How to randomize the velocity of a drum sampler to make it more realistic

Hello and welcome to this week's article!

Today we're talking a bit more in depth about a topic we have already mentioned in our article about MIDI dynamics: the fastest way to make more realistic a MIDI drum track, by randomizing the velocity.

One of the many parameters you can assign to a MIDI note is the Velocity: it's a value from 0 to 127 (like the other MIDI parameters) and it is meant to mimic the natural strength variations in our playing; 
basically it represents how soft or hard we hit a note, that can be a keyboard or any other instrument.

Now, when talking about virtual drumkits, nowadays there are on the market very extensive drum libraries, that arrive to dozens of Gb in size, and the larger is the library the more samples there are, also for a single drum part: a single snare, for example, can have 15, or even 25 velocity layers, that represent various intensities a drummer can hit it.

The more the velocity layers the more the sampler will sound realistic when playing it live, but even if we are writing down the drum MIDI parts note by note with the mouse, modifying the velocity it's quite important to make the drums sound less robotic, to the point that some drum sampler have also a "humanizer" function inside that randomizes a bit the dynamic variations in strenght of the hits.

Some DAW have directly the humanize function, for example in Studio One you just highlight the MIDI part you want to make more realistic, right click and you can choose "Humanize" or "Humanize Less" to reduce the effect, but the humanize function will also slightly move the MIDI notes in timing, so if you want only to randomize the velocity you need, while the same notes are still selected, to pull down the Action menu again and select Restore Timing.

In other DAW, where no humanize function is available instead, you can usually choose the MIDI part and under the Velocity section there should be a randomize velocity function that lets you dial in a minimum and maximum value, and the notes will be with a randomized velocity within that range.
What range to choose? It depends on 2 things: the genre (if the dynamic excursion is huge, like there are press roll parts, it's better to randomize them separately or write them note by note) and the number of velocity layers in the sampler. If you have some pre-made MIDI groove for that specific sampler you can load some and take note of the minimum and maximum velocity of each drum part, so you can be sure that the range you enter will have samples available, otherwise you can be conservative and choose quite a narrow range, in the area that sounds better to your ears (for example 70 to 90, or 80 to 100).

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How to do drum replacement/layering in Studio One without 3rd party plugins

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's article!

Today we're going to see how to make drum replacement in Studio One without using 3rd party plugins!

Drum replacement has always been a very sensitive topic among musicians: some love it, many hates it, but the truth that every mix engineer knows is that they are very important, almost essential to any modern rock, pop or metal production.
In order to do it there are many ways, for example by using drum replacement plugins like Slate Trigger, Aptrigga, Addictive Trigger and so on, but today I would like to focus on a technique that is available (as far as I know) only in Studio One and that makes drum replacement (or anyway turning any rhytmical source into a MIDI) very fast and without using 3rd party plugins, just follow these 5 steps:

1) Choose the track you want to replace (or layer) with samples, for example an acoustic snare or kick track, and from the top toolbar click on the Q icon, this will open a sub-menu in which you need to click on "groove" to open a field that will analyze your track.

2) Drag and drop the desired track in the groove analysis field, it will detect all the peaks in the track and mark them.

3) click on the "Audio Bend" icon on top and it will show you more tools to adjust, from there go on the "threshold" one and adjust it until only (or mostly) the kick hits (if we're replacing a kick track) are detected (because usually with the basic setting it's so sensible that it will mark also for example the snare bleed in the kick microphone).

4) When you are satisfied with the peak detection create a new Instrument Track in Studio One, and load there for example your sampler or virtual drumset, and from the groove analyzer field you can drag and drop directly a MIDI of the detected hits into your new instrument track.

5) The final step is to assign the right sound to the MIDI and clean up the track, eliminating the remaining unwated hits, adjusting the velocity and if necessary by moving the whole MIDI track few milliseconds back, if you hear some slight delay.

Voilà! 

You will have a nice MIDI replica of your acoustic track, that you can use to layer new sounds on top of it or to replace it altogether.

I hope this was helpful!

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What is a sound? And What is FM Synthesis?

Hello and welcome to this week's article!

Today we are going to talk about something that sounds almost phylosophical, and I won't go too much into detail, but I would just like to try to explain, to give a different point of view on what is a sound and what composes it.

A sound, and specifically in our blog we're talking about sounds that can be used to make music, is a wave that starts from a source and arrives to the human ear.

Let's imagine a note, for example the C in the same octave, played with a guitar or with a piano, or with a trumpet: the note is the same, but the sound is indeed different, right?
This depends from the harmonics of that note, not from the note itself. I will re-use the same pictures I have captured for a previous article to explain it: 

This is a sine wave, only the fundamental note of a sound, without overtones.
It's the purest form a sound can be.

This fundamental note is also called basic harmonic.
If this same sound would be more complex (for example if it would pass through a guitar amplifier), we would see a serie of repetitions of this fundamental note, distributed at regular intervals towards the spectrum (these intervals compose a scale which is called Harmonic scale): we would find out that the fundamental note is the same through all the instruments, and what changes, what makes the aforementioned C distinguishable from a piano to a guitar is the interaction between the repetitions, which are called harmonics.
The harmonics that are after the fundamental one are also called "overtones". 

So we can say that everything we hear in nature is a sum of some fundamental note and its harmonics, and Frequency Modulation Synthesis is the combining, mixing and modulating various sine waves in order to try to get close to sounds existent in nature, or to create completely new ones.
That's how a Synth can recreate (sometimes sounding more realistic, sometimes sounding more "synthetic") for example a violin or a piano.

