|
Drum Enhancement in Pro Tools: Part 2
In the last installment of the Corner, I ran through your best options for drum sound replacement in Pro Tools. As promised, this week I will run down step-by-step a basic drum replacement workflow using Digidesign’s SoundReplacer, as well as discuss some other tips, tricks and considerations for tricking out your rhythm tracks. Just in case you missed it, be sure to check out the first part of this article here before you proceed.
Replacing Kick Drum
In this example I have an acoustic kick drum that has been recorded in the context of a complete kit. I am not entirely thrilled with the sound so I am going to enhance it a bit by blending in another kick drum sample.
The way I like to approach sound replacing is to start by creating a duplicate track, by selecting the track and choosing Track > Duplicate. In the track duplicate menu I want to be sure to include the active playlist. The reason I prefer to sound replace on an entirely different track is so that I can blend and process to my hearts content without having to commit to a blend percentage inside the plug-in. I usually name this track Kick-SR or Kick-Sample. Later I may disable the original kick track entirely, but for now we will assume I am going to use both.
Tip: In the case of inside/outside kick mics, I generally choose the inside mic (closest to beater) to ensure the most accurate trigger timing and usually has less bleed.
After duplicating the track I can now select the portions I want to enhance (generally the entire track) and bring up the SoundReplacer plug-in (which is found under the Audiosuite > Other menu).
Once open I can see the simple, single page layout of SoundReplacer and at this point can either choose a preset I have already created (SoundReplacer unfortunately doesn’t ship with any presets or samples) or load in a new set of samples. For this example I will load in a fresh set of samples.
SoundReplacer can load in 3 separate sound files, representing 3 separate velocity layers by clicking on the little disk icons for each velocity layer. Unfortunately you cannot preview your samples while loading them in so you will want to know which specific samples you want along with their directory location before hand. I will choose my samples, softest to loudest from left to right. With the yellow slider representing the softest kick sample and the blue slider representing the loudest.
Hint: You do not have to load in 3 samples; you could just load in a single sample in the leftmost slider (yellow) and use a single velocity trigger.
After choosing my 3 samples, I can hit the update button on the right hand side to update the waveform display. Choosing auto-update will dynamically update the trigger display whenever a new selection is made.
At this point I want to scroll to a section of the song that includes some dynamic variation in the kick (soft to loud) and start adjusting my thresholds. The idea is to drag the threshold slider of the first sample (yellow) until it starts to trigger with the softest of kick hits, but not so low that it picks up false triggers from snare/tom bleed. I continue to adjust the sliders left to right, noting that I can never lower a slider lower than the ones to its left.
Depending on the consistency of the kick track, I may need to work in sections or possibly pre-edit tough fill spots where the bleed is just too much to deal with. Once I am confident I have all of my triggers accurately represented with the correct velocity zones I can hit process. In this case I have left the blending options set to 100% and the dynamics at 1:1 (follows original tracks dynamics), as I am going to take care of the blending on my own later in the mix. While I can hit the preview button, I find that it is easy to just process straight up and listen to the new samples in context.
Tip: Save your current settings a preset, that way if you have to go back and make a tweak (in the case of a missed trigger or another song on the same album) you can easily recall the same trigger settings and samples.
Now that I have two kick drum tracks (the original and the sampled track) I can go to my mixer and start finding a nice blend. At this point, I may treat the two with separate EQ and compression settings, or remove the original kick entirely. You can follow the same workflow for snare and tom.
Drum Sound Enhancement/Replacement Tips:
- Try blending, as opposed to completely replacing. I like to separate my original and replaced drums onto their own unique tracks so that they can be processed discretely.
- Even when using audiosuite plug-ins like SoundReplacer, you may need to nudge your newly replaced tracks by had to match the original performance. This is especially true when blending with the original. Because every sample is different, you may have to experiment a bit to find the sweet spot. Usually aligning the first hit in the track is enough to get every other hit to fall in line.
- Don’t be afraid to blend in electronic sounds with your acoustic ones. Even if you aren’t looking for a “synthetic” sound, you may be able to get some great tonal “oomph” or “snap” by tastefully blending in a really fat or crisp electronic drum sample.
- Many drum samples are pre-processed with ambience and/or reverb, so the traditional urge to add reverb to the snare or toms may be unnecessary once you have blended in or completely replaced your drums sound with a pre-processed sample.
- Sometimes I will take samples directly from the original performance to use as my sound replacement. For example, if I am looking for a very consistent kick sound, I may take a strong hit directly from the kick drum and use it to sample out the entire track, or sections of the track.
- Print your real time sound replacement plug-ins ASAP. They take up DSP and are probably adding some latency to the track anyways. Commit them to audio as soon as possible, that way the session can be opened on other rigs without the need for the same drum replacement plug-in and sample library. The easiest way to do this is by using a bus. Route the output of the track containing the drum replacement plug-in into a new audio track and record the output through as the session plays back in real time. If there is any latency, line up the printed track by hand to the original drum track using nudge or shift commands.
- Be tasteful. There is nothing worse than a bad sound replacement job. Again, start with blending and choose samples that compliment the track. If you start with decent sounding overhead/room tracks you can often get away with heavy-handed sound replacement, but always make sure you are doing right by the song.
Other Ideas for drum enhancement:
Triggers:
If you know you are likely to replace your drum sounds during editing or mixdown, you may want to consider investing in an inexpensive set of acoustic drum triggers for your kick, snare and toms. These triggers can be connected to either a traditional electronic drum module or a dedicated trigger interface like the Alesis Trigger I/O to generate MIDI sequence data, which can later be used with your favorite virtual instrument plug-in (BFD, EZ Drummer, Battery, etc). Unlike playing an electronic drum kit, one would still play and record the acoustic drums as usual, with the option of using the recorded MIDI performances to augment the drum sounds during mixdown. The only downside with this workflow is that triggers tend to be a bit fickle and need to be adjusted to the drummer’s technique to achieve accurate triggering.
Audio-to-MIDI:
Although a much more time consuming process than triggers or drum enhancement plug-ins, I have had success in the past using tools like Melodyne to convert audio drum tracks into MIDI notes, which can then be used with any virtual instrument plug-in. I will warn you though; this workflow is anything but straightforward and takes a little cleverness on the editor’s part, as Melodyne can be easily confused with mic bleed and generate false triggers. Drumagog (as mentioned in the first part of this article) can also generate MIDI from audio, and because it is designed exclusively around drums may be a faster option.
Pro Tools tidbits:
- Digidesign released a free beta of Transfuser, a new loop/beat slicing plug-in from the A.I.R. group.
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.
| 
