for all that use sequenced drum samples in rock or just about any genre with live instruments (guitars, bass, etc), what sort of drum samples do you use? i have been sampling drum sounds from vinyl for a while for the old-school hip-hop sound but im not too familiar with what sorts of drum machines are used by rock artists. i just saw in one thread that big black had used a roland tr-606 and emu drumulator, then theres radiohead and stereolab and the other bands that use a bunch of drum machines. im sure theres some people who just sample from a live drum set but i havent really heard of someone doing it.

any suggestions for sound sources?

Not quite the same scenario (I was triggering from an electronic kit vs programming) but I guess still relevant - just finished a track using FXpansion's "BFD". The sounds are pretty stunning, recorded from a real kit.

This is no help whatsoever if you're talking about a set-up without a computer (i.e. hardware sampler / drum machine), obviously.

tds wrote:Not quite the same scenario (I was triggering from an electronic kit vs programming) but I guess still relevant - just finished a track using FXpansion's "BFD". The sounds are pretty stunning, recorded from a real kit.

This is no help whatsoever if you're talking about a set-up without a computer (i.e. hardware sampler / drum machine), obviously.

i'm not too familiar with BFD. i think there are a few versions. last summer the BFD guys came to chicago and recorded drum samples for a newer version here at electrical audio in studio a. i'm guessing it's the newest version.

http://www.fxpansion.com/product-deluxe-recording.php

Yeah, the EA pack is not exactly the 'newest version' but an add-on. I haven't had the pleasure of hearing those samples yet. But even with the 'standard' drum kits I was blown away. Very natural and (to my non-golden-ears) well recorded samples, with a lot of velocity layers - 96, I think.

You also have all the mic feeds available to play with - i.e. three different sets of overheads, in/out on the kick, top/bottom on the snare etc. Why anyone would really want it I don't know, but there's even genuine recorded bleed between the mic channels (which you can turn off).

Well worth a play.

if you're going to use a sampler, get as many different hits of the same drum as possible, laboriously divide them up into hard medium and soft hits, do not program using velocity, use soft hits for grace notes ect.

there was a site called www.ddrum.com i havn'y checked if its still there which has loads and loads of multiple hits of the same drums.

personally, i'd record the cymbals live as i've never quite got them to sound right with samples.

i've got the ea pack and it's stellar. takes up a huge amount of space though -- 55gb for the largest amount of velocity levels.

fxpansion just released another batch -- jazz and funk. another 55gb - -best thing about these sets is that you can edit the drum patterns to your liking in any MIDI editor - you don't have to stick with the loops that they provide for you.

drumkit from hell is also a very good drum sample program... albeit with a very stupid name. there are hacks available that allow you to dump these samples into the bfd interface...

if you are looking for more electronic samples, you can't go wrong with battery 2. this one takes more sequencing ability tho.

hench wrote:i've got the ea pack and it's stellar. takes up a huge amount of space though -- 55gb for the largest amount of velocity levels.

Cool. Will have to listen to the demo on FXpansion's site for these.

I've never struggled with regular cymbals, but 'moving' hi-hats are a nightmare. I know some people on the FXpansion forum have talked about using BFD but then recording the hats live.

Rob, I've always wondered about the FXpansion recording process - do you have any more info on the session?

As I understand it the velocity levels are genuinely different recorded hits - not just a few hits played back at different levels. So for 128 levels, the drummer has to play 128 hits of different intensity (this must take forever with long sustain samples like the cymbals).

Any idea what the drill was in the studio to achieve this? I had visions of some robot arm, but I'm guessing the drummer just hammers / taps away for a while and they dump the lot into ProTools and pick out the 128 they want later?

I use Drum Kit from Hell Superior, made by a Swedish company called toontrack.

I highly recommend it if you are interested in programming strictly a passably real drum kit sounds, not a cool sounding drum machine type thing. The attention to detail and number of samples used is pretty impressive.

plug plug myspace.com/birthingofmillions (is this outlawed? probably)