How do you process drum percussion

[DovesGoWest]

Thought i would put the feelers out as to how people handle drum percussions in projects, by this I mean the percussion libraries such as Damage2, SAGA etc. or specifically the ones where a patch contains multiple different drums.

So you create the MIDI that has you drum pattern in however this is mixture of low, mid and hi drums along metals and other percussive elements, which of the follow options do you take.

1) Leave the track as it is and export it as a complete drum track have to compress\eq\process the entire track and sound along with relying on the VST inbuilt abilities to mix the sounds.
2) Break the track down into multiple group tracks such as low, mid, high, metals, etc. thereby allowing you to mix\eq etc. within your DAW
3) Break the track down into every single percussive element, again allowing you to have fine grained control over the mix\eq etc. in your DAW

Click to read more...

 

[mussnig]

I think this very much depends on the piece of music and the library. Sometimes (especially when wanting to have a more natural sound), using the complete track as it is turns out fine (at least for me).

Other times, you may want to tweak only individual drums (one of the reasons might be that you only want to use the sound of the soft hits on a particular drum so you have to turn up the volume). Also some libaries allow you to use different mic mixes for different drums within the same patch and many times this is already enough (so you can really work with one track).

So I guess this really depends on your general style of music (and your mixing preferences) and the libaries you use. For ease of use (and for saving resources) I would set up my template using only as many tracks as I usually need. Splitting up tracks if needed is usually never a problem.

One thing that also comes to my mind: I am using Ableton Live and I have Soundiron's APE as an Ableton Live Pack. At first I was unsure if I shouldn't have gone for the Kontakt version instead (after all, I can only use my purchase in Ableton Live) but the Ableton version has the advantage that you can use all the sounds in a drum rack. So this means that I create my drum rack on the go, choosing individual drums/percussion from the browser via drag & drop (and of course the browser has an acoustic preview), and it's also easy to have individual processing if needed. Furthermore, the correct names will automatically appear on the piano roll. I wish I could use all my percussion libaries this way!