From the course: A Mix Engineer's Glossary of Techniques

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Manipulating the levels of drum samples

Manipulating the levels of drum samples - Pro Tools Tutorial

From the course: A Mix Engineer's Glossary of Techniques

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Manipulating the levels of drum samples

- [Instructor] I want to talk about volume moves on live drum sets that have snare samples that reinforce the original performance. And I've selected this song, Royal by Waterparks, because there is quite a nice array of drum samples that accompany the live drum performance. However, there are undesirable qualities to those drum samples when rolls or fills, sixteenth note type playing is involved. So what I like to do to affect the overall feeling of natural drumming going on in a rock band is to take down the level of those drum samples during the times where a fill or a roll occurs. So we can hear the effect of this right away at the beginning of the first verse. Listen. ("Royal" by Waterparks) So there, the level of those drum samples decreases dramatically by about 5 dB every time more than a single stroke or a single hit occurs, and makes those rolls sound a lot more natural than they would if they had the extra samples going with them. Here it happens again later in the song…

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