Sampling a live drummer for loops

[Watto]

G'day all,

I'm getting a good mate of mine over next week and recording him for the purpose of slicing him up into little pieces

He's a monster drummer, and I'm going to get him to play various grooves at various tempos to use live for my duo gigs (he knows I'd use a real drummer if at all possible, so doesn't mind). I was just wondering if many of you have done this before, and how I should plan it. Is there a certain set of tempos I should get him to play at? I want to try to cover as much ground as possible.

Thanks in advance for any ideas!

Watto

[vurt]

herodotus has done a fair bit of this pm him

[Watto]

I was hoping herodotus would show up here, so yeah, maybe I should. Still keen to hear others points of view, though

[justin3am]

I've multi tracked almost all the breaks that I use and i found that using a click track often produces very unatural results, especially if the drummer is playing by him self. What you can do is find tracks that are in a similar style to the samples you want, tempo map them (or conform them to a specific tempo) in your DAW and have the drummer listen to that.

Also, you probably have a predetermined mic setup for the session... bring extra mics. Place them in a corner of the room, behind the drummer or other place that come to mind that may result in an interesting sound that may add to the character of the recording. These mics may cause phasing issues but those issue can usually be repaired in the mix.

Just my $0.02

3am

[Watto]

Thanks, mate - very interesting idea! I was actually leaning towards recording 8-bar snippets of music for him to play to.

[justin3am]

I'd be really interested in hearing the results you get. I'm very protective of my accoustic drum recordings, so I'd understand if you don't wan't to post the raw loops but if you can find a way to demonstate what you got out of the session I'm sure I'd dig it.

[Watto]

Sure, man

It should be fun, because I'm getting him to play on three things:

* a normal drumkit (Slingerland)
* an electronic drumkit (not sure what it is, but he loves it)
* my stand-up cocktail kit

As you can see, it's going to be a long session

[herodotus]

I was hoping herodotus would show up here, so yeah, maybe I should.

Hey!

I suggest (this is the short version, mind), that you:

1. use a drum machine or ROMpler with actual midi grooves instead of a traditional click track, which latter can definitely suck some of the life out of anyones playing.

2. start at 70 bpm and go up to 150-170 bpm in 10 bpm intervals.

3. Encourage your friend to 'jam out' so to speak. The more variety in the playing, the more loops you can make.

4. When editing, experiment with starting and ending on odd beats. Some great, unintended grooves can happen that way.

5. Get ReCycle if you don't already have it. Even if your mate is perfect in terms of tempo, the sample accurate perfection of ReCycles export is really cool. And all the tempi between the recorded tempi are then available.

I will come back with more later.

Good Luck!

[Watto]

G'day mate,

Thanks heaps for chiming in! Point 1, 2 & 4 are filed away. Point 3 is possibly slightly different for me, as when I play as a duo live, we use one loop only, and just start and stop it at various points during the song - this means that we don't need any fills, unless they form part of the actual groove. Of course, I realise you meant mostly for him to be creative, and I definitely want that, but I want to be able to play pop songs over the loops, so they can't be TOO outrageous.

Point 5 is something I'll have to look into - I can't afford ReCycle, but I think a friend of mine has it, so might have to spend some time at his place. If I'm literally just quantising and exporting REX files for Stylus, how long do you reckon it'd take per loop? They'll be 4-bar loops mostly, and pretty close to being in time

[herodotus]

G'day mate,

Thanks heaps for chiming in! Point 1, 2 & 4 are filed away. Point 3 is possibly slightly different for me, as when I play as a duo live, we use one loop only, and just start and stop it at various points during the song - this means that we don't need any fills, unless they form part of the actual groove. Of course, I realise you meant mostly for him to be creative, and I definitely want that, but I want to be able to play pop songs over the loops, so they can't be TOO outrageous.

Point 5 is something I'll have to look into - I can't afford ReCycle, but I think a friend of mine has it, so might have to spend some time at his place. If I'm literally just quantising and exporting REX files for Stylus, how long do you reckon it'd take per loop? They'll be 4-bar loops mostly, and pretty close to being in time

Well if you have Stylus RMX all you need is to export the rex2 files, as Stylus can handle the tempo changes etc.

Tell you what, if there aren't too many, I can do the conversions for you.

In fact, there has been a favor I have been wanting to ask of you anyway....


pm me if you are interested

[Watto]

Sounds great to me! Depending on what the favour is...