first runaround with programming drums

[hachikid]

I'm curious what you guys think. this is for a band that turned into a solo project. I've always been a fan of DFA79, and the seed was planted over a year ago to do a power duo with just bass and drums and either of us singing. after not being able to find a drummer to last, I just started reading up on drum programs and did it this way. I'm curious to hear what you guys think. I wrote and recorded the song on monday, and spent the evening editing it and adding drum tracks. exported it out of Studio One in .mp3 format. I'm curious about something, though. this song is REALLY quiet compared to most songs I come across. how do I get it louder? I tried raising the output volume, but this is about as loud as I can get it without the whole thing starting to clip. do I need to use some sort of digital compressor, or something? anyway, here's the link. the song is "Excuse me..." at the top of the list.


www.purevolume.com/josephcote

 

[AndyG]

Ahhh, the quest for LOUD  :headbang:

There are a ton of factors in getting a big, loud mix, and proper use of compression is certainly one of them.  The biggest problem most home recording software has is its metering.  Peak meters, IMHO, are pretty much useless except for monitoring peaks ... they give you no indication as to the "health" of your signal.  VU meters (those old, bouncy needles, also currently available as bouncy LED's), give you a much better idea as to the "size" of your signal.
For example .... take a snare drum, and watch both peak and VU meters as you bring up the volume.  The peak meter will be turning red well before the VU meter starts bouncing.  Gentle use of a compressor will help calm the peak down, while bringing up the overall volume of that snare.  The same would be true for all other instruments, then having another compressor across the overall mix.  That might sound like a lot of squeezing, but when used properly, a compressor will help give you the "size" you want, without taking away from the dynamics of the performance.  That is the true art of mixing.
Peak meters are important, as those peaks will be what causes digital clipping (nasty stuff).  But let your ear tell you when you are clipping, not the software.  Most software meters give you a few dB of headroom before clipping ... so they are not showing you the true level of your signal.

BTW .... cool sounding track!  :rock-on:

 

[hachikid]

thanks for the words, Andy. I'm definitely in on the deep end since that didn't particularly make sense. lol. I added some compression/eq and reworked the levels a little bit. lemme know what you guys think, and any pointers on if it sounds fine or not. in my headphones, it sounds fine, but it sounds like there is some clipping through my speakers...

 

[Panthur]

Here's something to help with metering. It's perfect for metering loudness rather than peaks/clipping, it comes from a very reputable company, and best of all it's free...
http://www.pspaudioware.com/plugins/tools_and_meters/psp_vintagemeter

Didn't get to hear the first mix, I like the track and I can offer my thoughts.
I'll start with a question, did you use a compressor across the whole mix ?. The reason I ask is because it seems to me that the kick is causing a bit of an issue. Around the 40s+ mark, when the kick is hitting it's a big transient (i.e. it's a loud sorta 'snap'). Sounds like a compressor is getting hit by that snap and reducing the gain, but it sounds to me like it's reducing the gain on the other tracks too. This makes it sound like the whole track almost throbs around the kick and it's knocking the balance off in my ears. It's noticable most at 1:38, the kick overpowers all.

The other thing I'd look to tweak is the eq and room a bit more. The bass sound is huge (love it btw) and when the drums get going there is a lot of sound there. Particularly the sounds of the drums that sound very live, i.e. you can hear a lot of the room. Around the 1:08 mark the lower toms are sounding a little flabby and they're getting a bit lost under the boomy balls of the bass. It might be worth 'focusing' the eq of the bass a bit higher up the frequency spectrum to give a bit more space in the bottom end. Or you could look at perhaps getting some 'tighter' sounding drum samples. The fact that those drums are sequenced is pretty cool to me, I can manage a Boom-bah boom-bah when I play them in and thats about it.

As for what compressors etc, multi band compression may be your friend here, but it's also something that can be fantastically complicated. Multi-band compressors allow you to apply different compression settings based on the frequency band. I.e. you can keep the compression on the bassier notes (which tend to have more power) tight without knocking out the higher frequencies. I'm not a pro-mixer at all and I'll struggle just listening, it's easier to me when I've got the mix open and I can see whats going on.

