 |
|
|
Drums Enhancement in Pro Tools – Part 1
Whether it’s fixing up a poorly recorded kit or creatively augmenting an already great recording, sound replacing has long been the engineers secret for great sounding drum tracks. The process of sound replacing, or “hit replacing” drum tracks generally involves replacing or augmenting the sound of a current recording with a new sample or set of samples in efforts to improve or change the sound without having to take a trip back into the studio. While there are countless ways of going about this process, in this two-part series I will share with you some of the most common methods for enhancing drum tracks in Pro Tools, as well as fill you in on some of my personal tips a tricks on the topic.
Sound Replacing: The Why
There are generally two main reasons to want to replace or augment the sound of an existing drum recording; fixing poor recordings or creatively replacing/layering sounds. When a drum kit is recorded in less than ideal conditions (e.g. with bad mics, in a bad room, on a bad kit), it may be impossible to realize the sound you are after come mix down, no matter how skilled you are with EQ and compression. In this case, replacing the sound of the kick, snare and toms can be a lifesaver, completely transforming the sound of the mix. Now that home based project studios are the norm and great sounding raw drum recordings are few and far between, I am finding that clever sound replacing skills are more useful than ever before.
The second most common use for sound replacement stems from a more creative standpoint. Many times engineers/producers want to layer or augment existing acoustic drum recordings with electronic samples, giving them extra punch or power. Other times one might layer various kicks or snares with the original recording to capture a specific tone or timbre that best compliments the arrangement. For example, I might have a perfectly amazing sounding snare drum sound, but previewed in the context of the mix it could be completely wrong for the song. In this case, replacing or layering the original sound with new samples may be a better option than aggressive EQ or compression. While I am sure we could sit around and come up with a bunch more examples or discuss the “ethics” behind the process, no matter which way you approach it, drum enhancement replacing is definitely a technique any PT engineer should have in their repertoire.
Sound Replacing: The How
Like I said, there are probably at least a dozen ways one could go about this process but there are certainly a few standard techniques that are more common than others. The fastest, and easiest way to replace drum tracks is by using a plug-in specifically designed for the task. While each drum “enhancement” plug-in has its own unique set of features, they all work off the same general principle of threshold based triggering. Because drum tracks, especially kick, snare and tom, have very rich transient information, it is easy to trigger new samples simply by detecting a breach in a user configurable threshold, sort of like a compressor threshold would react to a peak transient. Each time the track breaches this threshold the plug-in replaces or blends the existing sound with a user defined sample. At a minimum, all of these plug-ins generally support some sort of multi-layer sampling to better simulate playing dynamics, in other words, you can load more than one sample into the plug-in to represent the soft, medium, and loud hits.
Currently the top three drum enhancement (hit replacing) plug-ins for Pro Tools are Digidesign’s Sound Replacer, Trillium Lane’s Drum Rehab, and Wavemachine Labs’ Drumagog. Each have their strong points with the latter two (Drum Rehab and Drumagog) being the most flexible and my personal favorites.
SoundReplacer
A true classic, the name says it all. Developed by Digidesign, SoundReplacer is a simple to use audio suite plug-in for replacing drum tracks. Many engineers prefer SoundReplacer for its simplicity and ease of use, although because it is file based and not a real-time plug-in it is a bit hard to preview your new samples in context with the mix. It supports up to three samples with three separate threshold “zones” and will automatically adjust the dynamics based on the transient data in the audio track. SoundReplacer now ships with the Music Production Toolkit from Digidesign.
Pros:
- Very simple one page interface, easy to learn and use.
- Because it is file based you don’t have to worry about real-time latency offsets or CPU strain.
Cons:
- With only 3 velocity layers and no multi-sampling it is pretty easy to get “machine gun” sounding snare and tom fills.
- Not real time, very hard to tell if you new sample will work in the context of the kit/song.
