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Replacements

Lesson 28 from: Advanced Drum Production

Eyal Levi

Replacements

Lesson 28 from: Advanced Drum Production

Eyal Levi

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Lesson Info

28. Replacements

Lessons

Class Trailer

Day 1

1

Class Introduction

21:53
2

The Tone Pie and Process Overview

13:35
3

Getting the Lay of the Land and Q&A

32:58
4

Assemble Your Gear

14:34
5

Drum Tuning Part 1

33:56
6

Drum Tuning Part 2

39:49
7

Fine Tuning Tones Part 1

35:29
8

Fine Tuning Tones Part 2

54:24
9

General Guidelines of Tracking Drums

32:27
10

Tracking with Sean Reinert

32:50
11

Pop Quiz

17:57
12

Basics of Superior Drummer

30:00
13

EZDrummer vs Superior Drummer

25:32
14

Constructing a Metal Drum Kit Part 1

41:09
15

Constructing a Metal Drum Kit Part 2

26:14
16

Constructing a Rock Drum Kit

38:03
17

Grooves and Programming

14:33
18

General Q&A

18:31
19

Prepping Virtual Drums for the Mix

37:16
20

Superior Review with Q&A

22:01
21

Intro to Mixing and Drum Clean Up

33:13
22

Interview with John Douglass

25:00
23

Intro to Drum Editing

21:32
24

Manual Editing Approach

15:30
25

Editing with Beat Detective

16:46
26

Editing with Elastic Audio

29:16
27

Sample Layering

20:14
28

Replacements

23:13
29

Gain Staging and Bussing

15:45
30

Mixing Essentials

32:06
31

Compression and Parallel Compression

13:22
32

Reverb and Automation

28:18
33

Mixing Tips and Tricks

26:53

Day 2

Day 3

34

Bonus: EZDrummer - Introduction

17:38
35

Bonus: EZDrummer - Intro to EZDrummer

14:47
36

Bonus: EZDrummer - EZDrummer Foundations

29:30
37

Bonus: EZDrummer - How a Drummer Plays

19:51
38

Bonus: EZDrummer - Part Writing Part 1

32:54
39

Bonus: EZDrummer - Part Writing Part 2

29:35
40

Bonus: EZDrummer - Part Writing Q&A

10:21
41

Bonus: EZDrummer - Intro to Grooves

13:48
42

Bonus: EZDrummer - Writing from Scratch

26:49
43

Bonus: EZDrummer - Intro to Fills

20:51
44

Bonus: EZDrummer - Writing Fills

27:20
45

Bonus: EZDrummer - Mixing in Your DAW

14:13
46

Bonus: EZDrummer - Bussing and EQ

25:36
47

Bonus: EZDrummer - Compression and Reverb

18:26
48

Bonus: EZDrummer - Conclusion with Q&A

12:30
49

Bonus Video: Editing

1:07:00
50

Bonus Video: Toms and Cymbals

29:02
51

Bonus Video: Snare Midi

32:26
52

Bonus Video: Kick Midi

20:35

Lesson Info

Replacements

Don't use beat detective tio to edit your kicks what you want to do is if you're deleting if you're replacing kicks just uh you're going to just delete your kick track and make a mini one so let me actually go to the other file and I'll show you what I mean on something that was replaced closed session anyway yeah there's always in complete tasks of pro tools here we go now I've already got midi right here and we've got a printed sample so we've actually got two different samples so that we could better decide what we wanted in the mix that I recommend printing out a few different samples it's sometime is really it's sometimes really hard teo get the phase right between different kick drums and you need to be really really careful and boosting the low and anyways you're going have a bass guitar and things get really busy down there in a hurry so often times oftentimes I'll find that we end up using on ly one kick drum surprisingly enough and just securing your really well but there you...