Hopefully this sounds plausable and helps. I like the composition btw, and the photo of the rig looks cool. The fact that the headstock doesn't reach the top of the cab says it all ;-)

 

[dNA]

all mixing things aside - i like the music. if you had a live drummer pulling this off and the drums sounded of the same fidelity as the bass, it'd be killer. Sick bass tone - like Flea at the beginning of "Around the World" but muuuch bigger.

in terms of mixing... ehh. it's all so very subjective. I think trying to get the lo-fi (in a good way) sound of live instruments recorded in someone's house to mix with the super clean, hi-fi, processed and packaged sounds you get from sample packs and synthesizers is very tough. I've spent the last two years trying to blend such elements.

what might be worth a try is if you have a half-decent set of speakers and two comparable mics. You play the drum track and record it back through the room mics. Depending on how the sound is, you can use this to replace the original drum track (unlikely) or you can blend it in with the original to get a more live, gritty sound.

At the end of the day if you do mix it really well the drums are still going to sound like they were played by a machine. Whether or not that's cool is totally a matter of taste and context. Here, i think having a live drummer would make the difference between this being something I'd listen to and something I wouldn't. Still, for your very first demo and forray into this kind of stuff, i think this shows a lot of promise. Keep at it man

 

[hachikid]

Here's something to help with metering. It's perfect for metering loudness rather than peaks/clipping, it comes from a very reputable company, and best of all it's free...
http://www.pspaudioware.com/plugins/tools_and_meters/psp_vintagemeter

Didn't get to hear the first mix, I like the track and I can offer my thoughts.
I'll start with a question, did you use a compressor across the whole mix ?. The reason I ask is because it seems to me that the kick is causing a bit of an issue. Around the 40s+ mark, when the kick is hitting it's a big transient (i.e. it's a loud sorta 'snap'). Sounds like a compressor is getting hit by that snap and reducing the gain, but it sounds to me like it's reducing the gain on the other tracks too. This makes it sound like the whole track almost throbs around the kick and it's knocking the balance off in my ears. It's noticable most at 1:38, the kick overpowers all.

The other thing I'd look to tweak is the eq and room a bit more. The bass sound is huge (love it btw) and when the drums get going there is a lot of sound there. Particularly the sounds of the drums that sound very live, i.e. you can hear a lot of the room. Around the 1:08 mark the lower toms are sounding a little flabby and they're getting a bit lost under the boomy balls of the bass. It might be worth 'focusing' the eq of the bass a bit higher up the frequency spectrum to give a bit more space in the bottom end. Or you could look at perhaps getting some 'tighter' sounding drum samples. The fact that those drums are sequenced is pretty cool to me, I can manage a Boom-bah boom-bah when I play them in and thats about it.

As for what compressors etc, multi band compression may be your friend here, but it's also something that can be fantastically complicated. Multi-band compressors allow you to apply different compression settings based on the frequency band. I.e. you can keep the compression on the bassier notes (which tend to have more power) tight without knocking out the higher frequencies. I'm not a pro-mixer at all and I'll struggle just listening, it's easier to me when I've got the mix open and I can see whats going on.

Hopefully this sounds plausable and helps. I like the composition btw, and the photo of the rig looks cool. The fact that the headstock doesn't reach the top of the cab says it all ;-)

I'll have to get that program. haven't done it yet. I'm about to write another track starting drums first, then bass around it. yea, I need to do something about the drums. the section with the toms and when it goes in to the drum solo while the bass plays the harmonics, the track gets really "full" sounding. so, I may adjust the room mic for that. I may end up cutting that part out and putting it in it's own track to back the room mics down on that part specifically to allow a little more clarity without sacrificing cymbal volume and presence in the rest of the tracks when the drums are laying back a bit. for the bass drum, I put it about 6dB higher in the mix because I wanted it to cut through due to how I have my bass tone set up. my live tone is really similar to what you hear on this track (bottom end for days coming out of that 18" speaker). as far as my live rig, with both amps on top and the wheels on the bottom of the cab, it's taller than me and I'm 6ft tall...it looks like imminent death. lol.

do you have MSN or some other messenger type program so I can pick your brain a little bit more about mixing and compression and all?

all mixing things aside - i like the music. if you had a live drummer pulling this off and the drums sounded of the same fidelity as the bass, it'd be killer. Sick bass tone - like Flea at the beginning of "Around the World" but muuuch bigger.

in terms of mixing... ehh. it's all so very subjective. I think trying to get the lo-fi (in a good way) sound of live instruments recorded in someone's house to mix with the super clean, hi-fi, processed and packaged sounds you get from sample packs and synthesizers is very tough. I've spent the last two years trying to blend such elements.

what might be worth a try is if you have a half-decent set of speakers and two comparable mics. You play the drum track and record it back through the room mics. Depending on how the sound is, you can use this to replace the original drum track (unlikely) or you can blend it in with the original to get a more live, gritty sound.

