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[Romanp]

I haven’t ever recorded real drums. I am a sampling from records old school 80s early 90s hip hop guy.
I love drums.
Perhaps I am raising a need to better understand what these drum software instruments are capable of.
Perhaps these instruments with all the features and flexibility means that the user actually needs to learn more about drum mixing/processing.
Maybe there is a lot to learn in terms of what can be achieved with editing.
I was just listening to Little Feats song ‘Fool Yourself’. It’s the breakbeat I first heard on A Tribe Called Quests ‘Bonita Applebum’.
Tight non ringing drums.

[Romanp]

The Abbey Road 60s and 70s kits have tight options from the demos I listened to.

[Romanp]

Ken Scotts EpiK drums seems to have a short punchy sound.
Billy Cobhams kit is really good.
Addictives ‘Funk’ and ‘Retro’ sound like they could be usable as well.
Roman.

[Romanp]

In my experience and from listeing to demos there is a big difference between a natural snare recording that has a dampened snare compared to the snare sound disappearing very quickly with the use of an amplitude envelope or gate.
Totally different.
A dampened snare will have a natural decay without the ring. A gated or decay snare sounds just like a gated snare. Plus the sound of the attack and everything is different with a dampened snare.
A dampened snare doesn’t disappear into darkness straight away like a gated or decayed snare. It has some natural sound after it. Which softens the sound.
Having a sharply decayed ringing snare, hardens the sound and makes it sound unnatural.

My ears tell me that decayed snares sounds artificial compared to dampened snares.

I also hear a big difference between tuning a sample and tuning a real drum.

I think making gates and amplitude envelopes responsible for making short punchy drums is a huge compromise and a cop out.

Maybe adding a little smallish reverb could soften a decayed snare.
But I would much rather have a library properly done to sound short and punchy.

I feel the biggest genres of music are missing from the Toontrack sounds.

I was thinking last night. Toontrack could get Gabriel Roth to do a couple of drum kits. His daptone productions are the most authentic soul funk drum sound in the present.

Then go to Jamaica and get Prince Jammy to do a kit, ha ha.

Trouble is even our heroes have changed their sound over the years. Funkmasters is a case in point. Clydes kit doesn’t sound like his best recordings. It has too much ring.

I actually feel inspired to make my own drum library with these sounds. I would just need a software sampler that supports ’round robin’ etc.

My only observations are from the videos and audio on toontracks site. So I will have to wait to try it myself. As you say maybe in the mix the ring is less obvious. But all the breakbeats are naked drums and I don’t hear ringing in the snare.

I think we are cutting corners. We’ve got enough metal, country, pop, contemporary natural ringing acoustic drum sounds.

It’s time for some drums that we can actually use. Give us the vintage funk, soul, reggae, disco.

Give us short punchy drums of different flavours and tunings. Don’t use gates, just pillows and wallets and gaffer tape.

I will reserve my final judgments for when I have the product and try out using decaying processing.
Roman.

[Romanp]

Thanks for the reply John,
Greetings from New Zealand.

Ok, so the CC4 allows different sounds to be triggered instead of using different note values.
That must be how the Roland TD modules work as well. They trigger a different sound depending on the hihat pedal (CC4) position.
I don’t think us hardware sampler users could utilise the CC4 message to vary the hihat sounds.
It would have been simpler to have the hihat pedals position alter the note sent. Then us hardware sampler users or even software sampler users could simply assign different hihat samples to the different notes to vary the openness.
This CC4 method makes the ‘openess’ proprietary to samplers that can utilise it.

Maybe Kontact can utilise a MIDI controller to change the samples triggered.
Do you know if any software samplers allow this?

But hang on, there is something that goes against this claim. When my Roland TD3KW CY5 hihat pad is open (hihat pedal raised) it must be sending a different note because I can trigger the closed and open hihats on my Yamaha Motif XF7 by using the hihat pedal.
This means the hihat pedal is actually changing the note sent.
Because the Yamaha Motif XF7 is just a GM style MIDI map of drums.
The Roland TD3 module only allows you to alter the closed hihat note and the other two hihat notes for open and pedal stay 2 semitones above each other just like a GM MIDI drum kit.

So the pedal being fully up must send a note for the fully open hihat.

[Romanp]

And listen to any Jamaican music from the 70s. But mostly late 70s and early 80s.
Short punchy kicks and snares.

[Romanp]

Anyone?

[Romanp]

Yes I think my issue with the toontrack libraries is that to try and get a genuine funk, disco, reggae etc short decay, tight drum sounds we are expected to use amplitude envelopes, gates, transient designers.
Maybe some of my favourite records used gates to get the funky tight snare sounds. But I doubt it.
Having a Clyde Stubblefield kit that sounds nothing like our favourite recordings of him like ‘funky drummer’ is disappointing.
Jabos snare sounds closer.
I haven’t bought Superior Drummer or any Toontrack stuff yet. I love the idea of being able to sound like real drums from my Roland TD3KW. I will sometimes supplement a real acoustic hihat.
But from listening to the demos, I reckon there is still a big hole for the best most usable drum sounds for grooves that have shorter dampened snares etc.
Custom and vintage has some dampened snares.
I may be wrong, but I think a library with raw unprocessed but heavily and moderately dampened drums at a three different tunings is missing from the Toontrack sounds.
Go listen to James Browns ‘funky president’ or Johnny Osbournes ‘water pumping’ or most of the famous breakbeats.
All or mostly short punchy drums.
Maybe I am missing some tape saturation that I can add using my reel to reel. Or maybe I can get these sounds with envelopes and gates etc.
Go listen to Barry White and the love unlimited orchestra ‘Midnight an’
Edwin Starr ‘Easin In’
Cebu ‘The commodores’
The Boss by James Brown

They all have a punchy snare with no ringing sound.
Maybe there are some of these sounds already in the Toontrack sound library. But from my listening to all the demos, I reckon they should make a library that gets closer to the short punchy drum sounds than Custom and Vintage does.
Like 12 different snares all dampened and heavily dampened with 2 or 3 tunings. Probably dry would be best or dry with some room mics.

[Author]

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