Today we are launching the new tag, "Synth", and we'll start exploring here and there also this complicated yet fascinating world.

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How to record a song part 6/6: Keyboards and extra arrangements!

We are now in the final part of the recording session, and it's the part in which, once the basic elements of a rock band have been recorded, we must focus on all the additional arrangements.
Obviously it's impossible here to cover all the topics, because we are talking about an infinite variety of sounds that can be added, but we can narrow them down in 2 types: the real ones and the Midi ones.

If we are recording a real piano or other acoustic instruments, such a string ensemble, it's all about microphoning: for single instruments it's usually preferrable to do a combination of close miking and room miking, in order to take also the natural reverb of the room and blend the sounds together in the mixing phase.
If we are dealing instead with several acoustic instruments like an orchestra (click here for an article about how to record a string ensemble), we need to plan a bit more strategically: we can record the ensemble with condenser microphones divided left and right or by sections, and one or more room microphones to capture the room reverb and the low end: this way the mix engineer will be able to narrow the low end and open spatially the higher frequencies.

If we are dealing with keyboards/synths with in built sound, we can hook up the stereo outputs of the synth into our interface and record two mono (left and right) audio tracks.

Finally, if we are dealing with Midi controllers, the possibilities are endless: we can use any type of Vst instrument, for example a Virtual Orchestra, and the instruments can be either synths or samplers (click here for an article that explains the difference between them), and once you have done writing the Midi part you can enhance your sound making it more realistic, by adjusting the paramenters as explained Here and Here.

Now that we have also all the extra parts recorded, we should prepare our project for the mixing phase (click here for an article about project preparation): once we have covered all those steps, let's just go through this quick checklist on how to prepare the tracks for mixing, and we are ready to jump in our serie of tutorials about mixing: HOW TO MIX A SONGS WITH FREE PLUGINS!


CLICK HERE FOR PART 1/6: PREPARATION!

CLICK HERE FOR PART 2/6: DRUMS!

CLICK HERE FOR PART 3/6: BASS!

CLICK HERE FOR PART 4/6: GUITARS!

CLICK HERE FOR PART 5/6: VOCALS!


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How to mix a song with free plugins part 5/5: Keyboards and Extra Arrangements!

Hello and welcome to this week's article!
Now that we have taken care of all the basic elements of the classic rock band it's time to work on the additional arrangements (which sometimes are the most important part of a song, for example in case of orchestral music, edm, jazz or piano driven pop music).

Let's start by saying that those additional arrangements can be done by using real instruments (for example click here to see how to record a real string ensemble), or with MIDI instruments (click here to read our article about virtual orchestras), and within the MIDI realm we can use sampled instruments or synth instruments (click here for an article that explain the difference between the two), but no matter what those additional instruments are, the important thing is to apply the same process of carving space in our mix to accomodate them, the same way we did in the previous parts of this tutorial.

The good thing about MIDI instruments is the fact that most of the times they are pre-processed, so it's mainly a matter of finding the right sound and fitting it in the mix then a real sound processing, but on the other side if we are microphoning a real instrument (like a piano) we will have much more control and leeway when working on it to adapt it to the rest of the song, using our hammer and chisel: the equalization and the compression.

In order to process our instruments there is a variety of free software, most of it in form of Vst plugins; some of them are bundled directly in our daw (click here for an article about how to mix only using stock plugins).
If we're not satisfied with the stock plugins, here's our ultimate list of the best freeware Vst plugins sorted by type.
And here's our top ten 2018 Vst plugins, if you don't want to bother with trying and choosing among them :D

After we have processed properly our additional arrangement tracks, it's time to put the icing on the cake: we need to listen to the song very carefully, and we'll inevitably find out that regardless all of our volume balance and compression there will still be parts which are too loud or too quiet, too effected or too dry, therefore we will have to write automations until the song will flow perfectly smooth.
Now, if we feel that some track is still a bit too weak and lifeless we can route them into a console emulation plugin and let it do its magic in fattening the signal and making it more "round".
Finally, we can add some cool effect if we want to keep the listener's attention high, like inserting a reverse sound effect.

Once we have all of our tracks in place and well integrated in our mix there is still some final check to make. A good starting point is to make sure we have avoided the biggest mixing mistakes listed HERE.

After having cleared our project from the most common mistakes, it's time to do some A/B (actually this is a good habit to do at all steps of mixing and mastering, to keep our ears fresh and our perspective right) with a referencing track, so that we can rebalance our mix if we find out some major problem. You can read more about how to mix with referencing tracks in this article.

Now the last step before passing to the mastering phase is to make a test run of our mix through various playback devices (click here for a dedicated article) in order to find out whether there is some unbalance (for example some instrument can be too loud or too quiet when listened through some specific device); this will make the mastering phase faster and less frustrating. 

Let us know in the comment section if you found this serie of articles useful!


CLICK HERE FOR PART 1: DRUMS!

CLICK HERE FOR PART 2: BASS!

CLICK HERE FOR PART 3: GUITARS!

CLICK HERE FOR PART 4: VOCALS!



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What is MIDI? a guide for dummies

Hello and welcome to this week's article!
I have realized that during those years we have been talking a lot about MIDI, but we have actually never made an article with a brief explaination of what it is: here it is.