go this is the original performance down here where it says splatter you see it's completely off it's like nowhere near where it needs to be just like the hands weren't anywhere near where they needed to be now like we discussed before since we wanted since we decided that we want to do many for this there's no point in editing the audio and it is there's no point you're going to end up doing things twice so we use massive di rt to extract the midi john's going to show you the details on how to do that fight this is the plug in you select your area hit analyze pretty quick say your sensitivity set your velocities it's pretty cool and then you just drag the midi out too many track just like that bala pretty fast but it's not going to be completely aligned toe what you wanted to be so you will need to go in and fix every single one of these hits and I mean every single one of these hits don't think that you can get away with not doing that but since there kick drums if you have a kick pad and not an actual bass drum well you can make artistic decisions as to how those kicks fall in time if you're completely getting rid of a sloppy performance you could make a new one and I'm not saying it has to be one hundred percent to the grid or anything like that just saying you can you can solve the situation the drummer put you in by not learning his parts very easily this way so how they recommend it and then I showed you guys before you just route this middie too superior or to trigger bounce it out good to go if you do it via audio though you might end up with a lot more late and see problems and even midi through a few of these replacement programs will be kind of weird so make sure that you check the audio is in line and uh show you right here as you can see it's not a hundred percent blind off this many created this way form or these wave forms but the good news is the way that we bounced them they're all pretty much off the exact same way so let's bounce let's bounce over here and see if it's still up yep these were bounds very consistently they're all off all being off the same way well this is a really easy solution just line up the first one and you're good to go whereas if these were off by a little bit these other ones were off by another amount you er would have to sit here and do this all over again to the audio and uh why would you ever want to do that so I don't actually think that moving in a couple of milliseconds or one millisecond will make any bit of difference you won't even be able to hear it so I was just actually showing you how that works you have a feeling that that is thea unedited yes edited drums one second while it ah analyzes is she going to turn off elastic audio? Well uh there you go kick replacement for you here's ah double bass section I'm sure you guys are you curious about that stuff too but it's the same idea totally the same idea many notes do they there's not much more to say about that other than get it accurate so let's talk about snares unless if you guys have any questions about kicks all right guess what it's the same thing except like we say in john's video snares I need you to pay closer attention to the velocities because it's not just consistent low end that they're putting off this all kinds of high frequency varied information and it will really sound like a bad drum machine of you don't do that so and take a look at the dynamics of the actual snare track that might be a little bit too much variation it's actually not that bad so I'm gonna load up superior real quick and uh was put a sample on the snare it's making a stereo instrument track sending the output and we'll just go with the default sound that's loaded just in the interest of time that should sound cool anyways so d one is our snare note so like the snare track go to uh if you make a new mini trach actually routed to superior massive d rt allies and we will just take this as it is for now just so that anyways the uh deep editing with velocities is really covered in detail in my superior in my easy drummer course and also in john's clap this is that uh coming with this so let's see here make sure this note is right on I think it would have been triggering a bass drum nothing like a bass drum and snare hitting at the exact same time. Yep, yep that's what it was doing so here's a little pro tools trick press on the keyboard the note in questioning a light up it'll select all of them that are on that note so see, one selected it I hit the note and now they're all selected now I'm just moving them up to the snare and I want that so that I can listen to it oh no let's see here that was ah short phil it was too low that's actually a double trigger so go through and get rid of that we now have to go through in a line all of these literally every single one. So with the slides I just showed you you then take this many line that up very glamorous these slides right here those of your guide for doing this, I put them together specifically so that you guys would know where to do this that I'm showing you right now if you don't do this, your samples will face and you'll never get a job so? So, yeah, I crack myself up on that one. All right, let's, see here just align. Teo. Right, skip back. Let me just go back to where I wass all right, anyways, there's a way to make this cool and there's a way to make us not cool. Like I showed you guys in the example you, khun, do this in a way that will reinforce everything that's there. And you can do this in a way that it'll totally notre your performance and make everything sound like a drum machine. If you're using samples to reinforce something that's already good it's just going to sound punch here and work in the mix better if you're using it to totally just replace a snare and a tom than you know, you're going to end up with a drum machine sounding snare or tom, unless of you edit the velocities the same way that you would, too in or make virtual drums sound riel so well with the typical mix, like the blend between the two percentage was b I guess that totally depends on the, uh, on the material, right? If, uh, the scenario really doesn't sound very good, then it'll be a higher percentage of sample or possibly say, the high end of the snare is good. But it just doesn't have a good low end to it maybe we would just keep the crack of the snare and blend that with the sample it just totally depends but generally I think that you should have more rials snare than sample I'm thinking more like seventy thirty, sixty, forty something like that not fifty, fifty at all um I think as much really snare is possible you really should use this stuff two reinforced what you recorded I think that's my personal view but you know it's all up to the artist right artist meaning the producer the mixer, the band so let's go back to this yes record label to and that's actually good that you say that because if they're paying for it and they own it it really is up to them and sometimes labels are the ones that want that sound so you have to ah mix with your with your boss in mind and sorry that that's not much fun so real quick no play with and without samples just so you guys get that in your head one last time you opened up some questions about samples once the beach ball stops beach bawling ondo let again let me just point out these drums don't sound bad at all like we could use these on a record there's nothing wrong with them we already took into the point of sounding good we did everything that we said with the