LinuxMusicians

Which samplers/samples could I use to get realistic acoustic drum sounds like in these songs? I have been using ezdrummer on windows in reaper, but I want to look further at ardour and any drum sample setups for replacing ezdrummer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkyTK9tRgHs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCENxF4TE9s

There are lots of soundfonts/drumkit-sounds thet sound realistic. What you record/program makes the difference, not the sounds.

What I'm hearing is a very dry recording. There isn't much reverb, and what's there is the sound of a room (as opposed to a hall). So you want a "Medium Room" setting on your reverb.

Also the drums are mostly damped (ie, no overtones/ringing on toms/snare/kick). So you need a damped kit, as opposed to a kit like gmaq's avl kits. And the tuning is a little lower than many drummers use (although not as low as I tune drums). So you need low-pitched drums. You should try my JgKit on gmaq's site. All my drum samples are tuned quite low, and damped quite a bit, since that's what I prefer (but most people favor/distribute a higher tuning and ringing samples). So perhaps check out my collections of kicks/snares/toms in case you want to swap out sounds in jgkit (the tuning is deeper than your video, especially for kick).

http://www.bandshed.net/sounds/sfz/

jeffg, for any of these sample sets, is there a plugin that provides individual outputs for channels for kit pieces, overhead, and room mics? Besides getting velocities right, in commercial drum samplers I have found that I need to make level and pan adjustments to kit pieces, use sidechain compression on the kick and snare, and sometimes compress the room channels separarely from the rest of the channels. I have briefly tried some of the AVL kits in Fluidsynth, but I think that is limited to a single stereo output. Also, I have tried reverb on dry sampled drums in the past with no success in getting a convincing room sound. For example, take a listen to the room sound on the drums here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikMB1CKztC4&t=18m44s With even the best of reverbs, there is no way that I know of for processing dry drum samples to have that real room sound. Things that I have tried with reverbs on dry samples is eq'ing and compressing the reverb channels separately from the rest of the kit. I don't know what else could really be done.

Hi,

If you want multi-channel drum output in a plugin your only current choice (under Linux) is drumgizmo: http://www.drumgizmo.org/wiki/

GMaq wrote:If you want multi-channel drum output in a plugin your only current choice (under Linux) is drumgizmo: http://www.drumgizmo.org/wiki/

Not only. This sample player can also be used for simulating drums:
http://lsp-plug.in/?page=manuals&sectio ... ampler_x12

sadko4u wrote: Not only. This sample player can also be used for simulating drums:
http://lsp-plug.in/?page=manuals&sectio ... ampler_x12

it does multi layers too right if I do remember correctly? Does it have a humanizer? I remember using your multisampler a while back but it was for HIp Hop and it worked great.

If you program your drums in hydrogen you can export each instrument separately as an audio file and import them into your DAW. My favourite real sounding kit is AVL's Red Zeppelin kit. Using Hydrogen's humanise feature also helps.

funkmuscle wrote:Does it have a humanizer? I remember using your multisampler a while back but it was for HIp Hop and it worked great.

Yes, some kind of humanization is present (see Dynamics and Time Drifting knobs).

sadko4u wrote:

funkmuscle wrote:Does it have a humanizer? I remember using your multisampler a while back but it was for HIp Hop and it worked great.

Yes, some kind of humanization is present (see Dynamics and Time Drifting knobs).

sweet.. thanx!

Sorry to necrobump an old topic, but I wanted to add some advice on this.

To get real-sounding drums, you have to think about how a real drummer plays and how a real drumkit is miked and mixed.

Here's what I've done:

- Get a drumkit that has multiple samples of the same instruments and velocity layering. Most percussion instruments sound different if you hit them soft or hard, or in the middle vs. on the edge. Use a variety of samples for a single instrument. If your drum programming software lets you randomly vary these sounds, so much the better; otherwise, manually do it. (sadly hydrogen doesn't support this, AFAICT, though you can accomplish it to a degree with velocity layering and humanizing).

- Use the humanize features if you have them, and always put at least a small amount of swing in a beat, because humans generally do (even if it's not supposed to swing).

- Never allow the same sample to be played at the same velocity in two adjacent notes, especially on hihat/ride parts or snare fills. It's a dead giveaway. If you can use different samples of the same instrument, all the better.