At the end of the day if you do mix it really well the drums are still going to sound like they were played by a machine. Whether or not that's cool is totally a matter of taste and context. Here, i think having a live drummer would make the difference between this being something I'd listen to and something I wouldn't. Still, for your very first demo and forray into this kind of stuff, i think this shows a lot of promise. Keep at it man

I didn't think it was lo-fi at all really. I eq my bass to sound like that. I hate not having enough treble or clarity, honestly. that "lo-fi" stuff is for the birds. yea, I'll need to find a killer drummer that can pull this stuff off. if I can manage it, it'd be really neat. I also gotta learn how to sing and play at the same time. ha. there's something not QUITE right with this track, but it's almost good in terms of recording quality. I think I may have to bring the drums as a whole down a dB or so, and bring the kick down just a hair, too. I appreciate the comments so far, though. I'm going to try to get about 14 really good songs total written and recorded, and put it all into an album, then start playing live with a drummer I can find. I'm debating on making the tracks free online for the first little bit, too. we'll see, I suppose.

 

[reinhold]

DFA1979 always gets me in the mood to do a project like this too, could definitely hear the influence.  Nice job though.   

 

[hachikid]

is it too similar to DFA, or you think it's a bit more distinctive than that?

 

[dNA]

is it too similar to DFA, or you think it's a bit more distinctive than that?

I dont' think so. From what I've heard of DFA1979, they seem a bit more influenced by dance music and it's inherently more straightforward drumming style.


also, when I said lo-fi i didn't mean it as a style or an aesthetic. Your bass does not sound like it was recorded in a commercial studio and the track does not sound like it was mixed and mastered by professionals either. All I was trying to say is that the fidelity of the live instrumentation you've recorded does not match the fidelity of the drum tracks you are trying to mix it with. The drums and bass don't sound like they are in the same space, and I believe this disparity is going to be the biggest roadblock in getting a good mix. It's not unmixable or undoable, but I think that live drums recorded in the same space with the same gear as your bass will marry the two sounds much better than any amount of aftereffects.
That's just my two cents and it's totally subjective.

 

[hachikid]

awesome. to me, it sounds like something DFA would play, but I suppose that's just cause I'm in my own head. just glad there is distinction there. and ah, I gotcha. yea, it's not perfect, but it's what I have for now.

 

[hachikid]

new song is up

 

[dNA]

new song is up

I'll listen to that soon. I'm listening to the other track again. The first thing I felt was that the drums seem almost in unnaturally wide stereo (listening in headphones), particularly the cymbals. That being said, the cymbals also just sound too bright and crisp for this kind of music. Like they have the most presence  I think the whole drum kit needs to have


on this second track for whatever reason, the drums sound a bit more nicely spaced, but again the cymbals just sound panned to hard left and right. Even sitting at the drum throne, a cymbal won't sound so far to one side, and unless you're going for intentionally unnatural sound, I think bringing them in to a more realistic "perspective" would be a good idea. Overall, levels and mix of the drums sound better on this track. It doesn't sound too clean.


really interesting writing man. I remember when I got my first bass, I wrote one song that was in the same vain - intended to be instrumental with just drums and bass. But i didn't have any recording equipment back then and nowadays I tend to write stuff where there all the parts are simpler, but using a lot of layers to create complexity and depth. It's really refreshing to hear the much more organic approach.


Are you sequencing the drums first, then recording bass to it? Or are you conversely recording to a click track and then sequencing the drums behind the original take? I personally find it much easier to write drum parts once I've already got something laid down. But then to get it to really come together, I end up having to re-play all the instruments to the new drum track. I'm curious to know how you approach it

 

[hachikid]

I used a different drum kit for the second song. I think I'm gonna go back and use this new kit for the first song. it sounds better to my ears. not sure about the how things are panned, however. the "room mics" are the ones that pick up the cymbals. unfortunately, I don't think I can change it much.

thank you for the compliment. I don't think I'm particularly good at songwriting. I'd LIKE to be as good as St. Vincent, but honestly, she is unhuman. granted, we're doing different things, but I'd love to have compositions as gorgeous as hers. these songs are intended to have vocals, btw. I will be adding them later. I have to head to a friend's house to record them due to me not having a microphone of any sort. what organic approach are you talking about?

