#drumaugmentation

After guidance from the learning sets, I began to look further into techniques of drum augmentation. Essentially this is the process in which the drum kit is layered, primarily with one shots – i.e. kick drum snare and toms. I researched into this subject to understand the concept further. Upon this, I read into a sound on sound article, written by Bazil (2012). This article reinforced my knowledge, but also developed the technique with additional ideas. I started to use this, and using Logic samples to add to the places where my drum kit lacked. I then EQ’d the samples to solely focus on the aspect of the hit that I wanted to alter, therefore it was not changing the original recording, but developing the sound. These would then be blended and sent to their own channel so I could alter the overall sound of the kit when I was happy with the blend. 

Also, when mixing “My Faults”, the toms weren’t cutting through the mix enough for my liking. They had no life, and as they were important to the drum part, they needed to be addressed. Firstly, I tried the technique above to initially layer them or replace them but the Logic samples only had resonant toms that sounded out of place. I tried gating them but this made the toms sound artificial. Therefore I created a sample of the tom overdubs used in “Interlude”. As these were dampened to my preference and recorded well, the sample could replace the existing tom sound without sounding out of place with the rest of the kit. With a little sample manipulation, the sample was loaded into a sampler and used to replace the existing tom sound. The velocity could then be adjusted in the MIDI to integrate the human feel in the drums. The tutorial I used to assist me in this technique is available here.

Bibliography

Bazil, E. (2012) Layers of Complexity [Online]. Sound on Sound. Available from: <https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/layers-complexity> [Accessed 6 March 2018].