What's new

Live Rock Band Sample Libraries?

Replicant

Active Member
Something I've come to realize about my musical tastes in recent times is my dislike of using artificial reverbs. Like, with orchestral samples, I greatly prefer just using the microphone positions.

It's the same with me and rock/metal music. I hate the sound of just shoving an SM57 in the grill of your speaker cab and calling it a day; it's like shoving your ear against it and listening. I've always liked live recordings better because they use room mics and stuff that pick up the audience, the actual sound of the stadium and what not...

Examples





To my ears, those sound way better than the studio recordings. Not to say there wasn't any swapping of takes from different live performances or post-production, but you get my point.

Every electric guitar library I know of is just "here's a DI'd signal" and I get the flexibility that allows for. But for curiosity's sake: Has there ever been a sample library recorded of a rock band live at like...Budokan or something?

I think that would be rad.
 
ugh, stadium sound
the most horrible acoustic environment I can imagine.
unless you're a fan of reverb mess and undistinguishable low-end

its funny that both live recordings you provided sound absolutely direct, minus ocassional crowd cheering and live bleed. and a very obvious digital reverb (ams rmx16) in the first case.

honestly, I don't think thats a good idea.
you can get away with orchestral samples, because its mostly ensembles.
a band is a completely different thing as its mostly about the feel and performance.
a fake sampled rock band would sound absolutely boring and unauthentic
its impossible to sample solo players and sound convincing - there are too many fine details at play, especially when it comes to electric guitars.

There's plethora of drum libraries recorded in bigger rooms.
Thats the main element of that stadium feel in my opinion. and 80s non-lin reverbs
The guitars and bass work perfectly fine just micd up or direct/modeling. You can always add a little touch of convolution to simulate the space.
If you're totally against that - you can just reamp your guitars in some big hangar and mix it in - it would sound like a stadium.
 
Last edited:
There's something unmistakably special about the live ambiance of a big venue. A few years ago, I needed to make it sound like a polka band was playing for a crowd of 30,000 people. I employed every trick I knew... convolution reverb, delaying and processing doubled tracks, miking speakers, faking mic bleed, etc. I even recorded the singers using a Shure SM-58 without a pop filter to intentionally capture some plosives. I wanted a "live in concert" sound where the music was recorded direct, but there was also a distinct stadium atmosphere.

My point is that if you're up to the challenge of going beyond just using reverbs and delays, there are ways of creatively mimicking concert venue ambiance with dry, close-miked sample libraries.

[AUDIOPLUS=https://vi-control.net/community/attachments/stadiumsound-mp3.13313/][/AUDIOPLUS]
 

Attachments

  • stadiumsound.mp3
    937.5 KB · Views: 24
I guess the "band district" in Metropolis Ark I is kind of in that area, but the guitars there don't really have much in terms of range and articulations, so you can't really play rock songs on them, and it's not really a live rock band sound, either, since it's got scoring-style mic positions. For the live rock band thing, you'd want a close mic plus some bleed mics.

Bleed mics are also important to really nailing the Motown studio sound, but I can think of only one drum library that really goes that far, and its full-blown Kontakt version isn't done yet. It'd be great to have horns, strings, guitar and bass like that, too.
 
ugh, stadium sound
the most horrible acoustic environment I can imagine.
unless you're a fan of reverb mess and undistinguishable low-end

Okay...

its funny that both live recordings you provided sound absolutely direct, minus ocassional crowd cheering and live bleed.

and the live bleed is the important part here

honestly, I don't think thats a good idea.
you can get away with orchestral samples, because its mostly ensembles.

a band is an ensemble.

a band is a completely different thing as its mostly about the feel and performance.

and an orchestra isn't?

a fake sampled rock band would sound absolutely boring and unauthentic

That's what they say about literally all sample libraries.

its impossible to sample solo players and sound convincing - there are too many fine details at play, especially when it comes to electric guitars.

Well I agree about the when it comes to electric guitars part for the most part, but that's completely not the point of this thread.

There's something unmistakably special about the live ambiance of a big venue. A few years ago, I needed to make it sound like a polka band was playing for a crowd of 30,000 people. I employed every trick I knew... convolution reverb, delaying and processing doubled tracks, miking speakers, faking mic bleed, etc. I even recorded the singers using a Shure SM-58 without a pop filter to intentionally capture some plosives. I wanted a "live in concert" sound where the music was recorded direct, but there was also a distinct stadium atmosphere.

My point is that if you're up to the challenge of going beyond just using reverbs and delays, there are ways of creatively mimicking concert venue ambiance with dry, close-miked sample libraries.

That's rad!

since it's got scoring-style mic positions.

