Discuss the various methods you use in music production, from compressor settings to equipment type.
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By damien907 Mon Nov 07, 2011 9:52 pm
:lol: :lol: :lol:

yeah i was talking more about actually tuning them, like 2 semitones up is a major second/ whole tone different. and a major 3rd is 4 semitones different.

i usually always am blindly tuning drums by moving the knob to up or down, but i wanted to see if any of you musically tune them.

i did find this library that has all of their drums laid out by note, i think im gonna buy it so i could dive deeper into messing around with this stuff. i think it would be easier to start off with a note that i knew instead of trying to guess the tune of my snare drum.

http://drumhits.biz/
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By thx Tue Nov 08, 2011 4:08 pm
-niN wrote:I just about always play with the pitch a little ... Is that "tuning"???


definitely
filtering affects the physical nature of the manipulated sound, but doesn't change the tuning of a note/drum
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... cal_tuning
http://electronicmusic.wikia.com/wiki/Filter
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By -niN Tue Nov 08, 2011 4:56 pm
thx wrote:
-niN wrote:I just about always play with the pitch a little ... Is that "tuning"???


definitely
filtering affects the physical nature of the manipulated sound, but doesn't change the tuning of a note/drum
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... cal_tuning
http://electronicmusic.wikia.com/wiki/Filter


But if you use a filter and a lot of resonance it might end up in a diffren key, would it? At least I've read sumthing like that.. :?
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By thx Tue Nov 08, 2011 4:59 pm
^
yes true
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By damien907 Tue Nov 08, 2011 11:59 pm
that article was a good read.

anyone know of any libraries that have samples organized by tune?

i have found out about magic theater audio and have heard that the goldbaby 808 pack has some tuned drums as well.

there has to be other ones too though.
By séance Wed Nov 09, 2011 12:07 am
Always tune your drums. Enharmonic tones are fundamental to a good mix.
By CellarDoor Thu Nov 10, 2011 9:43 am
MPCWeapon1 wrote:I tune all my drums...when you get your drums from records, you almost have too.if you use library stuff you really don't. The people who design those drums sounds are pretty good at what they do.


Sorry, but you probably haven't understood what drum tuning is. It's just adjusting the pitch of the drum sounds to the pitch of the song you are working on. Every drum is tuned, but often this tuning won't match your current song, so you have to adjust it. If you use it on another song, you will have to adjust it a second time. There is no thing as "This drum is tuned, so now i can use it on every song". Whether the drum is sampled from a record or taken from a drum library is totally irrelevant. The only difference is that drums from a record will be tuned to each other (at least if a decent drummer played them), drums from a library won't necessarily be tuned to each other, but by tuning all drums to the pitch of the song you will tune them to each other anyway.

Having said that, i usually don't pitch my drums up or down by more than 2 semitones. If i can't make them fit in this range, i just choose other sounds. Otherwise my samples would either get too long or too short and the drums would also start to sound unnatural because of pitching them too much. Tuning a drum by pitching it is different to tuning a real drum where you adjust some screws on the rim. On a real drum you are way more flexible.
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By tapedeck Thu Nov 10, 2011 3:42 pm
^^thanks, you are right on.

this thread has a lot of misinformation and misconception it. flame me if you want but i got to set some stuff straight.

first off, like i said earlier, not every sound has a 'key'. examples include, noise, impulses, and inharmonic tones - guess what, most drum sounds approach either noise, impulsive, or inharmonic tones.

i think yall are confusing 'dominant frequency' with 'key' of a sound.

