Do drum sample lengths inadvertently determine genre?

[BigBasserino]

Do drum sample lengths dictate genre?

In cases where I hear metal bands with clear drums I feel I have to assume that to some degree triggers might be in play. With that being said, "how you sound" comes down to what samples are being used (which most popular lately seems to be EZdrummer).

Freeware options for drum samples often sound different or geared for dance.

But nobody really discusses the difference. Usually just "oh, maybe you're using crappy samples" if things don't sound right. What I hear in EZDRUMMER samples definitely sounds like hard compression, EQ and reverb, but does sample length make the difference? Is that the key to making free sounds so I can not deal with EZDRUMMER? I think sometimes samples from drum machines (like Alesis SR-16) that are "good for metal" sound slow. what do you think?

 

[Badwater]

Not really. You can use any type of drum sample made for specific genre and create your own style. In this song I took a electronic dance or hip hop beat, slowed it down, added my own drum rolls and created a cinema track for my videos.


Here's the video:

 

[BigBasserino]

I get that, but I know the usual battle against purists is "it still sounds like samples". Part of me doesn't care. After all, they're my tunes, right? But finding ways to get closer to "regular" sounding drums (I mean without the complication of humanizing things; if I had to choose between drummers that sit happily for murky poorly recorded live drums and my own abominations, I'll take the machine stuff) but closer to drumkit from hell or the metal kick drum (Google that site, pretty good drums). I actually recall my go-to drums were from a sample set called "kalava drums". But I wish I knew better how to manipulate from the ground up. Like stock DAW samples or synth.

 

[seamonkey]

It may not be the samples are longer, but along the lines of there are more samples and the sample players have round robin, and random adjustments on playback.

Drummers don't hit the heads in the same place twice in a row. And they don't hit at identical velocity. Sometimes they leave one stick on the head when they hit with the other. This adds some muting or pitch shift.

So the recording engineer will have multiple samples around the same velocity and hit at different spots on the drums and with a different mic position, or a wallet on the head, ... Then on playback do some random selection from the recorded samples around the same value. In midi - when you send the same note and same velocity it mixes up which sample is played back.

For pitched instruments it's common to take the next half step up or down, and pitch shift it to the same note to get some variations on repeated hits.

 

[BigBasserino]

Gotcha. Ya I just saw an article featuring Scott Hull where the same concept was brought up. Still a fan of minimal resources but could make music amusing if I put in some mismatched samples too (hip hop drums as you scale down the velocity from metal sounds etc.). Maybe I should make power tool samples and really upset people by using those as drums

 

[knumbskull]

I always found that busy metal programmed drum parts (in a simiar style as Agoraphobic Nosebleed etc) work best with as “flat” sounding drum samples as possible i.e. hard attack, short decay, no reverb. However a lot of “rock” or “metal” drum samples tend to be the opposite, really long tails, reverb etc.

As you mention

 

[BigBasserino]

However a lot of “rock” or “metal” drum samples tend to be the opposite, really long tails, reverb etc.

Right? I always have to crop that stuff out.

 

[Ulf_Hansson]

Do drum sample lengths dictate genre?
In cases where I hear metal bands with clear drums I feel I have to assume that to some degree triggers might be in play.

I'd say most (good) metal recordings use a combination of the recorded real drums and triggered samples. This is most prominent on the fast double kick parts, where you really only need the attack (click) part.

With that being said, "how you sound" comes down to what samples are being used (which most popular lately seems to be EZdrummer).
Freeware options for drum samples often sound different or geared for dance.

EZ-drummer uses some really high end samples (multi velocity, multi layered), but in my opinion the real magic are the algorithms that adds and modifies beats to make them sound more realistic, with proper variations in velocity and timbre. You can do that manually, but it is a lot of hard work. Probably easier to just record a real drummer instead. Or use EZ.

 

[Mcgiver69]

If more natural sounding drums is what you're looking for Analogue Drums is your best friend, they are drum samples (not loops) that were recorded through a Neve console.

Analogue Drums - Free Drum Samples for Kontakt

 

[JRA]

maybe.

 

[seamonkey]

For realistic playing Jamstix is still one of the best
Rayzoon - Virtual Drum Software
It has its own samples but it can work with any of the sample libs.
It has plugin to listen to the other tracks or midi and adjust intensity based on what else is going on.
Steep learning curve.

