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Confession: I am a drum sample hoarder

Amen.

30+ years of sampling and sample hoarding = drums and percussion libraries of 5.2tb as of today.

And more on the way. It never ends!

Holy shit!


since this has turned to a discussion of just drum samples....how we use what we like, etc...I haven't released music in probably 15 years (other than quickie funs stuff) with sequenced drums--which I just say for context--not judgement. I can do it well, but it takes WAY too long if you want it to sound like a drummer playing. WAY....too long. So--I just hire a drummer. So, I use whatever drum samples when I make a writing demo of a new song/idea.

I found this thread because I was trying to roughly approximate a drumkit from an album and as a non-drummer I was feeling a bit lost. This is the kit/album (though I don't know for sure he plays the same setup live as on the album, but it sounds close enough to me):








I'm having trouble telling all the different cymbals apart. Going clockwise around him, are these the following?

highhat
crash
china splash
another crash?
splash
crash
china
ride
yet another crash?



As you can tell I'm pretty clueless. Where should I start looking to puzzle together a kit like that from the libraries that I have? I'm trying not to be a sample hoarder and rather get better control over bending the stuff that I have into shape.
I have Komplete 10 ultimate (and 11 regular), Kvlt Drums and Drummica.

So far I was using the Studio Drummer "Garage Kit" and I'm mostly liking the sound and available articulations, but I don't like that I can't pan the individual cymbals and have too few different toms and cymbals available.

Any ideas which of all those kits (that I all don't know well and mostly never used before) that I have, would be a better starting point or how I could combine them in a sensible way?
 
I have a good hoard of drum samples. At yet I'm forever plumping for 808 hats. I promise myself I won't use them next time. Then I do.

There's also a cowbell sample I've rinsed repeatedly for about a hundred tracks..
 
I'm having trouble telling all the different cymbals apart. Going clockwise around him, are these the following?

highhat
crash
china splash
another crash?
splash
crash
china
ride
yet another crash?
Wouldn't be too rare for a metal drummer to have three different crashes, but the one to the far right seems to be another larger China. Some metal drummers will also have two hi-hats, with the extra one being permanently closed and often located over by the floor tom.

Borrowing extra cymbals from other kits is not easy if you want it to sound like everything's in one room and miked with the same mics, but might be easier than finding a kit that really was sampled with that many cymbals in that config. You can pan them where they need to be, maybe pitch an extra crash up a little bit to make it sound different from your normal crash... If you need an extra China, SM Drums has a decently sampled one for free.

You can probably get "close enough for metal" results by sending everything to an IR reverb channel to fake an extra room mic. Compressing the fake room mic heavily after taking out its low frequencies might be a good idea too, it'll make things sound more metal and also possibly help cover up any weirdness with their panning or "real" room.
 
Holy shit!




I found this thread because I was trying to roughly approximate a drumkit from an album and as a non-drummer I was feeling a bit lost. This is the kit/album (though I don't know for sure he plays the same setup live as on the album, but it sounds close enough to me):








I'm having trouble telling all the different cymbals apart. Going clockwise around him, are these the following?

highhat
crash
china splash
another crash?
splash
crash
china
ride
yet another crash?



As you can tell I'm pretty clueless. Where should I start looking to puzzle together a kit like that from the libraries that I have? I'm trying not to be a sample hoarder and rather get better control over bending the stuff that I have into shape.
I have Komplete 10 ultimate (and 11 regular), Kvlt Drums and Drummica.

So far I was using the Studio Drummer "Garage Kit" and I'm mostly liking the sound and available articulations, but I don't like that I can't pan the individual cymbals and have too few different toms and cymbals available.

Any ideas which of all those kits (that I all don't know well and mostly never used before) that I have, would be a better starting point or how I could combine them in a sensible way?



wasn't there a kvlt drums kontakt library? moar kvlt than mgla! it's right in the name?!

What daw do you use?

edit: I'm an idiot, totally glazed over you mentioning the library. There's actually a few decent metal oriented kontakt libraries, with getgooddrums/the nerds from periphery making some decenty entries.

Personally - I think Superior drummer 3 + either metal foundry or metal machine is a good setup. But I would edit each cymbal on it's own track so I can pan it how I'd like, reverse the LR ect.
 