- Don't let your drummer grow extra arms. If there's a tom fill, the hihats need to stop.

- If your drum programming software supports probability settings (the upcoming release of Hydrogen will -- if you compile it from git you can try out this feature), add in little hits and diddle here and there with a small probability for each one. Real drummers don't play beats 100% consistently, they add in little accents and embellishments here and there.

- The most basic drumkit miking technique is a close mic on the kick, a close mic on the snare, and two overhead mics covering the cymbals, toms, and snare. (a more complex arrangement would close mic the toms and add room mics). If you can implement individual outputs for your instruments, putting them in this grouping will let you process them more naturally. Also pay attention to the panning in the overheads:

- hihat on the left
- snare middlish left
- crash middlish left
- ride on the right
- Other cymbals middle/right
- toms going from hi->left to low->right

- Use a small/medium room reverb even if you plan to add a longer reverb later. Drums are generally recorded in a fairly live room. I love using convolution reverbs for this application, gives a great sense of realism. Put more reverb on the overheads, since in reality they'd pick up more room sound (but not tons).

lykwydchykyn wrote:- Don't let your drummer grow extra arms.

But you can remove them if you want: http://thehardtimes.net/music/overly-co ... m-removed/

what's wrong with the DrumGizmo program and kits? That has everything including room samples.
I only use them now. The bleeding of the snare in the hihats, etc., just makes it more natural. I've had drummers ask who played drums on my songs. I'd say DrumGizmo program and they would say 'fooled me!'
These are songs I've done with multi-layered H2 kits and redid the drums in the songs with H2 driving DG so these songs were compared by my bassist brother who is a drummer and he said that DG's kits made the mix sound like a real drummer.

Hi,

Drumgizmo is great... drum editing in Ardour...? not so much, No visual way to 'see' and draw note velocities when programming drums is a big time deal breaker for me (and many others I've talked to). For many Hydrogen is still the most intuitive drum programming and arranging interface we have under Linux IMHO. Maybe Reaper for Linux will change that as it has more complete MIDI features that are similar to other DAWs. I applaud Ardour's 'we do it our way' in many cases but when every other major DAW allows for visual drawing of note velocities I disagree that this is an issue to be a maverick about.

I've requested this and provided examples from other DAW's here (at the bottom): http://tracker.ardour.org/view.php?id=5608 but this is not high on their priority list.

Lastly to add to lykwydchykyn's list... snare ghost notes are a must to program realistically, those incidental subtle light hits in between the downbeats are a dead giveaway between programmed and played drums.

I've done an example here for the Black Pearl kit where you can hear the ghost notes before the major downbeats and leading into the drums fills, this was all done in Hydrogen:
https://soundcloud.com/glen-macarthur/a ... l-4pc-demo

GMaq wrote:Hi,

Drumgizmo is great... drum editing in Ardour...? not so much, No visual way to 'see' and draw note velocities when programming drums is a big time deal breaker for me (and many others I've talked to). For many Hydrogen is still the most intuitive drum programming and arranging interface we have under Linux IMHO. Maybe Reaper for Linux will change that as it has more complete MIDI features that are similar to other DAWs. I applaud Ardour's 'we do it our way' in many cases but when every other major DAW allows for visual drawing of note velocities I disagree that this is an issue to be a maverick about.

I've requested this and provided examples from other DAW's here (at the bottom): http://tracker.ardour.org/view.php?id=5608 but this is not high on their priority list.

Lastly to add to lykwydchykyn's list... snare ghost notes are a must to program realistically, those incidental subtle light hits in between the downbeats are a dead giveaway between programmed and played drums.

I've done an example here for the Black Pearl kit where you can hear the ghost notes before the major downbeats and leading into the drums fills, this was all done in Hydrogen:
https://soundcloud.com/glen-macarthur/a ... l-4pc-demo

yeah Glen, Ardour is brutal for me editing midi and MixBus, I can't even get DG to channel out like I doing in Ardour but that's why I use Hydrogen connected to DG or sometimes I use MuSE as Michael Oswald's amazingly helpful videos pointed out for editing midi drums.
I love your kits too but as I'm teaching myself sound engineering, DG gives me the raw kit and cleaning that up, I'm learning about eq'ing, filtering, compressing etc.

Also that's why I bugged you a while back about AVL kits for DG.. you RedZep kit sounds so delish bro!!