 

[BigBasserino]

Hi guys, so I've been chipping away at the same topic for three weeks and I think I've finally gotten close to a natural sounding (for programmed, I suppose) drum sound. No EZdrummer..... just my skills, FL studio and built in FPC...and a lot of compression and EQ. I can still think of things that need tweaking (like the snare needs boosting because I made a cut on it now), but I thought I'd share it's a resounding YES, shortening does make a hefty impact if you're doing it right .

 

[Ulf_Hansson]

Hi guys, so I've been chipping away at the same topic for three weeks and I think I've finally gotten close to a natural sounding (for programmed, I suppose) drum sound. No EZdrummer..... just my skills, FL studio and built in FPC...and a lot of compression and EQ. I can still think of things that need tweaking (like the snare needs boosting because I made a cut on it now), but I thought I'd share it's a resounding YES, shortening does make a hefty impact if you're doing it right .

Sorry if I might have misunderstood the question or the task at hand, but that didn't sound at all like a real drummer playing a real instument. The point of using something like EZ-drummer is to mimic the nuances and style of a human being, as well as letting the computer taking care of the resources (like which samples can be cut off due to multi-triggering and how to keep a cymbal sounding like a cymbal when hit more than once).

Actually I don't understand the original question, so maybe I'm not the audience for this tread. Maybe you are playing a style which I don't know well enough. (No "metal" is not the answer, because that clip didn't sound at all like a metal drummer. It sounded like a bad drum machine.)

 

[seamonkey]

The extra tails on samples are handled pretty good by the sampler/rompler players these days.
I do have automation in source forge that will read a directory of samples and clean up the tails, but I haven't had to use it in years as the sample players are much better about polyphony and not note stealing during important parts of the samples. The sample players themselves don't end up with "machine gun" type effect.

Yeah, the tails eat up disc space but storage is cheap these days. It doesn't hurt to cut out the silence in the tails, as long as it really is silence and not ambience. It just hasn't been worth the effort in years. Just let the software do the work.

 

[BigBasserino]

Sorry if I might have misunderstood the question or the task at hand, but that didn't sound at all like a real drummer playing a real instument. The point of using something like EZ-drummer is to mimic the nuances and style of a human being, as well as letting the computer taking care of the resources (like which samples can be cut off due to multi-triggering and how to keep a cymbal sounding like a cymbal when hit more than once).

Actually I don't understand the original question, so maybe I'm not the audience for this tread. Maybe you are playing a style which I don't know well enough. (No "metal" is not the answer, because that clip didn't sound at all like a metal drummer. It sounded like a bad drum machine.)

That's ok. I generally thought EZdrummer's purpose was to avoid an 8 hour session of perfecting a song and mixing things correctly before the drummer falls asleep and then tells you "mellow out, man". That's generally the "real drummer" experience I know. That's the biggest benefit of EZDRUMMER; compression/EQ are decided for you on what's "tight". And for the price, you get a decent step unless you want to get in-depth detail in Superior Drummer.

The thread title is "do shorter samples equate to more 'metal' ". Like if I take samples geared toward dance music, crop them, compress them and EQ them enough, will it still sound like Deadmau5 or will it be more convincing then the aforementioned variety.

My goal wasn't really to sound "real" in the sense I have 17 layers of velocity for each pad and everything cuts off. A real drummer comes with plenty of flaws and honestly in a recording environment does as much to excite me as "vintage" as a descriptive term (it can mean "worse" too). I CAN do that but I wanted to get a production that was snappy enough to fit death/thrash metal.

Add in that I'm generally programing things I think that fit the style vs whatever it actually is, and there's a few factors that could be lost in translation. But no where did I say I made a track that was EZDRUMMER sounds. Just that I can approximate somewhat. Honestly I like the machine gun drum effect.

 

[BigBasserino]

The extra tails on samples are handled pretty good by the sampler/rompler players these days.
I do have automation in source forge that will read a directory of samples and clean up the tails, but I haven't had to use it in years as the sample players are much better about polyphony and not note stealing during important parts of the samples. The sample players themselves don't end up with "machine gun" type effect.