First off: MIDI is an acronym: it stands for MUSICAL INSTRUMENT DIGITAL INTERFACE, and it is the standard protocol for interaction between electronic music instruments, and between them and a computer.
This standard was created in the '80, but somehow it got so popular and widespread that still today it's the standard for electronic instruments (and not only, also for routing the signals and creating patches that controls also analog devices, through a dedicated hardware, or for controlling lights in a concert etc.).
Some of the biggest perks of this protocol that granted such a long lasting success are in facts the reliability, the lightweight of the data and the low production costs, that allows every hardware and software producer to work with it, also because it's supported by an infinity of freeware tools.

So the basic concept here is that MIDI is a Standard: no other standard has been able to replace it so far (even if the technology has advanced and in theory Midi could have been improved in several ways), and at the beginning in the early 80s there has also been a sort of a war similar to the Vhs vs Betamax one, but the Midi standard got the upper hand and was adopted by the majority of music instrument producers (Yamaha, Roland, Kawai and so on).

Without the need of getting too technical the connection is a 5 poles DIN cable, which was commonly used in the early 80s, only 3 of which are actually used by the Midi, and these cables are able to connect to the serial ports in 3 ways: In (to send the signal to a Midi device), Out (to send out the informations), Thru (to allow the device to send its signal to the In port of another Midi device).

The Midi data that flows through these ports contain the informations that must be received from a device like a Synth, a Sampler or a Sequencer, which can be hardware (for example an electronic keyboard or a synth) or software (a computer), and the information is contained in a Midi File, a file that supports up to 16 channels (meaning that can send at the same time notes that can be played for example by up to 16 virtual instruments at the same time). Modern Daws can play hundreds of Midi tracks at the same time, using as many virtual instruments as the computer can support, leading to an infinite amount of sound possibilities that until few years ago was unimaginable.
A Midi file can also send for example the lyrics of a song synchronized with a music, and it is a standard widely used also for Karaoke, or it can be used to control the lights in a concert.

A Midi can be played in real time through a Midi controller (for example a keyboard), or it can be written in a Daw via a notation software (the best Daws allows also to manipulate it modifying the variables from a minimum value of 1 to a maximum of 127, creating automations and articulations), or it can also be programmed in a sequencer.

For more informations about the Midi standard you can visit the official website Midi.org, which has an infinity of resources for those who want to go more technical or in general to have more knowledge about this formidable tool.


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How to make pre-productions - rough mixes super fast! (with free plugins)

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's article!
Today we will focus on how to optimize the routine as best as we can to realize rough mixes to pass to the bandmates, in order to explain them the songs or the riffs we're working on.

Let's start by saying that everyone has his own method: Kirk Hammett of Metallica just records his doodles on the Iphone and then explains them to the others in the rehearsal's room, others use Guitar Pro or Tuxguitar (the open source version), to write down the midi parts of all instruments (with the upside that it can also generate you the pdf with the tablature of those parts), while others still prefer to cure their rough mixes a little bit more, but without wasting the time necessary to make a full record, and I am one of those, because this way I feel like I can understand better wether some part will work or not in the final version.

Important: when recording real instruments, as always, set the input gain on our daw to a point that the peaks does't surpasses the -10/-12db!

First off we should create a template on our favourite Daw with a decent relative mix, so that we will lose time only the first time, and for all the songs we'll use the same template.
After loading up the Daw, we must go to "create new project" and start by creating on a Midi track our favourite virtual drum vst, for example MT POWER DRUMKIT 2, which is a very good FREE vst drum sampler; from there we can adjust the Tempo Track and write down our drum part.
If we feel like our drum sound needs a bit of extra edge, instead of working on the single sounds, just add a single band compressor on the whole drumset and fiddle with it until you find just that small sprinkle that adds some body without making it too squashed.

Now we must add 2 guitar tracks (one for the left side and one for the right one, plus a third track if we want to add a solo or some part that we specifically want to keep in the middle).
In these tracks we can load some free, lightweight vst guitar amp simulator, for example Grindmachine Free. 
If we want to equalize the guitar tracks a little bit we can route all of them on a group track and give them all the same Eq adjustments.

Now it's time to create a bass track, and we can just slam there a good T.s.e. Bod plugin, which simulates a Sansamp, and a compressor to keep the wave on its place.

For the vocal track, same thing: we can add all the tracks that we need and route them (if they are more than one) on the same group track and add some compression, reverb and/or delay.

Obviously we can add also other vsts, for all the synth/orchestral parts we need, or take out from our template the tracks we don't use.

Once we have tracked down all the parts, it's time to create a mix: just set the volumes to a way that each track doesn't peak above -10/12db, and use the few vsts we have loaded to stabilize the most dynamic tracks.
Then, in the master track, just add a limiter to bring the volume up to a level that is easily audible (remember that this is a pre production, though, and its purpose is to be as understandable as possible, so don't push it to the limit or make it distort, otherwise it will become even more useless than an overly pushed final master).

If everything goes according the plan, you should have obtained a very simple and stable mix, so you can save the template, and the next times you will have to record a rough mix of a song, just load this template and record over it, you will save a lot of time!


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VIRTUAL ORCHESTRA! the best orchestral and strings Vsti, with free plugins inside!

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's article!
Today we're going to talk about an interesting topic: how to add some orchestration to our song using midi plugins, obviously only if we don't have a real orchestra at hand.

