Sampling Drums from vinyl

I have this same problem on Drum Kicks mainly (my snares sound fine usually)...I sample from vinyl but, one of two things happens:

1. My kicks are left sounding thick (meaning they have a fast attack that hits hard) but with no bass.

2. They have bass if I EQ but then they have no kick to them... they sound drowned out.

I've tried EQ and compression and either my drums end up sounding too dirty (I like dirt and grime in my drums, but at one point it becomes too much and ends up ruining the drum track) or my drums sound clean but with no presence...

I've even tried layering 808s behind my clean drums that need some bass, but it never sounds right, they always sound like two seperate kicks... Never like one complete kick...

Any tips for sampling drums from vinyl...

Sometimes you have to do some serious trimming. Sometimes you have to add a burst at the frontend of one of those super-over bassed kicks to work.
Sometimes, you just gotta find a nicely isolated sound to start from.

You may need to pitch the samples up or down. Maybe the pair of samples that you combine should be tuned for the sample freq.

You never mentioned what you are using...software/hardware wise. That may also over you some solutions.

Good luck. It ain't ez.

try to fatten the drum up with some distortion, but not to much. you might need some eq too, but be careful - just turn up the very lowest frequencies, not the area where the kick is defined - this will be done by the distortion, witch does not kill the attack like the eq

check it. i always treat my kicks like this
peace

Thanks andy... I'll definitely try that distortion trick when I get home... What do you use for distortion though... Hardware or software like SoundForge or Cool Edit... Just in general what equipment do you guys use to Get good vinyl drum sounds...

As for software, here are a couple of free VST plug ins that I use a lot:

Cyanide

H20

Fish Filets

Check them out at www.kvr-vst.com

Peace.

MattMatiks PG wrote:Thanks andy... I'll definitely try that distortion trick when I get home... What do you use for distortion though... Hardware or software like SoundForge or Cool Edit... Just in general what equipment do you guys use to Get good vinyl drum sounds...

acutally i use the distortion on the EB16, i love to stick with my mpc as far as i can

sw-wise, i prefer soundforge, for compression i use samplitude

Thanks man... I use soundforge and adobe auditon myself... I just wanted to know what you use since that trick works for you.

homershines wrote:As for software, here are a couple of free VST plug ins that I use a lot:

Cyanide

H20

Fish Filets

Check them out at www.kvr-vst.com

Peace.

I tried finding Cyanide on kvr-vst but no dice. It's and effect, right? Also, does anyone know of a VST wrapper for Soundforge?

Cyanide can be found at:

http://bram.smartelectronix.com/

Peace.

heres what i usually do to make my kicks fatter:

first i find a good kik to start with, you cant polish a turd

then sample, trim, and eq. my eq process usually goes like this- put a relatively tight bell curve in the low frequency range, boost the sh*t out of it, then sweep it back & forth between 50 and 100 Hz. somewhere in there is gonna be your boom your looking for. i put a fairly broad bell curve around the mid frequency range and cut out mud around the 500Hz area, this can be swept thru too to find the desired frequency. sometimes i will put a hi shelf eq on it to brighten it up a little if needed, and add a little snap to it.

then if it loses its attack, you can put a gate on it with a real quick attack and kinda low threshold and it will help it snap some more. put some compression on after that with a slow attack and medium or long release and you should have yourself a nice sounding, booming, snappy kick sample.
those are basic starting points for the kick sample, experiment with that and you should find your own way of doing it.

happy processing!

mesh wrote:heres what i usually do to make my kicks fatter:

first i find a good kik to start with, you cant polish a turd

then sample, trim, and eq. my eq process usually goes like this- put a relatively tight bell curve in the low frequency range, boost the sh*t out of it, then sweep it back & forth between 50 and 100 Hz. somewhere in there is gonna be your boom your looking for. i put a fairly broad bell curve around the mid frequency range and cut out mud around the 500Hz area, this can be swept thru too to find the desired frequency. sometimes i will put a hi shelf eq on it to brighten it up a little if needed, and add a little snap to it.

then if it loses its attack, you can put a gate on it with a real quick attack and kinda low threshold and it will help it snap some more. put some compression on after that with a slow attack and medium or long release and you should have yourself a nice sounding, booming, snappy kick sample.
those are basic starting points for the kick sample, experiment with that and you should find your own way of doing it.

happy processing!

What eq do you use for the bell curve and such (and I'll tell you that the only bell curve I've heard about was for curving grades in school)?? Sounds like you would need a pretty intricate eq to accomplish all that you're talking about.

Another question I wanted to ask everyone was whether or not anybody around here used drum samplers like Battery or RMIV.

If so, what advantages do they have. I've heard that they're pretty great for layering, but can they export two layerd kicks as one sound???

peace.

its actually a pretty common eq set up. most multi band eqs have bell curves for the low, mid, and hi frequencies. do you know the difference between different types of eqs? there are shelving, bell, hi cut(low pass), lo cut(hi pass) with each acting in a different way. if you have a parametric eq you can adjust the Q, i.e. how wide or narrow the bell is. i use the renaisance 6 band eq from waves, or the d2 from digi, or outboard-wise i have access to the manley massive passive that i like to use when i can.

what eqs do you have access to? i might be able to tell you if they have the features necessary to do what i am talking about.

as far battery goes, i havent ever used it, but if it cant combine sounds as a single exported file, just play them together and sample it!

the most underrated tip is watch out when you are chopping your kick drums.

leave a hair of empty space before the kick actually hits.
the true punch of a kick drum takes place at the very second it hits, if you clip that just a hair, youll make your kick drum weaker.

once you see that space, then adjust accordingly, but dont chop down to the dead beginning.

Sensewondah... Thanks for all the processing tips... I really appreciate the intricate description you gave... As of right now I use software (SoundForge and Adobe)... I really need to get some more hardware though... Especially in the compression department... Can anyone tell me what a good inexpensive hardware EQ is... I'm lost as far as what to buy in EQs...

don t even sweat the hardware eq. hook up some waves plug ins. you get more bang for your buck. i dont like f*ckin with hardware gear unless it is pro quality, and i cant afford that so i use plugins. i have a couple hardware eqs and compressors but i never use them. they are all cheap and sound like dookie. the waves bundles are nice, and you get a whole bunch more than just one piece of gear, plus you can use multiple instances of them, where as for hardware, well, you only have one piece that you can use one at a time, versus the plugins, you can slap as many as your processor can handle on your tracks.