Metal/funk/electro kit construction for live play

previewlounge · 2014-02-10T14:35:28.000Z

hi all, i am creating some kits on an MD uwII (non-plus drive)

the genre is hybrid metal with funk, house and electro elements, but the aim is explorative, trying to find a new sound…

the context is a four piece… the MD is played live by a drummer using a padKontrol with damper pedal.

OT is played live in a hip hop manner by a talented pal.

then there are two ESP guitars, one seven string, the other a five string bass.

so …

what i am trying to do is design the kits using mostly samples.

i have a few ideas, but if anyone has any advice, that would be awesome.

current selection of sounds to work with is about 100 acoustic samples of Ludwig and Kuezweil kits, a bit of Tama, Sonor and Pearl, Zildjian hats and Sabian cymbals… Supplemented by some breakbeat and trance kickdrums, reinforced snare hits.

wondering how to fit these into the 48 slots … perhaps making simple 4-note sample chains would be useful especially in the last 8 slots, where it is easier to go directly to a fraction division of an audio clip.

also wondering if i should do a lot of panning on the kit sounds …

the padKontrol has two Rotary controllers … and an XY pad. not sure if i should keep it simple n assigning what they do, or complex, and how to create a sense of continuity amongst drum kit constructions.

bluewolfse7en · 2014-02-10T15:03:07.000Z

The big things that come to mind are firstly to get rid of a substantial amount of midrange from the Kiks & Toms & to make sure snares have weight around 160Hz & crack around 5KHz.
Why?
A knowledgable FOH engineer will do this to make space in the spectrum for the gtrs but if you’re sending L&R then his/her hands are tied.
Use the individual outs if this fits in with your methodology & it’ll offer a lot more control!
Re panning, (if you’re not using individual outs), keep Kik Sn & Hats in the centre & pan other stuff around it . Will be fine for anything up to 1000 capacity venues. The larger you get the less panning you can get away with. For eg, at Download all Toms are panned centre, they have to be, otherwise people standing in front of the hangs either side would only hear half a kit

One other thing to bear in mind is to keep an eye on the low end, (using a spectrum analyser), when prepping your show. If you’re mixing without subs, chances are you’ll be dialing in too much bottom end without knowing it.
I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve hung my head in despair when trying to deal with unbelievable amounts of sub coming from ‘bedroom’ productions

Hope that helps dude

previewlounge · 2014-02-10T15:21:28.000Z

helps immensely, cheers

creating space for the guitars, i hadn’t thought of that … and yet, so essential, nice one. how much should i do, maybe prepare in ableton first and use a parametric EQ set to the rock and roll smile?
edit: actually just the one-band EQ on the MD should do it… maybe some filter work but that starts to remove detail sometimes.

many thanks for the EQ heads up re/ snare weighting at 160 and boost the 5k range

one thing i do wonder about is tuning … tuning of implied pitches across a single kit so it makes sonic sense with itself, but then also with the guitars.

and then, does EQ work somehow imply a pitch, or key center, by removing or accentuating…

currently designing the Machinedrum kits first… then will do more work on making performance one-shot kits for the Octatrack, to be in tune with the Machinedrum’s kits … the x-fader is amazingly creative for live performance tapping, kind of like vinyl beatboxing of parameters.

have played once with the drummer so far, so it is early days. he used a Genelec Tri-System for amplification, and the breakbeat kickdrum samples certainly carried a long way with the subwoofer making the kickdrums actually sound louder in the room next to the jamming room, strangely enough.

i am only just now importing some of the acoustic drum samples to the Machinedrum, so that will be interesting, to hear how these relatively untreated samples play on the MD, compared to the more electronic samples.

Allerian · 2014-02-10T17:59:55.000Z

Following this because I had a world of difficulty choosing samples that fit into the MD space limitations.

bluewolfse7en · 2014-02-11T12:06:57.000Z

previewlounge helps immensely, cheers creating space for the guitars, i hadn’t thought of that … and yet, so essential, nice one. how much should i do, maybe prepare in ableton first and use a parametric EQ set to the rock and roll smile?

With a live drum I’d think nothing of cutting 15dB in a Tom or Kik drum. Obviously with a sample it’s gonna be different depending upon how much work has been done to it before you get your hands on it. Stick a parametric around 800Hz with a narrow Q & boost whilst sweeping side to until you find the worst sounding area then cut & widen the Q to taste. Bare in mind that the working area of your gtrs, even a 7 string, is gonna be about 200Hz - 4kHz. (A is 440 so a 7 string with a low B won’t even drop to half that) On a live console, gtrs will centre around 1kHz, HPF to at least 160Hz & LPF anywhere 8kHz & below. With one act I LPF to 3kHz I kid you not! Gives that lovely warm rich sound & kills all that harsh stuff that makes your ears ring after the gig!

many thanks for the EQ heads up re/ snare weighting at 160 and boost the 5k range

Yeah this is fairly standard procedure, doing the sweep & looking for ‘honkiness’ in the midrange will help keep the Snares tight. Remember a slightly annoying ring in the studio will rattle around a large venue like crazy

one thing i do wonder about is tuning … tuning of implied pitches across a single kit so it makes sonic sense with itself, but then also with the guitars. and then, does EQ work somehow imply a pitch, or key center, by removing or accentuating…

Yeah freq is directly related to pitch & how important tuning is depends a lot on the sound you’re going for. For short punchy metal drums it’s gonna be less important than say a short Tom that morphs over time into a singing Sine wave. I wouldn’t necessarily worry about tuning to specific scales, just use your ears & tune to taste

currently designing the Machinedrum kits first… then will do more work on making performance one-shot kits for the Octatrack, to be in tune with the Machinedrum’s kits … the x-fader is amazingly creative for live performance tapping, kind of like vinyl beatboxing of parameters.

