Keeping random drum hit's in check in a mix

When I encounter this type of situation I believe by far the best way to do it is to open these tracks one by one in an editor. eg Cool Edit Pro/ Adobe Audition etc. You can see where the average levels are. You can pull the loud ones down and lift the soft ones. Then you end up with a track that is much more even.
 
It does not take long. The way not to do it is to put some effect/s on the tracks and push them hard just in order to tame a few rogue hits here and there. The result will be a more even sound but overall the track will sound much worse for it.
 
It is also faster than automation by far as well. This is where clip gain comes into its own and Sonar still does not have it. In Studio One or PT you can also simply cut either side of the offending hits and either raise or lower them accordingly. And because the waveforms change as well it is easy to match things up by eye as well. But the editor is hard to beat.
 
The editor works on everything as well, eg vocals. Once a lot of things are evened up in the editor then the effects you do have on these tracks can work much easier and they will all sound way better as a result. Any effect or plugin working hard will most often sound worse than effects or plugins that are working easy or relaxed.

simple way of dealing is with a limiter on the drum buss, set high enough to only handle those peaks.

This is the classic scenario for drum replacement. If the kick's on a separate track, convert to MIDI and use a sampled kick. The drummer will be amazed at how good you were at making his drum sound great.

The clip gain I am referring to is where you simply cut the waveform either side of say a loud kick and with one simple operation grab a point on the newly created sub clip and just drag the waveform down in level. The waveform gets smaller and the volume drops to match the kick either side of it. Once you have had this you will never go back. It is fast and you can even up things by eye very easily. It just works.
 
I know that Sonar has clip gain but you have to make assumptions as to how much less/more is required and the waveform does not change as far as I know to reflect the gain you have either added/subtracted. Useless IMO. So you have to keep trying until it sounds right and it might take several attempts to get it to match the kicks either side. The visual thing as per Pro Tools or Studio One is just way better. Unless they have put it in of course into X3.

Hey Chuck,
 
When I've been faced with this, I just find another good kick in the song and replace the bad ones. Copy and paste works fine. If it's all over the track, you blew it from the tracking stage. You should have seen inconsistent kick drum levels before the kit was tracked, ya know? For that guy maybe you needed a little more mic pre since he kicked like a girl. I would have D-Drum triggered as a safety net and always do just to save me from situations like this. OR...I can always create a gog file out of the drummers kick drum and re-replace it that way using Drumagog so HIS kick is what hits at all times consistently.
 
Or, you use bitflipper's advice and do the convert to midi using Audio Snap. As long as you have a really good drum module, it won't sound robotic. Superior 2, BFD 2/3, Addictive Drums...something with a decent amount of velocity based samples. Meaning, it may have 15 different hits per velocity so it doesn't give you that robotic sound.
 
But one thing you should always do bro from here on out....buy some good DDrum triggers and always have them on your kit as a safety net. Even if you don't use the midi you create, you'll be happy you have that safety net. Your brain you use for your V Drums will be perfect. And the D Drum triggers work so well, it's crazy not to have them. We use them on all our kits. I just leave them on and when we get someone that wants to use their own kit, we have another set we use for client kits.
 
The one thing about drums that you have to remember is...you only get that one shot to get them right. No one is perfect. But if you have the midi of the performance, it can really help you to enhance things or fix anything that may be jacked along the way. Personally though, I'd try to copy and paste good kick hits from other parts of the song into the bad parts if you can. If there are too many, go the bitflipper route. Superior 2 will handle the kick drum perfectly.
 
-Danny

Jeff Evans
+1 to Danny's suggestion of editing good kicks and snares over the bad ones. I should have mentioned that myself because I have done that a lot too and it usually works a treat.
 
Another thing to do is to get some single hits from the drummer after the session is over. Just some nice single hits of each drum. That will also serve you well too. A decent crash hit is also quite handy. No kick drum with it or anything just a nice single crash hit on its own. Very handy for those times you feel the crashes are a little low and just need beefing up a tad without having to turn up the whole OH thing.
 
Good suggestion from Danny about using drum triggers or splitting the mic signal if you can easily and feeding that into an audio to midi trigger device. Akai make a very good one. I have not done it that often but easily could though. Thanks Danny I might try it. I have done that with synth players though. Tracked their audio and midi at the same time. Because often my Kurzweil synth is way better than the synth they were playing at the time.

Yeah it's a really good way to handle things. I got really good at that when we did the editing for the first Breaking Benjamin album. Talk about a nightmare worth of audio editing?! MY bud Wayne Davis landed that job and I helped him out on the side with it. I still can't believe that album was done on a major label. Talk about terrible performances?! We had to manufacture bass parts all over the place. The editing was so insane because the playing was so bad, I can't believe this band got a deal. Beat detective was our friend and plain old copy and paste was our other friend.
 
