The ‘RIGHT way’ to record Drum(samples!)?

[merseymale]

B U M P!!

Happy New Year everyone
My 2022 resolution is to get this working…

I’m willing to pay for info!!

I’m clutching at straws here…

[merseymale]

….hang on!

I think THIS:

https://youtu.be/dewRGDerCXY

Could Well be IT!!?

[Drew Stephenson]

Yep, that's how you do drum replacement. It's worth noting that in the example shown he's actually still got the audio from the bass going to the new track as well as the midi - depending on what you're using to generate the midi note that may or may not contribute to the sound. You can easily turn that off in the routing panel so that it just sends the midi trigger though if you want.
The other thing to note is that you're just getting a midi trigger there, so every note will be at the same strength.

[merseymale]

Ah…right…

That’s a bit of a pity

I foolishly believed what people said when they told me to stop messing around with hardware and do it all in the computer

I figured there would be a learning curve but I sold my hardware; bought the computer; g paid for software And I’ve never been able to make a decent drum track with a band playing along since!

Thank you so much for replying, especially after such a long time this post has been dormant but if you can help in anyway I would surely appreciated it

[Drew Stephenson]

Reaper has another audio to midi option that, i think, allows for more than just a trigger signal.
I should get chance to have a look tomorrow.
So the process would be the same as in the video but using a different plugin instead of ReaGate.

[James Perrett]

….hang on!

I think THIS:

https://youtu.be/dewRGDerCXY

Could Well be IT!!?

As with most audio tutorials on Youtube, it doesn't necessarily describe the best way to do things. If you look in the JS effects you will see the JS Audio To MIDI Drum Trigger which gives you much more control over the triggering and also converts loudness to velocity.

These are the settings that I've used on one of my projects.

[merseymale]

Reaper has another audio to midi option that, i think, allows for more than just a trigger signal.
I should get chance to have a look tomorrow.
So the process would be the same as in the video but using a different plugin instead of ReaGate.

That would be great if you find a time to do that, I’d appreciate it. Thanks

[merseymale]

….hang on!

I think THIS:

https://youtu.be/dewRGDerCXY

Could Well be IT!!?

As with most audio tutorials on Youtube, it doesn't necessarily describe the best way to do things. If you look in the JS effects you will see the JS Audio To MIDI Drum Trigger which gives you much more control over the triggering and also converts loudness to velocity.
KickTriggerSettings.jpg

These are the settings that I've used on one of my projects.

Ah…okay, so… i’m assuming that’s a thing for converting audio into midi data?

That’s quite a cool process!

That could well be of help, thank you, but what do I do with this new midi information?
I mean, how will I get that midi information to “fire off“ selections of multiple samples of, say, a bass drum based on how hard it would’ve been hit hadn’t been’ really there’ as opposed to ‘virtually’, please?

[Drew Stephenson]

James has covered what I was going to look at in his post.

I've lost track of what's going on a bit here I'm afraid though.
Am I right in thinking that you have a recorded drum part that you're looking to replace some (all?) the parts of?
Do currently have a virtual drum tool like EZ drummer or are you working from individual samples?

[James Perrett]

The next plug-in in the chain would be some kind of virtual instrument that produced the drum sound that you wanted. There's a huge choice. You could sample your own sounds and put them in ReasamplOmatic 5000 or you could use one of the hundreds of virtual drum plug-ins that are around. If you had a MIDI interface you could trigger your Alesis drum unit that you mentioned in your first post.

I often go to MT-Power Drum Kit which is free and offers reasonably good basic sounds if you are working in a rock genre. I also have a selection of my own sounds built up over the years.

[merseymale]

James has covered what I was going to look at in his post.

I've lost track of what's going on a bit here I'm afraid though.
Am I right in thinking that you have a recorded drum part that you're looking to replace some (all?) the parts of?
Do currently have a virtual drum tool like EZ drummer or are you working from individual samples?

my original posts explain all but basically I used to record the ‘audio’ output Of Piezo Drum Pads Into a multi track along with true audio recordings of acoustic drums -all these played at the same time & Then connect the outputs of the ‘Piezo tracks’ Into the inputs, via a noise gate pedal, of an Alesis DM 10 drum brain & re-record those on two separate tracks then transfer the whole thing, Two tracks at a time, into Audio tracks of Reaper

Needless to say all this was a bit of a hassle!! but at least it perfectly synchronised the Alesis’ limited drum samples AND followed the performance velocity as well

I foolishly listen to others when they said that all this could now be achieved, these days, solely with a PC & a DAW So I sold all my hard work to afford what I was told was a “good enough PC”

Since then I’ve never been able to record a drum kit with anything like the quality I’ve been using for years with my makeshift hardware set up

That’s where I am now…

[merseymale]

The next plug-in in the chain would be some kind of virtual instrument that produced the drum sound that you wanted. There's a huge choice. You could sample your own sounds and put them in ReasamplOmatic 5000 or you could use one of the hundreds of virtual drum plug-ins that are around. If you had a MIDI interface you could trigger your Alesis drum unit that you mentioned in your first post.