Wouldn't be too rare for a metal drummer to have three different crashes, but the one to the far right seems to be another larger China. Some metal drummers will also have two hi-hats, with the extra one being permanently closed and often located over by the floor tom.

Borrowing extra cymbals from other kits is not easy if you want it to sound like everything's in one room and miked with the same mics, but might be easier than finding a kit that really was sampled with that many cymbals in that config. You can pan them where they need to be, maybe pitch an extra crash up a little bit to make it sound different from your normal crash... If you need an extra China, SM Drums has a decently sampled one for free.

You can probably get "close enough for metal" results by sending everything to an IR reverb channel to fake an extra room mic. Compressing the fake room mic heavily after taking out its low frequencies might be a good idea too, it'll make things sound more metal and also possibly help cover up any weirdness with their panning or "real" room.

Wow, thanks a lot for all the great info! I'm downloading SM drums right now. Will check it out later.


wasn't there a kvlt drums kontakt library? moar kvlt than mgla! it's right in the name?!

What daw do you use?
I bought Kvlt Drums to support the creation of niche blackmetal VIs. It is just a vst plugin, not a Kontakt library. The sound is a too raw for my personal taste but I thought I might eventually want to use it to make one of those "intentionally bad" tracks. Might be cathartic after spending too much time in the mixing and mastering rabbithole, I just bought Ozone 8 Advanced.

Superior drummer looks a little out of my budget both in disk space and price.

There's actually a few decent metal oriented kontakt libraries, with getgooddrums/the nerds from periphery making some decenty entries.
I was aware of GGD, but never looked closely at their products because I thought they were aimed at the djent crowd and frankly I haven't spent much time thinking about drums in general yet. Just starting really.

I took another look based on your recommendation and the trailer for "Invasion" is metal as fuck!



One of the best VI release trailers that I've ever seen!

I also watched a review:




This looks kind of like it was made exactly for what I want to do 0_o.

Do you know if you need iLok for that or is it just NI access? I'll play around a bit with the stuff I have and think it over till black friday, but there's a good chance I would grab this in a sale and use it as my primary drum library. Seems to be really versatile and configurable. Thanks for the recommendation!
 
stimatized is pretty good too.



just for what it's worth it has a "raw" version of the kit that's got less processing.


as far as GGD stuiff goes, I think they are all kontakt
 
stimatized is pretty good too.



just for what it's worth it has a "raw" version of the kit that's got less processing.


as far as GGD stuiff goes, I think they are all kontakt



Thanks! Didn't know that one. There is also shreddage drums:


I spent some time yesterday to experiment with how I could combine different kits. In studio drummer you can unload individual parts of the kit. I turned off the 3 toms from the garage kit and added another kit (iirc from AR 80's drummer) to the kontakt instance on the same midi channel that only has its 4 toms activated. I also added a copy of the studio drummer garage kit on the second midi channel, pitched it up a fifth and flipped its stereo channels. I also lowered the release times of the samles and to me the crashes now pretty much sound like different splashes. Haven't properly tried this out in context yet, I need to mock up a section of a reference track. But at the very least I now already have more stuff to hit with virtual sticks than I would know what to do with.
 
Yeah, for 80's I was going to say NI Abbey Road 80's.

I love those Abbey Road kits for getting a feel for which decade I want a piece to feel like. Then I try to match that sound (and kit piece/size) outside of Kontakt (previously in BFD3, now in SD3).

I think my Drum Drops libraries are mostly 60's/70's, but if you see one that is 80's, shoot me a PM as they are currently orphaned and unusable on my box due to having sold BFD3. My recollection is that they are focused more on vintage pre-80's. A bit true of fxpansion as well, but there is that Steve Albini expansion (one of the early ones). I guess that's more 90's than 80's though.

Don't forget, the big 80's sound was more about production than the kits used, as people were still mostly using kits similar to what was big in the 70's. Also, it's when close-miking became a thing -- partly because this helped with reverse-gating and the like vs. only having the Andy Johns mic setup to work with.
 
I'm guilty of this as well.

Although, I'm an international criminal when it comes to strings :P
 
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