We had to scour the entire album for certain notes, certain drum hits, vocal lines/words....no one should EVER have to edit that extensively without being paid $100 an hour or more. It's just ludicrous. I'll never do that for anyone again, that's for sure...not unless the pay is well worth it. But yeah Jeff, definitely try that if you have the resources. Make sure you go with the D Drum triggers though because they work soo well. It's best if you have a Roland brain too because the options in the Roland far outweigh the others I've tried. I even have a few old pad to midi interfaces but they fall way short compared to what you get with a V Drums brain. At least a TD 10 is what I'd recommend.
 
Like you, we get really stellar drum sounds out of the two kits we have at the studio. But we always run the triggers just in case because you just never know. Then between BFD 3, Superior 2, Addictive, Drumagog and Steven Slate, there's really nothing we can't fix. I usually use my Drumagog samples though because I have such an incredible library of drums with that program.
 
You know how you mentioned "get some single hits from the drummer after the session is over"? Every drum set that has ever come through my door has been sampled when they leave. Shhhh...don't tell anyone. LOL! I've been a sample prostitute since they made CD's with sound effects. When I used to make my own drums into Soundfonts (remember those? LOL!) I really got deep into the whole sampling thing. As technology got better and there were ways to use multi samples, I was like a kid in a toy store. When I got Drumagog, I didn't even care about what it could do or how cool it was. I couldn't wait to put my own samples into the pool and trigger someone elses kit using my samples. Hahaha!
 
From there, every kit that came through the door got multi-sampled at least 10-15 hits per drum/cymbal. Needless to say, some of them didn't turn out too good due to gear limitations and lack of knowledge back then, but as I learned more and bought better gear, the sounds came out so good, I've thought of putting together and selling my own libraries. Maybe some day. :)
 
But yeah, definitely consider the trigger method even though I know you get good drum sounds there. You just never know when something may happen and most times, it happens once the drummer leaves and you've broken everything down. Arrgh! I hate when that happens. :-/
 
-Danny

I'm tellin' ya, drum replacement is the way to go. It's not like using programmed drums - the performance will still sound human - you'll just be able to easily edit the performance, taking out or moving any bad hits, quieting overly loud hits and raising weak ones.
 
It can be hard to do with some kinds of percussive instruments, but not the kick. I've even extracted kick hits from a stereo drum mix and blended samples back into the original drum track. And I didn't have anything as fancy as Drumagog, just good ol' AudioSnap.
 
With Drumagog it should be easy. I watched a demo once where a guy "played" a full kit by slapping his knees and tapping his feet (on carpet!) using 4 mikes and Drumagog. And this was in a noisy exhibition hall at NAMM.

ChuckC
Danny,
  Well unfortunately I sold a few months ago I sold my V-kit.  Too many freaking bands were just all against using it & if they did, the drummers (most of whom are not used to playing on an electric kit) would complain about the feel,  Meanwhile I was getting pissed at all the cymbal triggers I was replacing/repairing because they'd smash the sh#& out of them....  I like what I am getting from acoustic kits better anyway (in general)  but, I wouldn't make that jump without a net.  I did buy Drumagog.  Which is great  for most stuff, I haven't figured out how to use it on Hi hats yet as it seems more complex there to get them to act right, but otherwise it can be a lifesaver.   Bro, how do you create a new gog file of say a great snare someone brings in to use later?  tell me tell me tell me!!!!   
  This drummer recorded here once before, about a year ago & and was one of the many whinning about the V kit.  He played better on the acoustic this time but some hits were just weird.  Yep, I should have noticed during tracking or before that actually, but what could I have done even then?  Say "hey dude....  kick like a man! and a consistent man at that!" ?    The last kick hit of every song was the loudest/hardest as he hit the final crash, he'd stomp that pedal every time.  For that hit (and it could be used for others also)  I found that when you slip edit & fade the kick track out at the end of the song you can just make the fade a little longer and slide it back until the hit is mid fade thus lowering the level, which by the way also gives you the same type of visual representation (shrinking the wave form) like what
Jeff Evans is talking about.  Try that Jeff and see if that is along the lines of what you are wanting.
 
  I admit, a limiter is not, the ideal way here....  I actually have used my 2nd kick track (the one with the inner mic) to trigger a gog kick (love that damn Yamaha kick!)  and have it set to 100% blend on that track, then coupled with my out front mic of my kick.  The correct way would be to automate the input levels of the tracks so they all hit the compressors (and drumagog) more consistently rather than trying to do this at the bus level after the damage is done.  I know.... I got lazy and tried to automate once rather than the 2 separate tracks.

I hear ya Chuck. V-Drums aren't for everyone. I wish I would have known you were selling them....I would have at least tried to talk you into keeping the brain. I take my TD-10 or TD-20 with me everywhere I do drums along with my DDrum triggers. I'm with ya on liking the acoustic kits better....I do as well. Nothing beats a really good kit being mic'd just right then having a drummer play the thing that knows how to play. But even there and I mean this....all the big studio's are using triggers too for safety net purposes. Just about every kit you hear these days is using a hybrid method. Don't let anyone try to fool you. Granted, there are a few die-hard studio's out there still doing completely real drums, but most of the big boys that matter are all using hybrid's or at least a few samples here and there.
 