Let's start by saying that virtual strings are not new, they've been around since the '70s, and the first synth strings have been featured on some of the most important albums of all times, for example on Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of The Moon".
A synth is a machine that starting from a self generated sound and applying a serie of filters and modifications is capable of reproducing (among the others) sounds that are similar to a real instruments, for example a drumset or a violin: it can't reproduce obviously every nuance, but it can give to the sound a cold and modern vibe that sometimes it's just what we need.

In the last few years, together with synth instruments, the market has been flooded with sampled instruments, which are for example violins or a drumset that are recorded with a microphone and bundled in a plugin that lets you play them by using the Midi standard.
This method is capable to achieve very realistic results, much more realistic than starting from noise (as the synth do), and with time the sample libraries have become always bigger, more accurate, more complete and with a higher resolution, up to a point that today they can easily reach the 20-50 gb size.

Today we can choose among the many orchestral synths and samplers the one that fits our song best, keeping in mind that a sample library will often need a sample player, like Native Instruments Kontakt, in order to be used.

The best Virtual Orchestra libraries are obviously expensive, for example today some of the best on the market are EastWest Symphonic Orchestra, Ik Multimedia Miroslav Philarmonik, and obviously the Native Instruments Komplete serie, but if we are on a tight budget and we need to insert some orchestration in order to become the new Fleshgod Apocalypse, here's some free orchestral synth and sample library to rock your world:

- Simon Larkin Section Strigs: a small but effective string section sampler

- Safwan Matnitron: a lightweight violin sinth

- Sonatina Symphonic Orchestra: one of the best free orchestral sample libraries around

- Dsk Overture: an interesting synth orchestra

- Versilian Studios Versilian Chamber Orchestra: an orchestral sample library with particular attention on percussions

- Dsk Strings: a very rich synth strings plugin, with the single instruments and the full sections

- Orchestral Strings One: a strings ensemble sampler from the authors of Piano One, probably the best free piano library on the market


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VIRTUAL GUITAR! a guide for dummies (with Free Vst instruments inside)

Hello and welcome to this week's article!
After having talked a couple of weeks ago about the Bass Vstis, it's time to dedicate an article about their guitar counterpart.

This article may sound a bit sacrilegious on a guitar oriented blog, since we're talking about replacing the guitarist with a MIDI-written Virtual Instrument that uses real guitar samples or guitar-sounding Synths, but since we are open-minded, we want to cover every aspect of the music production :)

The Virtual Guitar plugins are today very realistic, with many gigabytes of high resolution samples, and doesn't sound anymore like the 80's synth guitar sounds that we used to listen in the old videogames, for example: today a midi guitar sound may result very hard to tell, if well written.
Some of these plugins are libraries that can be used ok Kontakt, others are stand alone, some have already processed sounds (for example a distorted guitar with applied a delay), some others lets you choose which virtual amp to use, and which stompbox.
These last plugins, that are the most complete ones, also lets us  use external Vsts, in order to treat them like they were a real guitar track, recorded clean: we can send them to our favourite Guitar Amp Simulator and apply on it all of our favourite plugins.

Unfortunately, in this world there are not many good free guitar VSTI, since creating them requires a lot of work, sampling the single strings and chords with all the variations (vibrato, legato, tapping...).
These are the best commercial VSTI in the market, and some of them are so realistic (if well programmed) that it becomes very, very hard to tell that they are MIDI written and not played with a real guitar.

- PROMINY V-METAL: a very metal-oriented guitar sampler

- VIR2 ELECTRI6ITY: a very complete virtual guitar sampler, with over 24000 samples

- ORANGETREE EVOLUTION: a 3gb archive of guitar samples compatible with Kontakt

- REFX SLAYER 2: a VSTI with a very complete virtual guitar suite, including stompboxes and ampls

- SHREDDAGE 2: one of the most used virtual guitar plugins, includes a light version of Peavey Revalver

- MUSICLAB REALLPC: a VSTI with a collection of samples taken with a Les Paul Custom

- ROB PAPEN RG: a very interesting virtual guitar plugin that also features an in-built sequencer, with many rhythm patterns already included.


Here instead are some FREE VSTI, that surely worth a try:


- SUPERRIFF GUITAR: a very interesting VSTI of a humbucker guitar on a Marshall Amplifier.

- DSK ELECTRIK GUITARZ: a guitar synth with some built-in effect

- DVS GUITAR: a nice 80's rock sounding VSTI

- MILK GUITAR: a very convincing acoustic guitar VSTI


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VIRTUAL BASS! a guide for dummies (with Free Vst instruments inside)

Hello and welcome to this week's article!
Today we're going to talk about Bass!
If we're mixing at home, or just recording a simple pre-production of a song, sometimes may happen that we don't have a bass player available, or a bass at hand, therefore we need to find a replacement.
In these situations a virtual instrument such a Bass Vsti may come in handy, and some of them are already so good that it's almost impossible to distinguish them from a real one, if well programmed.

The selection of Vsti that we suggest you today all works the same way: we should load them in the Vst Instruments pool of our Daw, create a Midi track with the Vsti in the output slot, and then we just start editing the piano roll, first dialing the notes and their lenght, and then adjusting the velocity to make them sound a bit more natural.

Obviously the more expensive and professional ones have much more controls to dial in exactly the sound we need, and sometimes they replace the bass even in some commercial album.

These samples comes usually already mixed, it's quite hard to find the acoustic sounds of a DI Bass, anyway these tracks can also be mixed as an acoustic bass, distorted or manipulated with relative ease (click here for an article about How to Mix a Rock / Metal Bass).

