Drum Replacement
_ I’ve always been fond of Drummers; they hang around with the real
musicians and hit things and provide huge amounts of general entertainment. Then, one day I got to play
with a REALLY good drummer and somehow the whole band got better, big time, in
the space of one intro. So what happened there then?
Whilst many dance, urban and pop styles of music rely on a dead-steady, often machine generated, beat with absolutely strict timing, the worlds of rock, metal, funk, blues, soul, country and many others need to breathe and groove, and that’s where the chap at the back comes in.
The problem for Drummers is that they have big, heavy, complicated instruments that take ages and lots of resource to set-up to record (and yes, I know that Blind Lemon McCafferty’s 27 piece swing band was recorded with a single ribbon mic in the 1940s, and they had 3 drummers, but this is the 21st century). So too often when the microphones are being allocated the Singer gets the Neuman, the Guitarist gets the Shure and the drummer (with a small “d”) gets that one with the dented case that the cat was sick-on.
Oddly enough, the drums often sound pretty poor on even well played and engineered recordings. If that isn’t enough, modern extreme styles of music often require the drummer to put in a superhuman performance, right on or just over the edge (15 minutes of double kicks at 220 bpm please).
None of this matters of course, because you can just replace the drummer with a machine when (s)he’s not looking and no-one will know (who thinks Frank Beard loves “Eliminator” then?). Hear that sort of “mehhhhh” sound? That’s the sound of the life leeching out of your music that is.
So what do we do? We Drum Replace is that we do. Take the tracks that your real live Drummer (with capital D) plays, keep the playing and replace the sounds if they need it (or support them if the original sound is half-way decent) with high quality samples. End result, your original groove with your original timing and dynamics, played back on a world class kit (or kits). Best of both worlds!
Whilst many dance, urban and pop styles of music rely on a dead-steady, often machine generated, beat with absolutely strict timing, the worlds of rock, metal, funk, blues, soul, country and many others need to breathe and groove, and that’s where the chap at the back comes in.
The problem for Drummers is that they have big, heavy, complicated instruments that take ages and lots of resource to set-up to record (and yes, I know that Blind Lemon McCafferty’s 27 piece swing band was recorded with a single ribbon mic in the 1940s, and they had 3 drummers, but this is the 21st century). So too often when the microphones are being allocated the Singer gets the Neuman, the Guitarist gets the Shure and the drummer (with a small “d”) gets that one with the dented case that the cat was sick-on.
Oddly enough, the drums often sound pretty poor on even well played and engineered recordings. If that isn’t enough, modern extreme styles of music often require the drummer to put in a superhuman performance, right on or just over the edge (15 minutes of double kicks at 220 bpm please).
None of this matters of course, because you can just replace the drummer with a machine when (s)he’s not looking and no-one will know (who thinks Frank Beard loves “Eliminator” then?). Hear that sort of “mehhhhh” sound? That’s the sound of the life leeching out of your music that is.
So what do we do? We Drum Replace is that we do. Take the tracks that your real live Drummer (with capital D) plays, keep the playing and replace the sounds if they need it (or support them if the original sound is half-way decent) with high quality samples. End result, your original groove with your original timing and dynamics, played back on a world class kit (or kits). Best of both worlds!
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