When you listen to the newer music, the hits are all exactly the same. Not robotic "same" but you don't hear an edge hit come out of nowhere on a snare drum. When it's supposed to be a center hit or a rim shot, it never differentiates other than on snare fills, rolls, certain flams etc. Even there...the drum modules today are so sick, it would be too easy for someone to try and pull the wool over our eyes. So don't ever worry about being pure or not unless you get a band in there that is absolutely against sampling/resampling. The biggest ones against that sort of thing are the jazz guys and blues guys. Rightfully so in my opinion because you either mic the kit right for them and their style of music, or you tell them to go somewhere else because being natural is what those styles are all about....little clams and all.
 
As for gog files...I don't know how it works with the latest version of Drumagog. I never bought it because 4.0 does exactly what I need. But for me on the older one, I create my samples in Sonar based on velocity. For example, let's say we're using a real snare from a client kit. I get behind the kit and hit the snare in the center starting light until I'm hitting it like I mean it. This may be 15-20 hits.
 
Then I create another track and hit all edge hits 15-20 times like I did before.
 
Then another track and it's all rim shots. When the 3 tracks are all done, I start on track one and cut up all the samples removing all the dead space on each and put them in order according to level. From there, I get a general idea on what the level is on each hit and normalize each hit so that it's where it needs to be.
 
I do this on the other two tracks as well. When I'm done, I click on each sample one at a time and label it "Pearl Center -15" all the way down to "Pearl Center -1" and do the rest of them like that with the only change being instead of "Center" the others will be either edge or rim.
 
From there, I'll have 3 groups of exported wave files that are cut up just right with their start and end points. I open Drumagog (or even BFD because it too sports importing your own sample pools) create a new gog file inside of it, and then import my samples from lowest dB level to highest and it allows me to split things into "groups". So for group one of the gog, I have all the snare center hits from lowest dB to highest. Then, I switch groups and bring in the edge hits, then the rimshot hits. This will allow me to mess with the "position" knob and change from center, rim or edge on the drum. OR, you can just set it up so random samples hit and mute ones you don't want to sound. You can then set your thresholds for what sounds you mostly want to hear if need be in situations where you may not need light snare drum hits or little ghost notes.
 
That's just a rough idea...there are loads of options and ways to make Drumagog work for you. You'll just need to dive into them a bit. To me, it's one of the most powerful AND important modules ever made really. Like bitflipper mentioned, with a mic, you can create drums in seconds. I was telling a very good friend of mine about Drumagog on the phone one night.
 
As I was talking to him and telling him about it, I grabbed a 57 and started barking beats into my pc with my mouth. I did a kick beat, a snare beat and some hats. He's laughing at me over the phone. I bring in Drumagog, process the audio and then send him the bundle file so he could hear before and after. He cracked up laughing and bought it that night. It's simply amazing once you dine into it. The new one is even more intense with the new way it processes hats. We may have it at my other studio....but I don't remember purchasing it or using it. Joey my chief engineer down there always wants the latest and greatest stuff, so he jumps on me to buy something when it's worth it. I seem to remember something with Drumagog 5, but can't remember if we bought it. I'm going to check. LOL!
 
Anyway, if you read your manual it will explain it pretty easy. That's what I did to learn how to do the samples for 4.0. It walked me right through it and was easy. Keep in mind, you do NOT have to do 15-20 hits per drum with edge, center and rim. You can just do 5 on a rim shot snare or center hit and call it a day. I was just more thorough because I really get into the whole sampling thing. So don't let anything in my post scare you. 5 samples of a drum using different strokes will be fine. Drumagog will put them in order or you can mute anything you don't want to be heard while using the samples. For example, I just did a new snare the other night. I love everything about it except for one hit. When that one hit comes through, it just doesn't sound like it fits for this song. So I highlight that sample in Drumagog and press the mute button. You'll see man...once you dive into it, you'll be glad you did. :)
 
On what to do if you get a drummer like that again? Yeah, try to see if you can get him to hit a little harder and if you can, try to turn up the pre on your kick mic's. You may get a little unnecessary noise, but a good gate or slip editing will take care of that. You shouldn't have to boost it to the point on other things REALLY bleeding into it...but pushing your pre's in a situation like this may be the answer though you want to stay away from stuff like that if you can help it. Then again, it all depends on what sort of levels you're getting going in. If that kick is registering -20 dB, that mic needs to be pumped up a bit. I try to peak at -6 and sort of average about -10 on everything here. It works perfectly for me whether some guru tells me it's right or wrong. So next time, have a good look at your levels and ALWAYS ALWAYS record a little of each instrument before you go for "the print" to make sure what you see level wise is what you are getting print wise. Good luck brother.
 
-Danny

This was one of those tall skinny drummers, with thin arms & legs, they generally play light sticks and hit softer.   Ever played with a short fat drummer?  They play with tree trunks and hit like a hammer.

kirk covington:
 
 
nothing random about his hits!