Making a Kit - Pt. 1: Bitching About It

     Well, yesterday was my last day of class and today was my last seminar. I have finals Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Damn it! I don't want school to be over!

     Anyways, today is the day I begin my quest to build a fuckin sampled drum kit. It wouldn't be so bad or time consuming, but I'm going a little overboard. Instead of just doing it the standard way, I'm sampling each drum from every mic that was used.... I'll explain it more clearly in a second.

     One problem I have with sampled drum kits is that there is a lack of control and a lack of realism. Even though they sampled drums sound awesome, each drum is only sampled with one mic. That's really awesome because you get really clean results. The only problem is that there is no bleed.

     For example, when I record a live kick drum, the mic on the kick drum also picks up everything else the drummer is playing. I have to go back and add a noise gate to remove everything that's being played when the kick isn't being played... so yeah, I am getting rid of the bleed, but if a tom is hit at the same time or immediately after the kick, then that isn't removed with the noise gate.

     I realize that bleed is considered to be an annoying thing (and it is. It's annoying as shit), but it can also be a good thing. It can really add space to the drum mix. Take the hi-hat for example. I don't gate the hi-hat. That means that throughout a song, you hear the kick drum being picked up from the kick mic and the hi hat mic (plus a bunch of other mics). The same goes for everything else. Even a specific drum is gated, there's still gonna be a little bleed every now and then (unless you're gating so much that the drums don't even get a chance to ring out), so I'd like to be realistic and add this into my sampled kit.

     This way, I'll at least be able to have it if I want it. I'll also have the option to completely remove bleed from certain drums with the click of a button. For some, I'll even set a knob to control the amount of bleed. This way, I can have complete control.

     I'm also doing letting the overhead mics pick up everything, not just the cymbals, and I'm also doing room mics.... that's a bitch in and of its self, so needless to say, all the bleed bullshit is going to take forever.

     Right now I'm just cutting up the audio files and organizing them. That's gonna take a while. I really hate doing this shit. I love sampling stuff (but not sampling parts of songs or drum loops... I find that to be rather lame), but I really hate the whole editing process. I love the results though.

     Oh well, I'm gonna go finish doing that. I'll make a post tomorrow about the editing process. It's a pretty dry topic and there's no fun to be had, but there will be good info about how to do this without pulling your hair out.