- Does not ship with any drum samples
- Transient tracking is only ok, watch out for complex passages and fast fills
Bottom line: Because this is all we had for a long time, there will always be a special place in my heart for sound replacer and it is still quite useful for a quick and dirty sound replacement without to much hassle, especially when I just need to sample out a kick drum or something easy.
Drum Rehab
Developed by Trillium Lane, which is now owned by Digidesign, one might say that Drum Rehab is the successor to Sound Replacer and probably reason why Digidesign never released a Sound Replacer 2. Drum Rehab is a real time, RTAS based drum enhancement plug-in that sports tons of great features and ships with a great library of preset drum samples ready to load in. The plug-in basically features everything I wished sound replacer already had, including advanced 16 velocity layer sample support with up to 4 hits for each layer (left, right hand etc.), built in EQ and envelope shaping, great blending options, and sample accurate trigger locations that can be recorded and edited for complex fills. For a complete list of specs visit the product page here.
Pros:
- Very accurate transient detection, even on fast fills.
- Very flexible sampling environment with lots of velocity and trigger options.
- Awesome zero latency mode with editable sample accurate trigger locations.
- 4 gig library of drum samples formatted to load in and use.
Cons:
- The sample browser is a bit difficult to navigate when finding and loading in your own samples.
- May be too complex for the novice user.
- Importing samples with sample rates different from your session can cause trouble.
- Retailing at $495 it is the most the most expensive of the 3 options.
Bottom line: I like using drum rehab when I want real time control over samples with offline trigger editing flexibility for complex sections. I also like the ability to load and blend between two different sample sets simultaneously. However, if you are on a budget this one might be a bit pricey for the feature set.
Drumagog
Drumagog (Wavemachine Labs) has been around for a while now and ever since I started using it around 6 years ago it has always been one of my favorite options for easy yet robust drum hit replacement. Like Drum Rehab, drumagog is a real time RTAS based plug-in that you place directly onto the drum track in question. As the sound passes through the track’s insert, the plug-in does its magic outputting a fresh new sample or blend of new and old right before your very ears! Drumagog features easy to use visual triggering matrix to set the threshold and retrigger times and will easily load just about any sample at any sample rate. A unique feature exclusive to drumagog is its MIDI input/output capabilities, allowing you to use drumagog to trigger virtual instruments like BFD for even more sample flexability. For a complete list of specs visit the product page here.
Pros:
- Easy to use, visual triggering setup.
- Great sample and preset management.
- Updated, super accurate triggering engine.
- Ships with tons of great, preformatted samples, plus “GOG” formatted exclusive add-on sample sets available.
- Works in almost any host VST, RTAS, or AU.
- Competitively priced with two versions available.
Cons:
- No offline editing of trigger points.
- Latency can be an issue in Pro Tools depending how you set up the plug-in.
Bottom Line: From a price/performance standpoint, Drumagog is a great option, especially if you use other DAWs in conjunction with Pro Tools since it will work with virtually any host that supports VST or AU. It is easy to use and tracks extremely well, I especially like the MIDI output feature that allows me to record a MIDI performance with my existing drum tracks and then use a sampler like battery or structure to trigger new sounds. Watch out for latencies though in certain trigger modes, you may have to nudge tracks a bit to get things to line up.
Coming up in part 2
Stay tuned, in part 2 I will break down a sound replacing workflow step by step and give you some cool ideas on other ways to enhance drums with sample triggering.
Pro Tools Tid Bits:
• Apple introduced new iMacs with faster processors up to 3.06ghz
• Cycling ’74’s Max/MSP version 5 is now available
Pro Tools Corner on MacMusic:
The fine folks over at MacMusic/440 Network have made me a VIP Moderator of their PC and Mac Pro Tools forums. Come on over and join the community!
PC Pro Tools Forum
Mac Pro Tools Forum
If you have a Pro Tools related question that you would like me to take a shot at answering or have any feedback, please send it to brian@audioMIDI.com. I will do my best to select the questions that seem to stump the most people.
As always, stay tuned to the audioMIDI.com eNews for the latest reviews and new product info.
|
|