Click Here for an article about the best Guitar VST Instruments!

Here's a selection of the best Vsti basses on the market, including the one that is probably the most used, Spectrasonic Trilian.

If you are a lover of the open source software, instead, here are four interesting free Vsti Bass plugins to try:

- 4Front Bass: a very good and simple bass Vsti

- Samsara Cycle Om Bass 2: a versatile rock bass Vsti

- Dsk Bass: a lightweight bass Vsti with presets

- Evm Bassline: a wavesample based Bass Synth


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HOW TO ADD REALISM TO YOUR MIDI TRACK! A guide for dummies

Hello and welcome to this week's article! 

This time we will talk about how to make our midi drum track more realistic, but the same method applies to any other Vst instrument, such as a piano track.

Let's start with a midi that we have, for example a very fast death metal song midi track: the faster the song is, the more evident will be that the hits are unnaturally precise and even in terms of strenght, while a drummer tends to have some slight fluctuation in timing and hit intensity (e.g. obviously a blast beat drum part will be hit with less strenght than a slower part).

Now, we can slightly move each single drum hit in the piano roll and raise or lower the velocity manually (which is the best way, but it's a very long process), or randomize some parameter in order to get this job done quickly.

If we want to adjust each velocity manually, it's important to know some basic rule:

1) The blast beat or press roll snare parts are usually at a much lower velocity (= hit strenght) than the other parts of the song, and it's a good rule to increase the strenght in the accents and lower it in the other hits.

2) The same rule of the accents applies also to the hi hat and the ride.

3) The crash cymbals should be treated creating variations in velocity only if they are played one next to another, otherwise it would be normal if the drummer hits them full strenght.

4) The tom fills usually should start stronger and then lose intensity, and we can also consider that the toms hit by the right hand (if the drummer is right handed) can be set with a slightly higher velocity than the other ones.

5) It's a good rule, especially for rock-metal songs, to leave the kick velocity constant. If we're working on a jazz song, instead, we should variate this one too.

More info on how to correct the velocity with the pencil too can be found HERE.

If we want to use a midi randomizer, instead, we can do as follows:

1) Move slightly the hits (this function can be also found bundled in some of the most recent drum Vsti). First off we need to select the section of the song or the single drum part we want to process, then we must go (in the Cubase/Nuendo interface) in Midi->Quantize Setup. 

From the Quantize Setup menu we can input in the "Random Quantize" section the amount of the variance we want to apply, and usually for a realistic drum sound, a good amount is 5 Ticks: if we increase it more we risk to create excessive "mistakes" made from our "virtual drummer".

2) Randomize the velocity. This will randomize the strenght used to hit the drums in our song.

We need to select the song part, or just one or more drum parts, for example only the hi hat of our song, and go to Midi->Logical Editor. 

From this new menu we can look for a preset (e.g. "Random Velocity 60 to 100") or manually find the "Action Target" corresponding to the Velocity control, and under "Operation" we must choose "Set Relative Random Values Between", and then we can choose under "Parameter 1" and "Parameter 2" a minimum and maximum value, between 0 and 127; once we have decided, we just need to press "Apply". 

A good starting point could be to try randomizing from 90 to 110 or 120, then we can adjust to taste. 

Eventually, if we have something that needs to be retouched manually, e.g. a press roll part, we can always correct it with the pencil tool. The ideal result will probably be a mix between manually adjusted velocities and randomized ones, according to the song part.

Hope this was useful!

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FREE EXCLUSIVE ACOUSTIC DRUM SAMPLES MADE BY US!

Hello Everyone!
Today I'm making to you a little gift: a small archive with some oneshot sample of  a drumset I've recorded and mixed for the pop-rock band Fuoriskema some month ago; the drumset is a Yamaha Stage Custom Advantage Nouveau with Ufip Cymbals and it was played by Giacomo Ricci.
The samples are recorded 24 bit/44khz with an Rme Fireface preamp, a set of 10 microphones (sm57 for snares, md421 for toms and so on) and are already processed;
although they are only oneshot (one for each drum part) I think that someone could find them useful, for example they can be blended them with your own sound in order to give some extra punch.

These samples can be loaded with any drum sampler or drum replacer and can distributed freely, as long as the archive with the included informations stays unaltered.

The sample pack can be downloaded Here: Guitar Nerding Blog Rock Samples.

I hope this was useful, let me know what do you think!

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HOW TO USE SUPERIOR DRUMMER, ADDICTIVE DRUMS AND SLATE DRUMS SAMPLES IN THE SAME MIDI DRUM TRACK!

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's article!
Today we're going to see how to use samples from 2 or more drum samplers with our Midi drum track!
This article is an addition of the one that explains how to use VSTi drum samples to replace our acoustic drum sound.
Did you ever want to use for example the kick from Superior Drummer, the snare from Slate Drums and the cymbals from Addictive Drums?
It is actually is possible, and there are two ways to achieve it:

1) With separated Midi tracks: we must create a midi track for each VSTi we want to use, then we can disable all the drum parts we are not using (for example we can disable all the Superior Drummer drumset parts except for the kick, then disable all Slate drum parts except for the snare, and so on), in order to save RAM memory.
Now we must write in the piano roll of each track the drum part that we need (all the snares in the snare track, all the kicks in the kick track and so on), or write all the drum Midi in the same track and then cut/paste the snare and the kick in the proper VSTi tracks.
This way we will have a complete drumset, divided in two or more tracks, that together creates our hybrid kit.
We can also use the sound of a drum part from two or more samplers to obtain a fuller, layered tone (this works well especially with the snare, but don't use it with cymbals!).