I often go to MT-Power Drum Kit which is free and offers reasonably good basic sounds if you are working in a rock genre. I also have a selection of my own sounds built up over the years.

OK, that sounds good.

I don’t have any hardware drum brain or anything like that anymore just a computer now

I will look into getting a drum program like you say but I’m still at a loss to know how, once that plug-in that you showed me the screenshot of has converted audio into midi information, I then somehow get multi layered/velocity sensitive drum sounds

[The Elf]

MIDI is simply a list of messages denoting notes as they were played, and the velocity of each note. You send this MIDI to an instrument and the instrument plays those notes at those velocity levels. Whatever DAW you are using, just route the MIDI to your chosen instrument.

In other words, all of that multi-layer/multi-velocity cleverness is in the receiving instrument, not in the MIDI.

There are many drum libraries and players out there that already do everything you need, and where all of the mapping/layering have been taken care of for you. I use NI Kontakt and several drum libraries, including Steven Slate Drums, which is a personal favourite. Similarly there are EZ Drummer and Superior Drummer.

But then I also build my own drum libraries from session material. Unless you want to get deep down with something like Kontakt, Battery, Halion, or the like you might be better off sticking with pre-made libraries.

[Sam Spoons]

Drum VSTi's like those mentioned by The Elf are just treated as virtual instruments in the same way as keys and suchlike but if you have no experience of using VSTi's for, say, keyboard sounds then you will need to read up a bit on how it's done. Maybe some googling for general VSTi tutorials would be more useful than specific midi drum advice which may skip past the basic VSTi stuff assuming you already know it?

[Drew Stephenson]

The next plug-in in the chain would be some kind of virtual instrument that produced the drum sound that you wanted. There's a huge choice. You could sample your own sounds and put them in ReasamplOmatic 5000 or you could use one of the hundreds of virtual drum plug-ins that are around. If you had a MIDI interface you could trigger your Alesis drum unit that you mentioned in your first post.

I often go to MT-Power Drum Kit which is free and offers reasonably good basic sounds if you are working in a rock genre. I also have a selection of my own sounds built up over the years.

OK, that sounds good.

I don’t have any hardware drum brain or anything like that anymore just a computer now

I will look into getting a drum program like you say but I’m still at a loss to know how, once that plug-in that you showed me the screenshot of has converted audio into midi information, I then somehow get multi layered/velocity sensitive drum sounds

Let's assume you're using MT-Power Drum Kit (MTPDK). You'd stick this on a new channel and send the midi signal only from the other drum channels.
This is plays off the midi triggers generated by that JS plug-in. The key thing is that the output from the JS plug-in (unlike ReaGate) is velocity sensitive. The louder the original sound, the higher the midi-signal sent.
So when that midi signal reaches MTPDK it's not just getting an on/off message it's getting a variable signal for each hit, based on the original playing. So the louder the original hit, the harder the sample that will be triggered in MTPDK.
So if I was doing this I'd take separate midi feeds from the audio snare, kick, and toms and send them to MDPDK and use the faders in that plug in to add in the additional sampled sounds. Checking the phase at all points naturally.
If you've got a clear signal on the hi-hats you can do the same there, I'm not sure how effective it would be on overheads but you'd have to play around with that a bit.

[James Perrett]

For simplicity, I tend to have separate instances of MTPDK on each track rather than combining the MIDI signals as Drew suggests. This makes it easy to apply different processing to different parts of the kit.

I'll also often use a kind of "do it all" VSTi like one of the Yamaha XG synths for drums. They're not necessarily the latest and most natural sounds but they work well to add a bit of oomph to existing acoustic sounds.

[Drew Stephenson]

James is a drummer by the way, as well as being much more experienced than me, so if in doubt listen to him not me.

[James Perrett]

James is a drummer by the way, as well as being much more experienced than me, so if in doubt listen to him not me.

Though I'm probably not that experienced with all the current tools available. I don't do much drum replacement so I tend to stick with free (or very low cost) VSTi's and I don't know much about more advanced software like Kontact.