That actually still sounds pretty cool, though
 
Bleed mics are also important to really nailing the Motown studio sound, but I can think of only one drum library that really goes that far, and its full-blown Kontakt version isn't done yet. It'd be great to have horns, strings, guitar and bass like that, too.

Which drum library?
 
Which drum library?
Drumdrops 60s Motown kit - "the room was mic’d up as if there was a full Motown band in the room – brass section, vocal mic and then two mics on the kit – a kick, and a kit mic placed above the bass drum, between the rack toms and below the ride".

I've also done some vague testing of trying to get the "live in a studio" sound with a few extra mics for emulating bleed into vocal and instrument mics. You can get pretty lo-fi by messing with their sample offsets, and only having 1-2 mics on the kit itself. For live stadium rock sounds, you'd also need bleed of the drum sound from the PA, so there'd be an extra step, but it should all be doable.
 
oh so you want to be picky
a guitar is not an ensemble.

Neither is a Flute, Oboe, or Clarinet by itself and yet almost every woodwind library out there samples them, on a scoring state or in a hall, and have done so quite effectively.

Probably not in your opinion though, but this thread isn't about your opinion on whether or not recording a rock band with multiple mics in a "live" sense is a good idea — it's about who has done it.


Drumdrops 60s Motown kit - "the room was mic’d up as if there was a full Motown band in the room – brass section, vocal mic and then two mics on the kit – a kick, and a kit mic placed above the bass drum, between the rack toms and below the ride".

I've also done some vague testing of trying to get the "live in a studio" sound with a few extra mics for emulating bleed into vocal and instrument mics. You can get pretty lo-fi by messing with their sample offsets, and only having 1-2 mics on the kit itself. For live stadium rock sounds, you'd also need bleed of the drum sound from the PA, so there'd be an extra step, but it should all be doable.

Very cool.

I should probably clarify that despite my examples with Def Leppard or Testament and talking about Budokan, I kind of mean just live in general. Like, even if you had a really great sounding studio or smaller venue that was mic'd up as if recording the band's live performance.

So far it sounds like Metropolis Ark is the closest.
 
Isn't a band's live sound in a venue not an odd sound aesthetic to try and reproduce to begin with? Considering that it's not really a band's live sound - at least not in the case of a rock band playing electric instruments - but actually a live mix done by the backline guy that gets blasted through a venue's PA. The point I'm trying to make is that it's not the sound of amps on the stage anyway. And the sound of live recordings on a live record or DVD in turn is a multitrack mix of those recordings, done by a studio engineer, including the usual corrections by the way of EQ, compression, overdubs etc., and finally mastering. So our idea of a "live sound" is actually skewed, or mistaken, in the first place.

I think that if one is after that particular kind of impression, it can probably be designed by using "proper" studio mic'ed guitars, or sampled drums even, and treating them with EQs and reverbs in a creative way.
 
Well, I think realistic live sound is one thing, and a "worldized" electric guitar with an amp miked from multiple distances is another sound that could be very appealing. Not just as samples - I did a bit of production for a metal band's demo recently, and asked them if big-budget metal albums are done like that. I still don't know if they do or not, because the guitarist just recorded everything direct at home anyway, but at least in theory it could be an effective method of sonic embiggenment.
 
Neither is a Flute, Oboe, or Clarinet by itself and yet almost every woodwind library out there samples them, on a scoring state or in a hall, and have done so quite effectively.

Probably not in your opinion though, but this thread isn't about your opinion on whether or not recording a rock band with multiple mics in a "live" sense is a good idea — it's about who has done it.
nobody(or at least nothing overly detailed) because it doesn't make much sense. and wouldn't sell, consequently.
thanks for your polite remarks btw :)
 
Last edited:
Well, I think realistic live sound is one thing, and a "worldized" electric guitar with an amp miked from multiple distances is another sound that could be very appealing.

Right, this is what I'm basically getting at.

Perhaps I shouldn't have used stadium examples or whatever, but they're the only ones I can think of that are readily available to pull from YouTube and stuff. I guess I should have just said "rock band instruments mic'd from multiple distances" instead.

I'd make my own example, but I'm a bit strapped for the space and such at the moment.

Most records these days, to my knowledge, are made simply by multi-tracking each member of the band individually — either close mic'd or direct — and calling it a day.

But at least some bands (I think Edguy on their Hellfire Club album comes to mind?) would have the band in the same room, recording at once, with room mic's and such as well.

I was wanting to know if any sample libraries with these ensembles recorded the setup in that way for what I call a "live" feel; like you're there listening to the band jam in addition to close mics or DIs.

Just like how they record orchestral samples at various high-profile halls and stages this way, I wondered if the same had been done with rockbands.
 
Top Bottom