How do I get my sampled drums to sound good?

R

Rick Deckard

New member
I recently got the 9th Wonder drum kit and of course every one shot was of nice quality. When I sample one shots I dont achieve that, by miles. So, could anyone explain the process of making the sampled one shots good? Does it has to do with mixing, or do I need a better sampling technique?
 
For me a good sounding one shot is something that has not been processed to death and I only sample drums from records as it works for my sound and I dislike the way the drum kits usually are already dynamically processed.

I start by having good well selected samples that I load into my 2000XL. Usually I select a few different sounding kicks and snares and close to similar sounding hi-hats.

Kicks usually vary from a soft booming one to a short tapping one. I normally layer three kicks as two or three is fast and simple to layer in 2000XL's programs. At least two of them will get the low pass filter and one of them will often get a lot of it, like 0-40 (ranges from 0 to 100, 0 having most highs cut off) and just a bit of resonance. So one kick usually acts as the distinctive sound that defines the kick while two others beef it up. When I have them layered, I keep tweaking the low pass filters and pitching them up and down a bit until it sounds the way I want, and finally I will adjust the sound levels of the individual kicks.

It's pretty much the same deal for snares. Combining samples of various qualities, but no low pass.

If the drums don't sound good enough after that, it's not worth it recording them to my daw and trying to fix it in the mix. I'd rather just reselect the samples if that was the case. While mixing, I just emphasize and clean the sound a bit by trimming unneeded frequencies and mildly boost at some areas, kicks usually get a small boost on the low end. I would compress them a bit and add a bit of saturation, love using De la Mancha's free Imperfection for that (Imperfection | de la Mancha plugins).
 
Parametric(sp?) EQ can help. Like the above poster said, when sampling drums for kicks you generally wanna cut the high's out and boost the low end snares are sort of in the middle, and hihats are of course the high end. Layering the kicks can really get them to hit really hard, especially if you've got a hollow sounding kick a thump sounding kick and really give it a nice feel
 
First and foremost a good sample source such as vinyl, and even then not all sounds are gonna sound good. Somewhere i read a phrase I've lived by for a long time - "Its hard to make shit shine". If for example your kick isnt punchy to begin with, its gonna be hard to make it punchy. I know what kind of drums i like and i look for those drums. Damu, whos drums are praised by many, said they sound just like they sounded pretty much like the record he fount them on.

To give you real tips i would go for some EQ, filter and compression.
also look into layering drums.
 
Chain : EQ + Compressor (e.g. 3:1 Compression) + Limiter ... It also helps when you export them as MONO track and then use in your kit - this way the kick for example will always "stand in the middle" of the mix ...
 
marrelarre said:
First and foremost a good sample source such as vinyl, and even then not all sounds are gonna sound good. Somewhere i read a phrase I've lived by for a long time - "Its hard to make shit shine". If for example your kick isnt punchy to begin with, its gonna be hard to make it punchy. I know what kind of drums i like and i look for those drums. Damu, whos drums are praised by many, said they sound just like they sounded pretty much like the record he fount them on.

To give you real tips i would go for some EQ, filter and compression.
also look into layering drums.
Click to expand...

perfect right here! Damu's drums are ****in great....though I hear he plays most of his out on a live drum set...now a days...it really is all about ****in around with the EQ's
 
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