2) With one single Midi track: we must create a single Midi track with one drum VSTi, then we create a separate channel for each drum part and we can use Drumagog or some other drum replacer to replace that single drum part with another sample or with another VSTi drum sampler's drum part, as explained in This Article.

Now that we have a Midi drum track with different samples from different VST instruments, we need to create some coherence, to give the feeling that everything is played the same room: we must choose the ambience tracks of just one VSTi and stick with that, or we can disable all the ambience tracks, and route all the "dry sounds" on a buss where we can give to the whole kit a touch or Reverb, to create a homogeneous feel. Another good idea to create some coherence among the different samples is to add some harmonic excitement, or saturation, and some Drum Buss Compression.

Experiment and let me know!

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HOW TO USE SUPERIOR DRUMMER OR SLATE DRUMS SAMPLES IN OUR ACOUSTIC DRUM TRACK!

Hello and welcome to this week's article!
Today we're going to talk about Drumagog, the drum replacing software we've already analyzed some month ago, and we're going to explain how to combine it with Superior Drummer, Slate Drums or any other Vst Instrument, to make it replace the original sound (midi or audio) with the samples of the chosen Vst Instrument.

For this tutorial I'm going to use the standard Cubase/Nuendo interface, Drumagog and Superior Drummer, but the method should be the same for any drum replacer, daw and Vst Instrument.

First off let's assume that we have a project with 8 tracks, one for each drum part of an acoustic drumset we have recorded (it could be also Midi drums, but let's assume for this example we have an acoustic one), and we are not satisfied with the sound we have obtained with the microphones, so we decide to blend the acoustic kick and the snare tracks with some sample.
Let's also assume that the samples we have are not satisfying and we want to use the samples of Toontrack Superior Drummer.

We must load Drumagog in the insert slot of our drum track we want to replace (e.g. the snare track), and from the "Plugin" menu of Drumagog we choose "Superior Drummer", or any other Drum Vsti we have.
This will open an instance of Superior Drummer, and I really suggest you, after you have chosen the kit to use, to disable all the drum parts that will not be used and leave only the snare on, since we will need to run an instance of this virtual instrument for each drum part that we want to replace, therefore we'll need to save all the Ram we can.
In the Superior Drummer main window we can see (and if needed, modify), the Midi Note (or Midi Key) assigned to each drum part, and by default in S.D. the snare is assigned to the note D1 and the kick to the C1.
We need then to match this note with the one in the "Plugin" menu of Drumagog: if we want to replace the snare, and the snare in S.D. is in the D1 note, we will need to choose D1 in the "Midi Note" menu of the "Plugins" section in Drumagog.
Once we have matched the note, if we play the song, whenever the snare track plays, Drumagog should trigger the snare of S.D., and we can choose with the "Mix" fader in the "Plugins" section of Drumagog the amount of sample to blend with the original sound. If the Mix control is at 100%, the sound will be completely replaced.


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MODULATIONS PART 6: VOCODER! (with Free Vst plugins inside!!)

Hello and welcome to this week's article!
This tutorial is to be considered as an expansion of the Autotune article, since it shares with this the same basic concepts, but the Vocoder is a little different:
Vocoder is the contraction of the two words "voice encoder", and it consists into an algorhitm that takes a sound (usually a voice) and processes it throug a synth, basically morphing it and tuning it on the note chosen by the player, with a keyboard, or writing it on a piano roll Automation (click here for an article about automations).

This effect has been widely used throughout the '70s and '80 by the first electronic music bands, such as Kraftwerk or Giorgio Moroder, and by some progressive rock band as the Alan Parsons Project, and today the effect is used to give a voice the typical metallic sound of that time.

A Vocoder can be programmed almost the same way an Autotune can be:
First we need to create an audio track, which will contain the Vocals we want to effect, then we load into this track's insert the Vst Vocoder.
At this point we'll need to create a midi track, choosing the Vocoder as output.
Now we can draw on the midi piano roll of this track the notes we want our voice to go through, or we can play them in real time with a midi keyboard.


Here are some cool Vst Vocoder downloadable for free:

Tal Vocoder - an interesting vintage sounding Vocoder

Voctopus - 8 band real time Vocoder with built in synth

Braindoc Lpc Vocoder - a Linear Predicting Coding Vocoder

Vocovee - a real time Vocoder


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MODULATIONS PART 5: RING MODULATOR, OCTAVE, HARMONIZER! (with Free Vst Plugins Inside)

Hello and welcome to this week's article!
This is the fifth article about modulation effects, and today we're going to talk about ring modulator, octave and harmonizer!

- Ring Modulator: This effect is a sibiling of Tremolo, which, instead of having its amplitude rhitmically altered, it uses a copy of the sound itself very altered, or another sound.
Let's make an example: we put on a ring modulator two sounds: the sound of our voice and the sound of a guitar, the effect is like the guitar is "talking" to us, because the effect won't let out the single sounds, but just the "interaction" between them (e.g. Peter Frampton's "Talking Guitar").

