Fitting together a drum kit

I was wondering, what do yall look for when you are putting a drum kit together out of one shot samples you have sitting around? I usually just listen for individual sounds that I like and put them together, which more often than not ends up sounding like crap. I've tried using a single drum kit that was all recorded together and then layering different sounds under each of the hits, but that's pretty hit or miss too. And one other thing I've found that works is to just use a bunch of different drums but then run them all through some distortion together (mostly Predatohm) to get them to sound like they fit, which usually works well. But I don't always want distorted sounding drums.

Anyone have any tricks they use on this?

welcome to the boards, u got me all figured out.

Most goood drum samples have some inherent room sound....You need to try and match that if you can. Listen closely to the decay to understand the reverb. You can kill some of this in several ways. If you have a sound editing program like sound forge, experiment with the noise reduction. You can grab a bit of the reverb "tail" and effectively process out most of the room sound, cleaning up your drums so they will fit with any clean kit. Noise gates can also help you acheive this goal. Have the gate kick in at a moderate level and it will effectively cut off the reverb tails...you then need to go back in and add your on reverb to repair it or it will sound a bit unnatural.....Or you can spend the bucks on something like Bob Clearmountian drums which are reallly nice samples and spend more time playing than tweaking. I have been in the same space for over 10 years now and I take samples from every kit a drummer brings here. Since it's all recorded in the same room - everything seems to go together well

the huntergatherer wrote: but that's pretty hit or miss too.

To me, everything about this art is "hit or miss".........you just have to be willing to spend the time experimenting until something blows up in your face (in a good way.)

You know I would say for me its after I play some riff or sound element that is when I start picking
drum sounds.

Fader-pro, that noise reduction tip looks nice. I'll give it a try next time I feel like doing some tweakin rather than bangin.

fader-pro wrote:Most goood drum samples have some inherent room sound....You need to try and match that if you can. Listen closely to the decay to understand the reverb. You can kill some of this in several ways. If you have a sound editing program like sound forge, experiment with the noise reduction. You can grab a bit of the reverb "tail" and effectively process out most of the room sound, cleaning up your drums so they will fit with any clean kit. Noise gates can also help you acheive this goal. Have the gate kick in at a moderate level and it will effectively cut off the reverb tails...you then need to go back in and add your on reverb to repair it or it will sound a bit unnatural.....Or you can spend the bucks on something like Bob Clearmountian drums which are reallly nice samples and spend more time playing than tweaking. I have been in the same space for over 10 years now and I take samples from every kit a drummer brings here. Since it's all recorded in the same room - everything seems to go together well

good tip!!

but i suggest to use an expander instead of a gate to clean the drums, cuz it will leave a more natural tail that fades out..


edit: anyone knows where i can get a multiband expander?