[merseymale]

MIDI is simply a list of messages denoting notes as they were played, and the velocity of each note. You send this MIDI to an instrument and the instrument plays those notes at those velocity levels. Whatever DAW you are using, just route the MIDI to your chosen instrument.

In other words, all of that multi-layer/multi-velocity cleverness is in the receiving instrument, not in the MIDI.

There are many drum libraries and players out there that already do everything you need, and where all of the mapping/layering have been taken care of for you. I use NI Kontakt and several drum libraries, including Steven Slate Drums, which is a personal favourite. Similarly there are EZ Drummer and Superior Drummer.

But then I also build my own drum libraries from session material. Unless you want to get deep down with something like Kontakt, Battery, Halion, or the like you might be better off sticking with pre-made libraries.

By “ Premade libraries” do you mean different types of drums or different types of programs?

[merseymale]

Drum VSTi's like those mentioned by The Elf are just treated as virtual instruments in the same way as keys and suchlike but if you have no experience of using VSTi's for, say, keyboard sounds then you will need to read up a bit on how it's done. Maybe some googling for general VSTi tutorials would be more useful than specific midi drum advice which may skip past the basic VSTi stuff assuming you already know it?

[merseymale]

The next plug-in in the chain would be some kind of virtual instrument that produced the drum sound that you wanted. There's a huge choice. You could sample your own sounds and put them in ReasamplOmatic 5000 or you could use one of the hundreds of virtual drum plug-ins that are around. If you had a MIDI interface you could trigger your Alesis drum unit that you mentioned in your first post.

I often go to MT-Power Drum Kit which is free and offers reasonably good basic sounds if you are working in a rock genre. I also have a selection of my own sounds built up over the years.

OK, that sounds good.

I don’t have any hardware drum brain or anything like that anymore just a computer now

I will look into getting a drum program like you say but I’m still at a loss to know how, once that plug-in that you showed me the screenshot of has converted audio into midi information, I then somehow get multi layered/velocity sensitive drum sounds

Let's assume you're using MT-Power Drum Kit (MTPDK). You'd stick this on a new channel and send the midi signal only from the other drum channels.
This is plays off the midi triggers generated by that JS plug-in. The key thing is that the output from the JS plug-in (unlike ReaGate) is velocity sensitive. The louder the original sound, the higher the midi-signal sent.
So when that midi signal reaches MTPDK it's not just getting an on/off message it's getting a variable signal for each hit, based on the original playing. So the louder the original hit, the harder the sample that will be triggered in MTPDK.
So if I was doing this I'd take separate midi feeds from the audio snare, kick, and toms and send them to MDPDK and use the faders in that plug in to add in the additional sampled sounds. Checking the phase at all points naturally.
If you've got a clear signal on the hi-hats you can do the same there, I'm not sure how effective it would be on overheads but you'd have to play around with that a bit.

Okay!
I’ve done most of that but I’m not sure how I should get that JS effect to send midi data to the second channel/track

Do you have any suggestions?

[merseymale]

For simplicity, I tend to have separate instances of MTPDK on each track rather than combining the MIDI signals as Drew suggests. This makes it easy to apply different processing to different parts of the kit.

I'll also often use a kind of "do it all" VSTi like one of the Yamaha XG synths for drums. They're not necessarily the latest and most natural sounds but they work well to add a bit of oomph to existing acoustic sounds.

Thanks for this but do you know how I get the MIDI data to liaise with MTPDK, please?

[James Perrett]

Thanks for this but do you know how I get the MIDI data to liaise with MTPDK, please?

I just put MTPDK (or other VSTi) straight after the audio to midi plug-in in the plug in chain window. Reaper will send the MIDI data from one to the other automatically. See below (click on the picture to enlarge)...

[merseymale]

Thanks for this but do you know how I get the MIDI data to liaise with MTPDK, please?

I just put MTPDK (or other VSTi) straight after the audio to midi plug-in in the plug in chain window. Reaper will send the MIDI data from one to the other automatically. See below (click on the picture to enlarge)...
SnareTriggerChain.jpg

…soooooo… we don’t call up Another Track & put the VSTi on That, then?

[James Perrett]

…soooooo… we don’t call up Another Track & put the VSTi on That, then?

I don't - but I think Drew does it a different way so that he only needs to use one instance of his drum VSTi for multiple drum tracks. I prefer to keep my routing simple and conventional so I use a separate VSTi on each track. MTPDK doesn't take much processing power so it can be used that way. That's the thing about Reaper - there are often many ways to achieve the same end.