How do i remove drums from a sample

M

mindtricks

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I know u have to eq it and all but i dont know exactly how.I use soundforge 8 and adobe audition.I just started back in the samplin game i was composing for a while and just dont have the feel for it as much as samplin.
 
you can't. Thats like asking to seperate pink paint into red and white paint. You were right in saying eq'ing it, that way the lowend will be more "thin" so you play your drums on top of it......
-Gost
 
normally I'll just keep them... and still play over them...

Trying to EQ takes out alot of the bassline also...
 
.....thats when you add your own.

sometimes playing over the already existing drums doesn't work (cancelation, muddiness, etc...)
 
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yea, i usually just EQ the kick out and play my own drums. That way you can put your own kicks anywhere without conflicts. Then I just put the snares on top (usually on 2 and 4) and a few snare adlibs usually fit in most loops as well.
 
You need yo use your Equilizer, drop all the frequencies below 500 then add a loittle bit back the 125 and 250 frequency usually carry the kicks while lower than that controlls sub-bass. You might also want to use a compressor but the EQ ussually does it.
 
but keep in mind that eq techniques only lower the volume of the drums at best. you can't remove them..... However, I take that back. It really depends on how and when the record was mixed. If it is from the mid 60's or earlier, you may be able to eliminate the drums. Records back then would sometimes have the whole rhythm section panned to the left or right. So, if you eliminate the channel with drums, your good. However, this would also eliminate any other instruments in rhythm section(bass, guitar, etc.)
 
The first thing you should ALWAYS do when looking to remove/isolate a particular instrument from a sample is to listen to the left and right channels independently. As mentioned before, a lot of old songs will pan the drums much more than drums get panned these days. If the drums are centered, you could always try using a vocal cutting technique to attempt to remove them as well. EQing will only do so much and could potentially ruin the sound you're looking for.

If you can EQ the drums out only by wrecking the sample's quality, you can always overly the original instruments with your own. I do this quite often with some soul samples I use. I EQ them to the point where the parts I want are isolated as best as possible, then I'll overlay the part I'm trying to bring out. For example, I have a nice soul string loop that sounds really thin and "tinny" after EQing it. I'll load that sample into whatever (usually FL or Sonar). Then I'll load up either a single hit string sample or a VSTi/DXi and load a string sound and play the same exact part. You can then mix the two tracks toghether and create something that sounds good and retains some of the "qualities" of the original sample.

This technique is helpful with basslines as well. If you have a really hot bass loop that doesn't pack enough punch, you can overlay it with a nice low-end heavy bass and really make it thump.
 
The SP-404 has an Isolation function that filters drums but not totally out. You have to play around with it but,it's pretty effective for layering samples.
 
If your doin hip-hop take the sound you want and make it a breakbeat. Then put it in a sampler. That way you can get the sound you want. If you want to get rid of a drum just play with bringing up the fade and fade out knobs. This works reaally nice in fruity loops.
 
the method for removing drums differs from track to track but as a general guide this is what I do (this is assuming that you don't care about any existing bass instruments or sub bass):
1. filtering, use a high pass filter to cut out everything up to around 400Hz with a slight amount of resonance, the resonance makes sure that any other instrument close to 400Hz aren't affected.
2. EQ, with an EQ make a slight 0.2-3db cut anywhere from 1.8kHz-3kHz with a wide Q, this just helps to tame the high end of any kicks or snare a little bit making them more subtle, obviously if its affecting the sound you want then ignore this step.
3. Reverb, This is a step where personal preference is key, a reverb with a long decay time and the Dry/Wet set to mostly Dry will have a subtle effect but it can work wonders to help mask high hats and the high end of kicks and snares, this trick wont always work and can reduce power in some instruments but when it does work it can make even the most pronounced drums seem to fade from of the track.
4. side-chain, there are 2 options when it comes to side-chaining, you can either use side-chain compression to duck the volume of the track when your drums come in or you can use side-chain Eq to duck specific frequencies when your drums come in. the second option is more subtle and has less of an effect on other instruments but it might not do enough to hide the drums.
5. expand/gate, once you've applied the previous steps the volume of the drums should be significantly reduced which makes them the perfect target for an expander or a gate, with this step its a simple case of slowly increasing the threshold until you have the desired effect, this step should get rid of any remaining drums that you no longer want (emphasis on the word "should" there because it doesn't always work in the way you want it to)

These steps should help you cut out those difficult to mask drums but they are by no means 'perfect' solutions, they don't always work but they can help. also you might not need to use all of these steps or necessarily use them in the order shown above, like i said it differs from track to track

hope this helps anyone that struggles to remove drums :D
 
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