Drum Replacement!

Banned · Post by **Banned** » Sat Jan 10, 2009 12:31 am

Hey guys!
I was curious on how many local producers or even actual studio guys do Drum Replacement. Im a huge fan of DR. Sometimes the sound you want isnt the sound you get. I prefer replacing the sound with something i like better. Ive been using Aptrigga for my replacement needs, as its lighter on the CPU than drumagog is!

Ive heard local records where i thought certain sounds should have been replaced. It makes for a better mix i think.

Anyone else?

FrigoRecording · Post by **FrigoRecording** » Sat Jan 10, 2009 6:14 am

Well it all depends on the drum kit you record. I prefer to record a great sounding kit with a great drummer and not replace anything.

That doesn't always happen, though, so I may have to drop in a kick and snare to augment the real kit sounds. If I have to drop in some samples, I often blend the real and sampled sounds, rather than completely replace them.

Banned · Post by **Banned** » Sat Jan 10, 2009 7:11 am

Blending samples and audio are good too, youre right about that.

Killjingle · Post by **Killjingle** » Sat Jan 10, 2009 12:53 pm

Im not a big fan of drum replacement. Although it does have its uses. Especially if you like divine heresy, static x, and dont have those kinds of setups. What bothers me is what happens when the band plays live and the live sound isnt anything close to the recording.

To me live drums is one of the last organic pieces to me of recording. Its so hard to get a great drum sound; but yet its such an accomplishment when u do it right. I elected to break my wallet to get the right mix of mics (for the cash I had) and compressor/gates for the next set of drums I record. The worst part is there is always something better; but thats ok too. If u were awesome at something when u started; u would probably never strive to get better.

ToonaRockGuy · Post by **ToonaRockGuy** » Sat Jan 10, 2009 2:36 pm

Anyone replaces my drums, I walk right out the door. Work with me to improve my sound through tuning, room dynamics, etc, but no replacement.

onegunguitar · Post by **onegunguitar** » Sat Jan 10, 2009 2:55 pm

ToonaRockGuy wrote:Anyone replaces my drums, I walk right out the door. Work with me to improve my sound through tuning, room dynamics, etc, but no replacement.

Recording studio's/engineers remember this-If ya want to get Kevin out of your studio,just tell him you are gonna do a drum replacement,problem solved!!! Haha,just kiddin' Kev!!

Killjingle · Post by **Killjingle** » Sat Jan 10, 2009 3:12 pm

I know what hes saying. But in one recent case it was a necessity for a drummer I worked with on a track because he had dropped his snare and never did anything with it. The ringing and bad overtones were awful. We were not in the position to grab a new/different snare that quick.

Not a big fan overall; but it is a useful tool. I do like triggered kicks blended with natural kick; but thats subjective as well.

Banned · Post by **Banned** » Sat Jan 10, 2009 6:12 pm

I havent heard a local record that didnt need drum replacement or better mics or better drums or a better audio engineer. All of those factors make a good drum mix.
Why let your mix suffer? If you can get a better sounding mix, why not?

Killjingle · Post by **Killjingle** » Sat Jan 10, 2009 6:43 pm

why have a 10000 dollar drum sound with a 250 dollar guitar sound though? why not use auto pitch correction on all the vocals? why not use high end plugins to record bass and guitars? I have a few CD's with rippin drum sounds that were obviously sampled, replaced, triggered; and they suck. No dynamics at all.

I think just DR'ing to cover a bad drum sound is crazy. I dont think that makes anyone a better engineer if thats their stance. If it was that simple; throw away all the decent mics; throw up a couple of radio shacks; hit record; then go back and fix. I dont like that scenario.

Of course u arent using that extreme; but whats to say that it couldnt go that far for a lot of up and comers?

Id rather get there the old fashioned way.

Banned · Post by **Banned** » Sat Jan 10, 2009 7:26 pm

Good points!
The trick is, to spend alot of time on everything.
Obviously you want your drums to sound dynamic. Always keep that goal in mind. I was mixing a Nirvana song yesterday. Found the multitrack master online. Its the raw files, no processing. anyway, the kick and snare sounded horrible! Something like cardboard and piss mixed together. It wasnt even the type of snare sound i thought should have been there. I replaced the sound with a great quality sample that fit the type of snare sound i wanted for my mix. Problem solved. To make it a bit more dynamic, i loaded the same sample again and pitch shifted it a bit and did a couple other little things to it. It sounds great i think. I also replaced the kick. The only toms were coming through the overhead which sucks.
About the bad drum sound thing..covering a bad drum sound is THE POINT of Drum Replacement....
You'd be amazed if you knew how many records feature Drum Replacement. All kinds of genres too.

I agree it doesnt make any a better engineer though. The mixes should speak for themselves.
Drum sound is very important when it comes to an album. It'll make or break it in my opinion.

As far as guitar sound and vocals, again spend alot of time on them. If a singer sucks, he prob shouldnt be singing, but Autotune might need to be used. Guitars too need alot of time spent on it. Its always good to record a DI track too, just in case if you would need to reamp the guitars with a different or better amp.
Again, the audio engineer's job is to make the best possible sounding record. Thats what people want when they choose to record at a certain place. I hope to have my place soon! Things are starting to work out.

I guess we wont go into quantizing a drummer's performance. Toonarockguy prob wouldnt like that either.

I didnt mean to make you mad, Kev. With the Drum Replacement thread. Drum Replacement isnt an insult to the drummer at all.

I love talking production guys! Now with have a little group of Engineer's talking. Lets keep it going!

