbinCabin]

Assuming the leakage suppression thing didn't work-

1) Bounce the processed unsampled track, automate volume and add sound-replacer after. You should have more control with velocities that way.

2) Convert processed bleed reduced audio to MIDI, replace, automate midi

 

[Jordon]

I'd start by asking why you're reaching for samples (not trying to sound like a pretentious ass, honestly), because that will dictate what type of samples you're going to use, ie if you're totally replacing or just augmenting what's already there.

Generally, my goal with using samples is to augment the existing kit, just using the sample to make up for what the drum may be lacking (body, attack, crack, etc), which is why I've been using more one-shot samples lately. This seems to work really well for metal and heavy rock, especially when they sample isn't being used for the majority of the sound. For kick, I usually lay the samples by hand if the raw kick track has minimal bleed. I have a macro set up in Pro Tools that will tab to transient, drop down to a different track, lay the sample, and then repeat the process a certain amount of times.

For snare, I'll reach for Massey DRT (try the free trial, it's pretty awesome) over Trigger because I've found it to be much more accurate when laying down samples. I'll also lay down a track of clicks to use as a sidechain for a gate, and it also comes in handy if I find the sample isn't working in the context of the mix, that way I can quickly replace what I have using that "trigger" track without going through the entire process all over again.

If I'm totally replacing a kick or snare or working with a project that needs more finesse, then I'll use a multi-hit, multi-layered sample and spend a decent amount of time making sure the velocities are matching the performance properly.

Hope that helps a bit.