Have played once with the drummer so far, so it is early days. he used a Genelec Tri-System for amplification, and the breakbeat kickdrum samples certainly carried a long way with the subwoofer making the kickdrums actually sound louder in the room next to the jamming room, strangely enough.

That system is gonna give you a much better idea of what to expect live than a typical bedroom rig for sure. I guess it depends where your gonna play & what you’re playing through. If you’re likely to encounter modern line array systems then you’ll be dealing with Infrasubs that’ll go down to like 27Hz or something so it’s still worth tidying any clutter in those areas. I can’t emphasise just how useful spectrum analysers are when it come to taking electronic stuff to the stage!

If you’re not sending the MD into the OT I would definitely use the individual outs, give way more control!!!

The phenomena you describe about the Kiks sounding louder next door will be down to standing waves most likely. Basically, if the fundamental is 100Hz, then that’s a wavelength of 3.43m. If that sound occurs in a room with those, (or divisible), dimensions, then the wave will bounce back & forth reinforcing itself.

i am only just now importing some of the acoustic drum samples to the Machinedrum, so that will be interesting, to hear how these relatively untreated samples play on the MD, compared to the more electronic samples.

Yeah keep us posted, be interested to hear how you get on

previewlounge · 2014-02-11T15:33:30.000Z

ok, shall sweep the snare and search for the honkiness! haha i think i know what that means.

currently using Audacity for sample preps. i really like the waveform display and it’s perfect for zooming in and trimming, doing a number of corrective fadeouts to enable truncating of samples while retaining detail and naturalness.

not sure about Audacity’s Parametric EQ, have tried a couple of times, seems pretty straight forward i guess.

i found the magic EQ chart for the MD’s one band EQ:

Machinedrum EQ Frequencies

40Hz    -    10
60Hz    -    18
80Hz    -    23

100Hz - 28
150Hz - 37
250Hz - 47
300Hz - 50
500Hz - 60
1000HZ - 73
1500Hz - 80
1800Hz - 83
2000Hz - 86
2500Hz - 90
3000Hz - 93
3500Hz - 96
4000Hz - 98
4500Hz - 101
5000Hz - 103
6000Hz - 106
7500Hz - 110
10000Hz - 115
12000Hz - 119
14000Hz - 121
16000Hz - 124

using Sauna Sound’s chart, to strengthen 160Hz would mean adding EQ gain with the EQ param being set to 38…
or, to boost the “air”, set the EQ param to 103 and boost that.
maybe use layering and trig grouping, to trig the same sample, one with a lowpass filter, EQ boosting the 5k region…
the other trig with a highpass filter on the sample, and the one band EQ boosting the 160Hz region?

most likely possible to do all the preparation work in the DAW before importing, but then again it is nice to then have the ability to further shape the sound on the MD.

to fit within the 2.7mb limit, i am trimming one-shots in Audacity and exporting…
it’s a bit like making a valentine’s card heart shape by cutting with scissors but then trying to avoid over-zealous perfectionism and only making a card one centimeter in width.

at a certain point, too much trimming of samples results in a series of blips and pops that are all small in memory size but also very light-on as regards character of sound.

i think cymbal samples are going to take up the most space in terms of individual sample size. would like to load at least 3 cymbals. have made quicker and longer versions, shall try both and see how they sound.

some sounds naturally take to the process of being converted to 12bit mono by the MD very well, sounding as nice or nicer than they did before. other sounds do not. it is like a lucky dip, slightly predictable but requiring direct experimentation all the same. this is why i am waiting for a while to see how individual sounds work in the MD, before making sample chains.

Snare drums are hopefully going to feature fairly strongly in the sample imports, along with Tom drums, Kicks and a number of acoustic hihats (pedal, open, closed).

a couple of handclaps and a tambourine sample, not sure what else … maybe a rimshot and a tweaky percussion sample.

edit: i just noticed today that Audacity has its own spectrum analyser, cool!

also have Ableton 9 but that isn’t a sample editor.

Deep_Cycle · 2014-02-13T18:14:09.000Z

""Allerian"":

Following this because I had a world of difficulty choosing samples that fit into the MD space limitations.

Same here, trying to maintain the clarity, especially on crash and ride cymbals is an issue for me.
My process is to drop a bunch of samples into live 9, crop em so theres absolutely no extra data after the tails, drop the sample rate to 32kHz and export at 16bit.
This would result in a 1.7mb [Ride Bell] sample dropping to 288kb, still maintaining enough clarity that i can live with it.
I’ve read somewhere that pitching samples up before importing will take up less space, but i’ve yet to try, curious about the results/sound of that method…
Great advice so far, glad i found this thread…

previewlounge · 2014-02-16T09:32:24.000Z

talking of great advice, that is very cool advice about changing the Hz rate… not sure exactly how it would work, but anyway awesome! cheers for the share.

as regards pitching up, yeeeeeah i do remember reading that, seems like a useful workaround… but then there is a formant shift involved with the sound when adjusting pitch back down on the MD, maybe it isn’t nearly as obvious with certain drum sounds as it would be with say a voice sample.