tone pie while we were recording we took care of all of that we had a drum tech they're tuning we made sure the heads were always knew we always kept everything in tune we made sure the performances were tight the that the dude sticks were new we pitch matched all the time and we have some pretty good sounding big sounding drums there's no needed to totally just throw them out the window and start from scratch so when we add the samples it's really only tio make sure that everything's all right with that which is wanna open up the floor to any questions about sample replacement that you guys might have the internet or in the room anyone you guys are all totally tight on sample replacement so on something that's really subtle like a roll or a ghost note yes I assume you have to go in and program all the velocities on something like that yes I mean sometimes with uh the massive plugin it'll get the velocities free close to how there were but yes you have to go in and if you want if you want to sound like I'm good yeah if you want it to sound like well it depends do you like the drummer's dynamics if not then gay I would change the curve basically how the velocities work but if if say I was just reinforcing sean snare for some weird reason yeah, I would go and I would match his his dynamics exactly and it would take a really long time but that's that's that's what you have to do and also one thing that bears mentioning is that on sections with ghost notes or phil's sometimes it's good to just drop the sample out completely or drop the blend down to more like ninety ten in favor of real snare that makes a lot of sense to me just because the way that a drum responds when you hit it yeah um obviously the samples that you're using are like the top of the drumhead mostly whereas when you do something like a ghost no or a role you're hearing a lot of the snare wire not the actual top of the drum well, we use multi samples that were taken from sessions like the one that you saw the other day where he got all the different velocity layers so the samples that we use actually do get that quiet and they do get that that much of the understeer but at the same time it doesn't sound right to me tio it's just it's really hard to get the velocities right on there's not much more I can really say other than it rarely ever works out as planned, so I find that for me at least and all the guys that I've ever done mixed stuff for the ratio always comes down of sample to riel you have any questions? Yeah question from equip monk do you ever manipulate a drum or trigger track with gates transient designer for better transit detection with sample replace er's well no because we're doing everything the amity so there's no need massey analyzes everything and then gives us hit points for the mideast so it's not actually detecting the audio but when I used to do things via audio like that yes I would sometimes put a limiter on the track so that everything would be a consistent volume if that's what I wanted or yeah transient designer works yeah, absolutely if you're going to do it that way yes, that method works but I highly advised that you don't do it that way because you want to change your samples you're going to have to go through the alignment process all over again we didn't get into that very much but it takes a really long time and like for instance, I remember on a record I did with jason suk off about a year and a half ago it was a death metal album was pretty popular death metal band and there's blast beats throughout everything and I did all of the snares three samples everything aligned it took maybe five, six days I mean we're talking something like eighteen hundred nineteen hundred snare heads per song so you know, pretty extensive operation there, and then I find out or I am told maybe three days before deadline that all the stairs need to be redone. And that was before we did things for committee, so I had to sit there for nineteen hours straight and redo everything, whereas if I had many could have just selected new sample bounced it out, make sure it was cool, it would have taken me on hour and a half as opposed to literally nineteen hours sitting in the same spot. I didn't get up more than twice to go the bathroom because we had to get it done, there's no way around it, so I highly advise you not to work that way. You're way better off working with mickey. If you care about efficiency, catch him and ah, quick one from kool aid olio, do you find it preferable it all to you? Samples from that same session made by the same drummer or or doesn't matter using a library sample let's say that using both is where it's at because every producer, every mixer has their custom go to samples that they use every time I don't care who it is, it's what they know and it's what they use that that's across the board, a really common thing, but how do you do that? And then retain some sort of character for what you're working on in the present time and that's by using samples of the new drum set and then and you know, obviously the natural drums but that is a really good way to reinforce the snare without having it sound all sampley is because you're already pitch matched and the dinette what happens a different dynamic layers matches what happened in the performance so yeah that's a good way to do it the thing is the reason to use your custom samples that a pre existing and predating that is because you already know howto work with them you already know howto make them jump through the speakers if that makes sense sounds great cool uh when we question him um I was one of you touch on triggering symbols at all is that any different than the workflow from like we don't really know why you don't do that now will will paste symbols in from the sample session meaning when I haven't hit all the symbols that different dynamic levels if I need thio replace something but I won't sample this I mean, yeah, I won't trigger the symbols it's hard to make those sounds relisting nearly impossible and it's just because getting symbols to sound realistic and a virtual environment is close to impossible just because you would need a way more powerful computer than you could get right now and the technology just isn't one hundred percent there yet. It's. Pretty close, but not one hundred percent.

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

Day One Presentation.pdf
Day Three Presentation.pdf
Day Two Presentation.pdf
Johns QuicKeys Shortcuts.qkmx
Sample Input List.docx

Ratings and Reviews

El Bulbo Studio
 

This class will give you confidence when tracking drums. Eyal's interaction with the drummer will help you communicate better with the artist to get the best performance and tone. The added bonus on drum replacement is very valuable and will improve your mixes.

a Creativelive Student
 

My drum sound has improved by 150% and counting. I'm grateful that Eyal would share this information with us. Not every technique is for every situation, but they all work. It's up to you to have the vision and to use the right tools for the job. Thank you guys!!

Michael Nolasco
 

To the guy that said buyer beware: this is an advanced production class, it's not meant for beginners who are learning to mic up a kit. I'm a beginner, but i'm using superior drummer, so this class was perfect for me to learn how to process drums post recording. I refer to it constantly. The editing videos are also prime information.

Student Work

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