Yeah, the tails eat up disc space but storage is cheap these days. It doesn't hurt to cut out the silence in the tails, as long as it really is silence and not ambience. It just hasn't been worth the effort in years. Just let the software do the work.

For sure. The fade out button in my sample editor was a great friend for a while. "Real" samples want to account for everything from the attack/impulse to the ambience of it fading. ....as in more time than is useful to me.

 

[EastCoastThump]

Hi guys, so I've been chipping away at the same topic for three weeks and I think I've finally gotten close to a natural sounding (for programmed, I suppose) drum sound.

My goal wasn't really to sound "real" in the sense I have 17 layers of velocity for each pad and everything cuts off....Honestly I like the machine gun drum effect.

I'm assuming you're not doing this for commercial purposes. So if you like it, then that's the main thing. But natural sounding? Nope. Neither the 8-bit sounding samples nor the programming sound anything like a drummer playing acoustic drums.

Guess I'm having trouble seeing how the rhetoric and themes of the OP and thread relate to what you seem to be shooting for in the example clip.

The samples there don't seem to be about reverb tails or the limits of current software in producing authentic sounding drum tracks. (Heck, the samples wouldn't have counted as state-of-the-art authentic even 30 years ago. They sound more like a 1970s Roland CompuRhythm than like even a 1980s Alesis HR-16.) And the programming doesn't sound at all like you're shooting for a metal drum track. It plays up the 8-bit vibe.

But again: if you like it, carry on.

 

[BigBasserino]

But natural sounding? Nope. Neither the 8-bit sounding samples nor the programming sound anything like a drummer playing acoustic drums.

Why would I be using acoustic drums when a large portion of metal productions have drummers playing with triggers strapped to their drum heads? Drummers have plenty of limitations in playing, I don't see what's so great about them.

The samples there don't seem to be about reverb tails or the limits of current software in producing authentic sounding drum tracks. (Heck, the samples wouldn't have counted as state-of-the-art authentic even 25 years ago.)

You don't say? Why would I want (again, this harps on my "vintage" comment) to water down my sound with a lot of reverb? I did use convolution reverb to wet the snare up and give it a reverb like in a garage or a cellar (ironically the IR was described as "locker room" if I remember correctly). The snares are a bit old. The kick I synthesized so no, I guess it's not "acoustic".

I'm just an average joe schmoe trying to cook up good sounds on TV speakers through his DAW. My thoughts are irrelevant compared to what I've put together so far.

 

[EastCoastThump]

Why would I be using acoustic drums when a large portion of metal productions have drummers playing with triggers strapped to their drum heads?

I don't think you understand what happens downstream from the triggers. Live and in studio, metal drummers who use triggers are triggering samples based on sample libraries that are in turn based on well engineered recordings of acoustic drums. Those samples are often have heavy processing (compression, gates, eq) and sometimes include FX, but at the core of each velocity sample is a recording of a quality acoustic drum being hit by a player with a genre-appropriate touch.

Drummers have plenty of limitations in playing, I don't see what's so great about them.

Thanks for your response, which makes it a little clearer what your after. Like I said, whatever melts your butter. If you don't like drummers and the goal was to *not* sound like a drummer—especially a drummer playing metal—you've nailed it. I was just confused after the language in your OP and elsewhere in the thread, thinking you were shooting for something else entirely.

 

[BigBasserino]

Uh, ya, I bet if I'm spending $150 for a single plugin that I'd expect that nothing needs to be adjusted to make a good track. That's not even buying a library of drums you LIKE. You forgot the mic that's recording the drum, the mixer it's going into, and the software registering the drum sample, just for a few steps. "Genre appropriate touch"? What about "hitting the drum"? There's plenty of recordings with limp drums, inconsistent playing, and attacks that get buried in a mix rather than standing out clearly. If my track (hint: the word "demo" implies it's not a serious effort) has a "lack of velocity".....it's because I like it that way. I like punchy, hard compressed, relentless drums.

I've also found thousands of limp sounding "real" drum recordings packaged into magazine sample discs. I probably could "work" with those drums but what if those suck too?

The track I uploaded obviously needs a a little tweaking. ...the kick I picked/made (even tho it sounds good passively listening) has a buzz that sounds like it's clipping and I need to reduce the bass cut, the snares are low, but generally they still sound like percussive instruments.