as far as how I approach it, it varies. these two songs I came up with the main idea on my bass and recorded it with a click track. as I record a new song, I tend to improvise too. I usually start out with the main/original idea, then go to a different place and come back to the main idea every now and then, and end it when I think it should end. then go back and added drums to parts that fit. it's kind of ambiguous, to be honest. I also do a little cut/paste edits, and if it's necessary, I cut and pasting some bass parts a little bit to structure the song better. I am in the middle of writing a song, though, where I intentionally start drums first then come around and think of a bass part that fits. I don't want to get stuck in one process. I like to keep challenging myself to see how creative I can get with just two instruments. no overdubs, either. I don't want to use them because all this is meant to be performed live. recorded music is great and all, but you just don't see music that sounds full coming from a duo being performed live very often.

as far as inspiration, the tone itself can be an inspiration, honestly. I screw around on amplitube, stumble across a tone that sounds great, I keep playing, and I soon have a song idea. other times, I can be influenced by a bunch of different things. the incomplete idea "bird song" on there was actually something I played, then realized it sounded (to me) like something Andrew Bird would play on his violin. as I recorded, I improvised, and it came out like it did. how it usually goes is I improvise a good bit when I hit record, and if I like the way it sounds, it sticks, and I go back and learn the song. speaking of, I still need to learn the songs I make so I can play them live. also gotta learn how to sing and play simultaneously. lol.

basically, I'm aiming to write music that makes people go "HOLY SH**!!!!!!!!!!!" when they hear it. and makes them immediately empty their lower intestine when they hear it played live. 've you seen Scott Pilgrim vs. The World? refer to Knives' reaction when she first hears Sex Bob-Omb...that's what I'm going for. hehe.

 

[dNA]

I can honestly say I've never heard St. Vincent, except i only once heard the track that she did with Bon Iver. checking it out on myspace now. My immediate thought is that it reminds me of a lot of other things. But then, I guess everything does in a way. Ever listen to Dirty Projectors? this reminds me of them, only this sounds much more accessible. Dirty Projectors are significantly weirder.


it's good to hear that you try to do new and different things in terms of the creative approach. A lot of people get mired in the process, and even very open-minded people often dont realize their own pitfalls. When I said organic, I guess I just meant in terms of writing out a song by just sitting down and playing the instrument. I used to write everything that way, but nowadays I start with one part, then come up with layers, then approach a different section. It's a different process. Now that I'm playing in bands again for the first time in years, I'm suddenly rediscovering the method of just playing until something works. It's cool. A little uncomfortable at times, but good.
I also feel what you're saying about the sound being an inspiration. I usually write to what I'm hearing, not the other way around. If I find something that sounds distinct, I work to it. Its great to do that, but sometimes it sucks when you go to translate that song into another setting (i.e. playing it on a different piano or a different guitar) its hard or impossible to recapture the initial spark. I've been struggling with that a bit too - especially when it comes to recreating music in a live setting.

Anyway, I ramble about this stuff. But I think you've got the right idea for the creative approach and exploring different things. Would be very interested to see what you do vocally. I was also surprised to know that the bass was done through Amplitube - I haven't had any luck getting sounds I like out of guitar plugins, though bass is a somewhat different beast.


keep at it

 

[hachikid]

oh man, she's so good!!! amazing amazing amazing amazing amazing! also, my friend Kyle introduced me to the Dirty Projectors. they do sound similar to her, I must admit. great stuff.

it might be that I'm into progressive rock, or just that I have nothing but disdain for artists that have obviously stopped trying and are just riding their achievements X number of years ago *cough* Kiss AC/DC *cough* that makes me want to see what's possible with as little as possible. the way this is all coming out is a really good surprise, to be honest. I'm getting a number of positive comments from people, and it just makes me happy. I really thought I just lacked the ability to write a song and figured I'd be nothing more than someone who could just add a few neat ideas here and there. I'm really not sure how to approach writing songs, still. I just kind of tackle it with all fingers and toes and just keep doing stuff till it puts a smile on my face...or sometimes I have an idea I hear in my head, and still tackle it arms akimbo till it sounds good to me.

as far as the reproduction bit, I really harp on being able to play live what I play on the record. I believe this really came from a huge influence of mine, Billy Sheehan. he's always hard up about being able to put on a great live show, and I've really taken that to heart.

I'm not really sure what I'm going to do about vocals, to be completely honest. I've never sang anything original before. I've only really sung along with music on my MP3 player in my car, and occasionally at random band practices when we weren't playing. I want to have four songs with complete bass and drums by the end of this week, and vocal parts written and recorded for it at the end of next week. I just gotta remember to somehow keep the vocals a bit sympathetic to the bass parts as I have to do them at the same time.

amplitube is freaking awesome, btw. lol. I love this program. I'm actually tri-amping my bass. it wasn't on purpose, it just kind of happened that way. it's not my exact tone live, but it's close.