Drum replacement and augmentation

Samples are useful for sculpting the tone of multi-mic drums when EQ boosts cause spill. Marc Daniel Nelson’s approach is to do samples before any other processing. Doing so keeps you from having to do any crazy EQ or compression to get the tone you want, especially for drums.¹ This follows the rule of getting it right at the source.

The sample’s attack can be edited out of a sampler instrument with the ADSR envelope. The sample can also equalized to add specific tonal changes.² Tuning the sample with a pitch shifter can be useful too.³ Marc Daniel Nelson uses either the sample or the original drum as the “punch,” using a transient designer to change the envelope of the sample and original.⁴ He also uses a sample to add ambience without reaching for a reverb.³

See Drum triggering in Reaper for more. I’m now using UVI Drum Replacer instead.

Warren Huart uses Melodyne to grab the MIDI.⁵ The benefit of this is that Melodyne gives you velocity information for each hit. Bring the file into Melodyne, specify fixed tempo, then export as a MIDI file. The only thing is you have to edit the MIDI to get rid of bleed.⁶

Consider using a separate track to layer in snare ghost notes.⁵

For toms, make sure you’re choosing a group of toms, not just random ones from different kits.⁷

Billy Decker always mixes in a dance kick for Mixing kick drum.⁸