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Recording, Mixing, Performance and Production
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Joined: Apr 2009
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OP
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Joined: Apr 2009
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I tend to work quickly and using the generic in style drum track is my preferred way to go. Often, it's a compromise. Work quickly and get good results but live with the things I don't really like about the track.
Out of curiosity more than anything else but also really not satisfied with the in style drum track.... I opted to check out the drum style that would work but also had the stems.
I picked a Nashville style with 10 stems and generated them and imported them into my DAW.
Immediately, I realized that they were in fact recorded with a mic and there was a significant amount of bleed from the rest of the kit.
Not to be deterred, I loaded the CLA drum plug and adjusted the gate. I had a reasonable isolation of the main drum. This had to be duplicated across all of the tracks.
I also realized that I couldn't get exactly what I wanted from the stems. Quite simply, what I wanted simply wasn't there. It was necessary to add a couple of instances of my Cakewalk drum synth and play the parts in with my midi keyboard. A bit of quantizing and the hits were on the beats. Doing this especially for the cymbals allowed me to delete the overheads and room where the cymbals were in the stems. This did a major cleanup on the sound and allowed better control over the cymbals high end. The song was so much clearer as a result. Huge.
In the end I have a really good, realistic sounding kit with a quarter note cymbal bell ride in the places I want along with a solid sounding kit that has nice fills. I might have to do this for everything from this point forward.
If you are not working with drum stems you really should give them a try. I think you'll have much better sounding drums.
You can find my music at: www.herbhartley.comAdd nothing that adds nothing to the music. You can make excuses or you can make progress but not both. The magic you are looking for is in the work you are avoiding.
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Recording, Mixing, Performance and Production
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Joined: Aug 2010
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Agreed that individual drum stems CAN make a big difference.
I think most guitarists can appreciate that a stereo track of drums is, in some ways, similar having all of the guitars rendered as 1 stereo track of guitars.
I'm excited to hear some of your mixes with what you're doing. Great info!
Chad (Hope that makes it easier)
TEMPO TANTRUM: What a lead singer has when they can't stay in time.
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Recording, Mixing, Performance and Production
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Joined: Jun 2009
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Thanks for the info ! I don't know how many drums have stems now in 2024 ?
I know they haven't got around to adding the shots holds pushes in the stems (maybe they were added in the stereo tracks after the artist recorded the drum track ?).
I thought you could use the drum chart midi with the SforzandoVST with the Playable RealDrums .sfz in the DAW to replace any stem track that you can get right or add the missing shots etc...
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Recording, Mixing, Performance and Production
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Really good write up. I had a similar experience with drum stems when they were first introduced, but ultimately decided the extra work wasn't worth it for what I was doing. Probably time to revisit. THANKS for sharing!
DC Ron
BiaB Audiophile
Presonus Studio One
ASUS I9-12900K DAW, 32 GB RAM
Presonus Faderport 16
Too many guitars (is that a thing?)
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Recording, Mixing, Performance and Production
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Joined: Apr 2009
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OP
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It is a fair amount of work. The question you need to ask yourself is this..... Is the song worth the effort to have a good drum sound?
To see which real drums have stems and exactly how many stems..... From inside your BB project, select the first utility track, I think it's a right click to open the menu.... Choose the real drums option and look at the column on the right side which lists the number of stems. When you click on it to select it, it populates the available utility tracks with the available stems.
Note: as I found out, you don't necessarily have to have all the stems to get a good sounding kit. Some are repetitive and unnecessary. Choose the ones you need.
You can find my music at: www.herbhartley.comAdd nothing that adds nothing to the music. You can make excuses or you can make progress but not both. The magic you are looking for is in the work you are avoiding.
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Recording, Mixing, Performance and Production
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Herb, all good tips. THANKS for passing them on. Ron
DC Ron
BiaB Audiophile
Presonus Studio One
ASUS I9-12900K DAW, 32 GB RAM
Presonus Faderport 16
Too many guitars (is that a thing?)
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Ask sales and support questions about Band-in-a-Box using natural language.
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