- Octave: this one's much easier to explain, it consists into analyzing the input sound and creating a synth copy or more, one octave or more lower. This produces a deeper and more "bassy" sound, like the one that can be heard on Led Zeppelin's song "Fool in The Rain" guitar solo.
A particular type of Pitch Shifter that not only works with the octaves, but that alters the sound's pitch widely, even of many octaves, it's the Digitech Whammy pedal, often used by Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello.

- Harmonizer: this is a very particular type of pitch shifting (sometimes it's called intelligent pitch shifter), in which the effect creates a synth copy of the original sound that respects a certain harmonic distance (for example a third major, or a fifth minor...).
This effect is often used to process vocals or guitar, and it can be set at a certain scale related with the original sound, or midi-driven, and in this case it can change its scale at a pre-programmed moment. This effect is part of the trademark sound of many guitar players, from Brian May of Queen to Blind Guardian's guitarist Andrè Olbrich.

Unfortunately there are no common basic controls to analyze for these three effects, except for the Mix control, which sets the amount of original signal to leave unprocessed.
Then, according to the type of effect, we will have an octave control for the octave, a key control to set the scale on the harmonizer, and a control that will set the shape of the waveform for the Ring Modulator.
Some Octave processors for guitar also feature a Distortion control to add some growl to the processed signal.


Today some DAWs already feature some basic Octave, Harmonizer and Ring Modulation Effect, but if you want to try something new and different here's a selection of the best freeware effects available:

Ring-O - A nice, vintage looking, ring modulator

ST-Rmod - An interesting stompbox-style ring modulator

Stereo Vrek - A creative Lo-Fi delay / ring modulation effect

Ringer - A simple, easy to use ring modulator

SubGen - A stompbox-style Octave plugin

Harmonisator - A simple harmonizer plugin


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HOW TO DO AUDIO EDITING (a guide for dummies) PART 1/2

Hello and welcome to this week's article! Today we're going to talk about audio editing!
Audio Editing is the single most important and time-consuming task to accomplish before starting mixing, in the Project Preparation Phase, and it consists in the correction of all the little mistakes that needs to be fixed on the audio tracks, in order to sound properly and not to draw attention.

Let's start by saying that not every small error needs to be fixed: sometimes some slight acceleration or deceleration made by the drummer may improve the groove, sometimes producers even speed up the metronome of a couple bpm on purpose on choruses, in order to make them even more energetic, on a subliminal level.
Also the interpretation nuances of Vocals or guitar solos should be left alone, what really needs to be edited are the macroscopic errors done especially on the rhythmic side, manily by Drums, but also by Bass, rhythm Guitars or some attacks of Vocals and the other audio recorded instruments.

Today there are different solutions in order to help us on our editing tasks, especially for drums, Pro Tools has a feature called "Elastic Audio" that helps editing by marking the audio peaks and quantizing or moving them automatically, also there are other plugins called Beat Detection Tools, which are capable of finding the bpm and help you modifying the track, but we will today focus on the "Slip Editing" which consists into slicing and dicing the audio tracks and moving them, and is the only Free option among these.

Click here for an article about the AUDIO BEND tool of Prestonus Studio One!

- Techniques:  Slip Editing consists into cutting the tracks at the "Zero Point", which is the last silence (0db) part of an audio track right before the start of a sound, and moving the part forward or backward of a few milliseconds, in order to set it on perfect time. To do this many DAWs offers the "Snap to Grid" option, which helps us finding the right place, where the bar starts, if we set the right metronome and quantization for our project: this is very important, since many details of our mix are driven by metronome and quantization, for example the Delay Repetitions, so set this carefully. The metronome and the quantization of our project are MIDI driven, so the "Snap to Grid" option will snap the audio parts on the MIDI grid, which can be divided in 1/8, 1/16, 1/32 and so on, in order to be more precise for the positioning. 

Click here for an article about the Marquee tool / Smart tool for a faster way to edit!

When editing, thus applying a change in the continuity of an audio track, there is the problem of how to fill the gaps at the beginning or the end of the track that we have moved: usually if our track slips below another track that starts at the right time there is no problem, since the new sound will take the place of the old one at the right moment, but if we create a gap of silence, this is going to be noticed, so we will need to solve this problem with Time Stretching:
Time Stretching tools (like the Cubase bundled "Audio Warp") are plugins that helps us in widening or shortening the lenght of a sound while mantaining the pitch unaltered; his can be a solution for filling the small silence parts that are generated when cutting an audio part.
Another tool we have in order to "blend in" two parts that were originally distant, in order to make them less feel like one is replacing another, is Cross Fading: this technique consists into creating a quick fade out on the first track and a fade in on the new one, in order to give the impression that there's perfect continuity between the two sounds.
Luckily all the new DAWs and Audio editing Softwares features a Fade In - Fade Out tools.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE PART 2/2 OF THIS ARTICLE!


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HOW TO USE DRUMAGOG AND THE OTHER DRUM REPLACERS (free Vst plugins and samples inside)

Hello and welcome to this week's article! Today we're going to talk about Drum Replacement!

Drum replacement is a very common technique nowadays, and it consists in taking the peaks of a drum track (an audio track, or even a MIDI) using a level analizer, setting a threshold like we're using a Compressor, and every peak that exceedes that threshold is considered by the program a hit to be replaced with a midi sample of our choice.

This technique can be used to replace virtually anything with any sample, but it has been developed specifically for drums, because this is the application where it really turns out to be useful: to add the sound of an already processed snare, kick or tom to the original sound we have recorded and blend them, in order to give more punch, clarity and "professional vibe" to our songs.

