Sampling a really small drum kit

[DSmolken]

I know a drummer who plays jazz and Latin music on a mini kit - cajon with kick pedal, snare, hi-hat, a really tiny cymbal (not even sure what it's properly called) and a small cowbell. But we could get a good amount of articulations out of these few elements. I'm tempted to talk him into a recording session. If we do a total of maybe 500 samples, so not a very high amount of detail but enough for a few round robins and velocity layers, would there be interest in such a kit?

Or is sampling a small kit kind of pointless since you can always just use a few elements from a bigger kit? Would it be better to "spend" our 500 samples on something that's not as easy to find, for example just brushed snares?

[Baard]

I think its a great idea. I see that a lot of folk bands use a small setup like this with a tiny hihat as well. The cajon makes an interesting kick imo. I dont think that it need to be too detailed, but 3xRound Robins and at least 5-6 layers would be great.

[bigcat1969]

Go for it. Everybody love drums and it sounds different enough to be interesting. Hum 'Different Enough to be Interesting' could be your new slogan.

[DSmolken]

I'll try to talk the drummer into something. I'm just having a hard time deciding what that something should be. In other words, which does the world needs more - a not-too-heavy sounding drum kit with a fair amount of detail, like 3 RR and 5-6 velocity layers, or a more detailed brushed snare library with more RRs, layers and variation of drags and swishes.

[funky lime]

I, for one, prefer a complete kit as opposed to something like a dedicated snare-only library. The problem I find with trying to "frankenstein" a kit together out of various sample sets is that because each kit piece is potentially recorded in a different studio with different mics, different drummer, different mixer, etc., it's hard to get a natural, realistic sound. When the whole kit comes together as a package, there tends to be a continuity that lends itself to a more believable, coherent drum sound.

But then, I am a drummer so that's the kind of stuff I pay attention to.

Also, something as esoteric as the kit you've described sounds like a lot of fun to play around with; there are way too many expensive, "designer" kits out there that, while sounding great, all have this big commercial sound to them right out of the box. Sometimes a big fancy Mapex/Sonor/Tama kit just doesn't fit the project.

[pljones]

+1 for the small kit. In addition to what funky lime says, unless the brushed snare were something that fitted easily into an existing kit and maintained playability, I'd have no interest in it. It just makes more work for me in trying to shoe-horn the mapping into what I'm using.

+1 also for the "keep it dry" approach.

Go for unique. Capture the articulations that the drummer thinks are what makes playing that kit special along with the bread-and-butter sounds that are needed to keep it useful. (For unique, I don't mind having to create my own mappings to work the way I like to play, either .)

[DSmolken]

Good points - a brushed snare used together with an otherwise non-brushed kit, that's not terribly useful. We'll do a whole kit (small though it may be), though don't know when. Probably a few months, as usual.

Is there a standard for mapping brushed snare articulations?

[herodotus]

People seem to like whole kits sampled in situ.

I have always thought that the best results came from having a close mic on each element, and a stereo pair as overheads. A coincident or near coincident pair or a mid side setup seems to work best for the overheads. Mono overheads are less popular, but they can work quite well with the right sound. With a kit as small as this one, mono might be the way to go.

[pljones]

Is there a standard for mapping brushed snare articulations?

Nice one

Take a look at the different "rich articulation" mappings that have been put out by various companies across their lines and you'll quickly realise that the vile and dire limitations of "GM Standard" are a joke in themselves for drum mapping. More briefly, "no" . Brush styles vary much more than sticking styles, giving a wider array of feels. You'll be sampling the player of the snare, so you'll need to find out from them what makes that snare live. You've 128 MIDI notes to play with and if that's not enough you can extend it with controllers (like CC4 can be used to get up to 128 hi-hat articulations on one note). More briefly, you can stick basic "hit" sounds on the normal GM notes and additional ones pretty much wherever.

With a kit as small as this one, mono might be the way to go.

Interesting thoughts... For a small kit like this, maybe even just a single mono overhead with a stereo pair out front, skip the close mics? I've never done it, of course, just thinking back to my Sound On Sound reading and wondering how it would end up.

[jancivil]

to throw a wrench into the works, I wouldn't be into specifically that kit but I would be quite interested in a snare done w. brushes in detail.
It would depend on your approach, my view as to dry vs room. I do tend to use a close, spot, dry mics when the dev offers the four mic types, but a boutique instrument it might be good to deal with the reflections off the special sort of drum.

For the kit I think spots on the individ. pieces and one stereo OH, cardioid is a good way to go.

[jancivil]

Is there a standard for mapping brushed snare articulations?

Typically 'drag', Note 39 is for the sweep and flam at 41 is a different swipe (with 40 for 'rimshot' and 38 for simple hit, 37 for sidestick. Typical GM I suppose.) which is not the same sound necessarily from drum to drum as sampled. I use BFD and am accustomed to the above, anyway.

It seems like brushed snare is not exploited very much. CC4 is typical and you could make that default if you are including a lot of layers using different tonality of the drum. I would put different articulations on different keys. And be mindful of the typical mappings for Hat and Toms adjacent to snares, such as map them down low where most maps are empty; in order to suit what people are used to, is the reasoning there. That's being as accomodating as possible.

[pljones]

I would advise against "dual use" of CC4 -- it would interfere with using the snare in a brushed kit with hi-hats if I couldn't use CC4 for hi-hat articulations independently of articulations on the snare. Any other CC would be better. Otherwise pretty much agree with what jancivil wrote. About the only areas to avoid are the "core" GM drum/cymbal sounds (ignore the additional percussion / traps sounds); you might want to check Roland and Yamaha eKit "standards" as there seem to be a few drummers who think (particularly Roland) no other way of drum mapping should be legal...

[Shabdahbriah]

+1 this:

... Also, something as esoteric as the kit you've described sounds like a lot of fun to play around with; there are way too many expensive, "designer" kits out there that, while sounding great, all have this big commercial sound to them right out of the box. Sometimes a big fancy Mapex/Sonor/Tama kit just doesn't fit the project.

And this

+1 for the small kit. In addition to what funky lime says, unless the brushed snare were something that fitted easily into an existing kit and maintained playability, I'd have no interest in it. It just makes more work for me in trying to shoe-horn the mapping into what I'm using.

+1 also for the "keep it dry" approach.

Go for unique. Capture the articulations that the drummer thinks are what makes playing that kit special along with the bread-and-butter sounds that are needed to keep it useful. (For unique, I don't mind having to create my own mappings to work the way I like to play, either .)

What format are you considering? e.g. Kontakt, Battery, Mach-5, Sfz, or just wav files?

[DSmolken]

Thanks. So there is a fairly standard way to map these which will let us have a couple of different types of swipes. I'll see how many types of swipes the drummer wants to do, if we get more then we'll find some notes to stick them on.

We don't exactly have a nice studio or a lot of good mics, so one close mic plus mono overhead might be all. If we do cajon kick, brushed snares and brushed hi-hat only that should let us get a decent amount of articulations and detail on the snares.

Getting stuff like sweep and flam to be usable is another interesting challenge in itself. When sequencing tracks, I guess triggering the flam part on MIDI note release would be a way to get it to flam at the right time, but I don't know about using an electronic kit.

Format-wise, I'd do wav files and sfz. If anybody wants to do mappings for other samplers, we can see about that once I have the samples recorded and edited, which is going to take a while. But it's good to see a healthy amount of interest in this. I guess small brushed kits are something which hasn't been sampled enough.

[DSmolken]

We could also do this urban folk kit in a smaller amount of detail, like maybe 100-150 total samples.