Real drums, fast double kick, how do?!?

[bryan_kilco]

Ok, so I've been noticing this problem with our drummer while tracking. He'll start off a fast double kick passage sloppy as hell, like...the first hit is way loud then it gets realllllllly quiet as he gets motion going, then always ends up swelling up and getting louder and better.

No access to a trigger. Aside from just having him keep tracking over and over, what would you guys do to aid an all-natural kick, that probably will not get any sample replacement? Compression can only take it so far, I imagine.....God DAMN I wish we had a trigger!

 

[ForgotenWarrior6]

Its not the kick. It's your drummer. Tell him to practice religiously to a metronome everyday.

You could buy APtrigga and find one of the many kick.wav files floating around of the forum and use that for triggering. It'd only cost 50 dollars, roughly. That way when you boot up the plugin on your kick channel, it will trigger it registered hit to the .wav you have it set up to.

It sounds to me that your drummer doesn't have even feet though. (If the groupings don't sound even then triggering it probably wont fix it.)

 

[BLUElightCory]

Or just replace the weak hits by hand in your DAW - it sounds like it would take a long time but once you get the hang of it it's not so bad.

 

[Trevoire520]

You can still trigger a sample from the mic'd signal, just might take a bit more messing about compared to using a trigger.

 

[bryan_kilco]

Yeah, I figured it's mostly just the drummers foot technique. He HAS been getting significantly better with practicing to the clicks and he's beginning to relax a bit more. We basically took some of the weak hits out and replaced them with good hits.

 

[bryan_kilco]

You can still trigger a sample from the mic'd signal, just might take a bit more messing about compared to using a trigger.

Exactly, I've always had issues trying to find the right threshold and all that fun stuff. Seems like it'd be WAYYYY easier to have an actual, physical trigger to deal with....would make editing much easier too. Then again, I've only really used Reapers Stillwell/Drumtrigger which is single sample.

 

[JamesNorman]

Even if it the drummer is perfect the kick will still lose it's attack on faster kick patterns as it doesn't have time to resonant properley between hits, if you carnt afford a replacement software paste the sample to the transient

 

[B36arin]

Program the kick in MIDI after you've edited the drums.

 

[mva801]

if you carnt afford a replacement software paste the sample to the transient

^^^^ This. You don't need anything besides a kick sample, readily available on here. And maybe a new drummer who can play consistently...

 

[pikachu69]

Minimizing the spill during tracking makes it alot easier to trigger from a mic. Using a kick tunnel covered in blankets etc is a great way to minimize spill almost entirely, then transient monster its ass and it should trigger fine.

 

[if6was9]

Definately the drummer, I've had guys who come in and play like that. In my experience you never have the luxury of telling a band "to go home and practise". Just automate the threshold of the trigger software or replace by hand. Also in my experience drummers who hit like this with their feet also usually have a hard time getting a consistent tom sound as they don't hit very cleanly.

 

[JeffTD]

Ankle weights, track the kick separately in sections, replace by hand, or program in MIDI.

 

[Morgan C]

Dynamics are a part of real drums, you won't EVER get as constant a sound as you get with samples with a real drummer, no matter how good he is. However, sounds like your drummer just isn't good.

Any particular reason you're keeping them natural? If it's just because you can't trigger off the source, then just program them. You could fill the kick drum completely with blankets so all you get is a 'tick', then highpass that and trigger from that.. but then you'd have to quantize and it's way more work than programming it would be.

If you REALLY want to keep them natural, then try tracking the kick separately to the rest of the drums, however, that may make him play even worse. The drummers who can pull off natural drums in metal are few and far between, are some of the best drummers in the world, and still often have minor sample augmentation and it STILL doesn't sound anywhere near as consistent as sampled drums.

 

[bryan_kilco]

Yeah, I don't know.....I'd be all for messing with replacement but we'll see what happens come mixing time. Pretty far into tracking now, so to go back would eat up a lot of time. I just never really messed with taking real samples, multi-sampling, or tuning other peoples' samples correctly to make it sound great. I did mess with drumtrigger on kicks and snare and it made a big difference, but this was when I was the one "producing" us. I'm sort of assistant now.

 

[OctoberRust]

track the kick separately in sections

^ this

 

[Damage, Inc.]

What I've done on a couple occasions is use Reaper's ReaTune to make a MIDI file out of the kick track. Then you can move the hits, adjust volume, remove doubles, etc. Then you can trigger samples and end up with a clean kick track.

 

[pikachu69]

Edit the kick track to the grid separately but only fixing the worst parts that bug you and replace 100% with a sample similar to the kick being used. Use surgical eq to remove as much of the kick out of the OH and room as you can and blend the sample in to suit. Gating other close mics on toms and snare will be important here too. I did this on a song recently with what can only be the twin brother of the drummer you are tracking lol and it worked out ok.

 

[Tommy Gun]

Tell your drummer to watch this, if he hasn't already...

 

[TomCase]

Have him play the part 4 or 5 times longer than it's written. If he gets better as he goes you should be able to find enough workable material to cut and paste together.

Like others have said, you don't need to spend anything other than time to augment/replace the kick with a sample.

Tom

 

[TomCase]

Just re-read, saw that you are way past the recording phase.

Best of luck.

Tom