MeYatch · Post by **MeYatch** » Sat Jan 10, 2009 7:51 pm

AwakenedDrummer wrote: Again, the audio engineer's job is to make the best possible sounding record. Thats what people want when they choose to record at a certain place. I hope to have my place soon! Things are starting to work out.

I think another goal a lot of bands (should) have is to make an accurate sounding record.

Killjingle · Post by **Killjingle** » Sat Jan 10, 2009 7:59 pm

Meyatch makes the point I was trying to make earlier perfectly.

I personally am sick of seeing national bands whose CD's are over the top production values and they can barely play.

The role of an engineer is to properly capture a band. Show up to my place with drums that are crap; Im not recording them.

We went down this road in Deviance at Bill Filer's place. My drummer insisted on triggering his kicks and toms. No live mics except for overheads. Bill pleaded with us to not to that. Ultimately my drummer won cause his drums were so out of whack from not tuning them forever.

What did we get? A CD that I cant listen to. It sounds fake to my ears years later. Thats the part u have to be so careful with.

DR'ing is different than triggering I agree, and Im quite aware of how useful of a tool it can be; but I dont know if my first thought would always be "well if it doesnt track right, will just replace it"

My thought process would be if I cant get the EQ dedicated to the Kick quite right during mixdown, why not blend a little replacement in with it on a seperate track. Therefore keeping the original track intact.

One of my favorite bands has a very fake sounding drum sound. I love their music, but the drums are way TOO BIG. I laugh cause live the drums are probably the weakest link of this band.

Banned · Post by **Banned** » Sat Jan 10, 2009 8:03 pm

It would just be like having a better snare or kick in the kit.

If everyone played top notch equipment and it was being recorded with top notch gear AND the performers are top notch, then yeah, a great sounding record is possible without replacing or fixing.

What sounds best wins in my opinion. Like i said, mixes should speak for themselves when it come to producing.

No band is gonna turn down a great sounding album because their drummer has a shitty snare drum.

FrigoRecording · Post by **FrigoRecording** » Sun Jan 11, 2009 10:16 pm

AwakenedDrummer wrote:I havent heard a local record that didnt need drum replacement or better mics or better drums or a better audio engineer

Okay - now I'm insulted! Unless you haven't listened to any of my mixes..

faceoffmuzik · Post by **faceoffmuzik** » Mon Jan 12, 2009 1:17 am

I use drumagog bouncing it to tracks on probably 90% of the current stuff i do. A lot of times i make recordings of the actual drums to use during the replacement to avoid weird phase shit when post-eq'ing them how i want, and to provide a better level of consistency.

I don't always do it though, you could probably easily tell the records i have replaced sounds on.

I think a lot of the mainstream use of drum replacement comes from the fact that it is mix by someone who didn't record it so they have a very different idea of what it should sound like. whether that's good or bad is simply a preference. About 99% of the 'mainstream' metal stuff thats out there now is replaced heavily... its part of the sound.

I don't obviously do mainstream work but i think i have made some cool local records with some really cool bands and that's really all i care about. you might think its all shit but thats cool too.

I would be down to get together if you guys want, sometime.

bassist_25 · Post by **bassist_25** » Mon Jan 12, 2009 1:48 am

MeYatch wrote:
I think another goal a lot of bands (should) have is to make an accurate sounding record.

Killjingle wrote:Meyatch makes the point I was trying to make earlier perfectly.

I personally am sick of seeing national bands whose CD's are over the top production values and they can barely play.

+1 to the nth degree...

It seemed like sometime around 2003 or so, the big trend was to make these really slickly produced, over the top albums. It was cool to hear such polished stuff, but it made one wonder how in the hell a four piece band could pull it off and still sound respectable in a live situation. My guess is that there were a lot of hired musicians playing backstage at concerts or the bands just weren't delivering on their live performances. Maybe a few had gotten good with triggers, samples, and looping so they could present some sort of accurate recreation of their music on stage. That's what I've really dug about the metal records versus the Top 40 modern rock records of the past couple of years. There hasn't been a lot of bullshit on the metal records, but the modern rock albums have had five-part harmonies when only two of the members of the band sing, 34,496 guitar tracks on one song, drums sampled out the wahzoo, and 10 piece gazoo ensembles.

I'm noticing a big shift back towards keeping it simple. Jim bought the new Buckcherry record a few weeks ago. Too Drunk is the only song off of it that I'm familiar with, but I dug it when I heard it because there wasn't a lot of ostentatious crap going on. It just sounds like a couple of guys playing their instruments together instead of spending 20 hours a day in the studio overdubbing guitar parts that they'll never be able to reproduce live. The arrangment of the tune is really cool, too. Jim says the rest of the album's all like that. But I'll get off my soapbox here.

As far as drum sounds go - Well, studio trickery has always been around. We just have different technology. Now we have autotune; back in the day, the engineers just changed the speed of the track to align with the vocalists' pitch (it's always fun trying to learn a song that's about 30 cents in between two notes). The reality is that sometimes cats don't walk in with the best equipment. That goes for both the studio and live. Personally, I'd rather hear a quality kit, properly tuned, with a kick ass person on the throne. I know that's not always going to happen. Certain drum sounds are so highly sought after that there are people who actually rent certain vintage kits to recording studios.

slackin@dabass · Post by **slackin@dabass** » Mon Jan 12, 2009 8:30 am

faceoffmuzik wrote: ... but i think i have made some cool local records with some really cool bands and that's really all i care about...

word.