Those plugins usually gives you the opportunity to "refine the search" of the peaks to be replaced, supporting Equalization filters and a volume fader, in order to isolate as much as possible the range of sounds to be processed, since it's a common problem to have replaced more sounds that we need, for example a long-tailed snare hit may be interpreted as more than one single sound so the plugin may add a double or triple hit on it. It takes some practice to set up the software so that only the sounds we need are replaced.

- The first and best drum replacement program around is Drumagog, it comes with some sample bundled sample and lets you use Wave files and the proprietary .GOG standard, which supports multisampling in order to assign the right sample according to the Velocity of every hit.

Another very interesting and useful feature is the "Blend" control, that lets you choose the percentage of original and triggered sound you want, mixing them.

- The second plugin I suggest is Slate Drums, which is a bit more expensive but comes in bundle with great samples.

- The third plugin in order of quality is ApTrigga, which is cheap, light, and very effective.

- Drumtrig, is FREE, and very easy to use. Similiarly to Aptrigga, Drumtrig has a clean interface, but with less controls.

- Boxsounds Replacer, is FREE and lets you load up to four sample layers.

- KTDrum Trigger is another FREE plugin that allows you replace sounds, and this one supports up to three different frequency bands, thus is possible to replace more than one sound at the same time (anyway is suggested to open a single instance for every single drum part, to avoid errors).

Now we must choose the right samples. There are many sample packs around, and among them a very good pack is LSD DRUMS, or the Slate Drums pack, but surfing the web you can also stumble upon some good free sample library, just try searching on the Ultimate Metal and the Mixingtips forum. You can even create your own samples by microphoning a real drum or ripping the single samples from your favourite album, just make sure to find a song where the drum part is playing alone, or you will sample something of the other instruments too!

Once we have replaced all the drum parts we need (usually snare, kick and toms, since is not a good idea to replace the cybmals as the sampled ones tend to sound a bit "unnatural"), it's time to head to the "cleaning" part: clean all the midi drum tracks of the "double hits" accidentally taken by the software, correct the eventual timing and quantization errors (if the samples are replacing a real microphoned drum track), adjust the Velocity to the right levels when needed (just remember to not make it completely flat or you will lose all the dynamics of the drumming), and after this phase we will have a perfectly edited triggered drum track, which is ready to be mixed (and with the right samples, more than 50% of the mixing job is already done!).

Click here for a tutorial on How to use Superior Drummer and Slate Drums samples with drum replacers!

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HOW TO USE AUTOTUNE (free VST plugins inside)

Hello and welcome to this week's article! Today we're going to talk about how to correct the pitch of vocals, or any other instrument. These pitch correction tools are usually plugins that takes a wave sound and drag it as it was a midi sample, higher or lower on the piano roll in order to match the correct note you need. 

In the last few years the technology has been developed in order to limit the inevitable degradation of a sound that is pitch shifted, especially when applied the vocal parts, which are the ones where the pitch correction is more noticed: today the pitch correction is blended with the introduction of a synth line almost inaudible right below the vocal, in order to help it to sound more "in tune". 

Obviously the pitch correction part should be seen as a "last resort", to use only if you notice, before starting the mixing phase, that there are some errors that cannot be recorded again, but that at the same time are too big to not be noticed, and that risk to ruin the song.
First off let's say that auto tuning tools works fine only with clean, monophonic sounds: any kind of background noise, or rasp vocals, or distorted sound may be misinterpreted by the algorithm and lead to mistakes. It's also suggestable to process the vocal parts without sibilant letters (s), and the guitar - bass parts where there are no slides-bendings.

There are two types of autotuning tools:

1) Automated Pitch Correctors: These are the kind of tools, such as Antares Autotune, or the free Gsnap and Kerovee, where you can choose the key of the song and other parameters, and let the plugin to automatically slide the wave on the piano roll, in order to match in real time the scale used on the song. It's a good thing not to leave it activated for the whole song, but to Automate it in order to be switched on only when needed, and turned off when unnecessary. It is also possible to create a MIDI track and route the plugin on it in order to manually decide the pitch as it was a regular synth, in facts today the industry standard is using Autotune manually, line by line, in Graphic Mode.

2) Pre - Scanning Pitch Correctors: These plugins, such as Waves Tune and Celemony Melodyne, works by pre-scanning the track and creating a "MIDI-like" version of the track itself inside their interface, so that you can use real-time autotuning (like an automated pitch corrector), or correct the pitch manually without creating an external midi track. Offline working (which means "not in real time") takes more time and efforts, but usually leads to a better result, since it leaves to you the decision of which single syllable (or even part of it) to be processed and which not. With the best Pre - Scanning pitch correctors, such as Melodyne, it's also possible to modify the single notes of a chord of an Acoustic Guitar, for example, just like a Midi file.

The famous/infamous "Cher effect" present on the song "Believe" has been obtained by forcing the vocals through wrong scales, or manually writing notes for the voice in order create that unnatural-sounding "glitch" (obviously in this case it has been an arrangement choice, but sometimes it's just a pure error).

In conclusion, regardless to the kind of plugin you may choose, autotuning should be used with extreme caution, only when impossible to record again, and only for the single parts that really needs it, since often is better to hear a more natural interpretation, although not perfectly in tune, than the "Midi-sounding" voice that sometimes can be heard, even on commercial songs. The risk is to have a completely flattened and lifeless voice, altough perfectly in tune :)

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