-niN wrote:But if you use a filter and a lot of resonance it might end up in a diffren key, would it?

no.
it will sound like the note, with highly resonant filter on it. more technically, it will sound like the note, plus one random, overpowering sine wave. one sine wave at one frequency doesn't determine 'key' of a sound. sure you can take this to extremes and annihilate the original sound, but its not like, slap a resonant filter on a B-flat and suddenly it becomes an A.

damien907 wrote:i have found out about magic theater audio and have heard that the goldbaby 808 pack has some tuned drums as well.
there has to be other ones too though.

unlikely. the reason you haven't found many of these is because the whole concept is based on a myth created on internet forums by uninformed talking back and forth until everyone agrees on something that isn't there.
notice how in that video for the drumkit above, they never show you using an 'out of key' drum - you know why? because it would likely work just as well. :roll:

read that very SOS article yall keep mentioning...it confirms what ive been saying but its being misinterpreted here:
SOS article wrote:If any drum sample has a prominent pitched element to its sound, there is the potential for that pitch to conflict with the harmonies of the production as a whole

thats a big IF followed by uncertain POTENTIAL. not an ALWAYS.

some drums with certain sounds might sound out of key, but only if the drum has this 'pitched' sound (ie long 808 bass).

consider a drummer, in a band, with other musicians, playing songs in different keys. the drummer doesn't 'retune' his drums with every key change. he never goes, 'oh crap, this next song changes key to A and my hi-hat is in E-flat!'.

it doesnt work like that.

yes, you should experiment with tuning your drums. yes it might help. but thinking 'i have to find the key of this drum beat' or 'i have to have a snare in A-flat' is completely wrong.

homedude above nailed it too by pointing out that anything +/- 2 semitones can just get weird - not to mention, even if there is a pitched element, +/- 2 semitones is enough to bring any note into any major or minor key.
also 'drum tuning' in real life is totally unrelated to 'drum tuning' in a sampler - so lets not even go there.

this is a good subject, and tuning your drums is good practice, but lets try to understand the fundamentals, and not make this more difficult than it is.
:mrgreen:
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By thx Thu Nov 10, 2011 3:55 pm
tapedeck wrote:
consider a drummer, in a band, with other musicians, playing songs in different keys. the drummer doesn't 'retune' his drums with every key change. he never goes, 'oh crap, this next song changes key to A and my hi-hat is in E-flat!'.

it doesnt work like that.

this is a good subject, and tuning your drums is good practice, but lets try to understand the fundamentals, and not make this more difficult than it is.
:mrgreen:


+1
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By -niN Thu Nov 10, 2011 5:14 pm
Thanks for cleaning up with some BS tapedeck :mrgreen: Appreciated!
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By Copper_Tony Fri Nov 11, 2011 6:01 am
if the beat is say in C minor for example, i usually make sure the kick is something like a 5th, octave or 3rd as a starting point. go from there and match the other drums to it
but obviously whatever sounds best
this is just one example of how to go about things if the drum is not sitting well
also, maybe go with another drum

damien907 wrote:hmm, ill look for that scott storch kit. any other kits that are tune that you know of?
if im finding the key of my sample, say if it was in cM my drum would hit at C wouldent it? because the scale is C,D,E,F,G,A,B,C

but if it was in Cm the scale would be C,D,Eb,F,G,Ab,Bb,C

would i still use my root note as a C for my drum pitches? can this be song dependant? i think it might matter what cords were being played as well and using the root notes of the main chords? am i correct in assuming this?

im not tone deaf, and i can usually tell when an instrument is out of tune, its just hard for me to tune it to the right key.

when you do tune your drums, do you just do it by ear or do you find the note that your drum is and tune it by semitones ect/ in the mpc?

do any of you have a beat or 2 you could post that i could try and guess the key of?
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By damien907 Fri Nov 11, 2011 9:53 am
@ tapedeck, yeah i realize that there is no formula for making music, i have just been learning about drum tuning recently as another way to advance my skills.

@ copper tony, im gonna try out the 5th and 3rd you were talking about.

i just bought the goldbaby super 808 library, it has chromatically tuned kicks, congas, and toms in battery 3 and exs format.

it also has regular .wav files, i believe they are 24 bit 44.1

the kicks are killin it though! they had me sold on that.

it was 40 dollars well spent.
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By Yozzer_Hughes Fri Nov 11, 2011 10:18 am
HERES HOW

Get a free vst called G-TUNE ...Apply it to the bass read the HZ

Then use a frequency shifter on the bassdrum and use that as the starting point