{"id":783,"date":"2013-02-22T06:00:32","date_gmt":"2013-02-22T05:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/santoclemenzi.com\/?p=783"},"modified":"2013-02-20T12:03:50","modified_gmt":"2013-02-20T11:03:50","slug":"drum-replacement-in-reaper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/santoclemenzi.com\/en\/drum-replacement-in-reaper\/","title":{"rendered":"Drum replacement in Reaper"},"content":{"rendered":"

In heavy metal production the sound of your drums could really affect the overall mix. Sometimes it happens that you can’t reach the sound you’re looking for during your recording sessions, maybe because you didn’t realize what was the problem during the recordings or just because you don’t have enough time to tweak your mic placements. But you know your kick and snare deserve “something more”.<\/p>\n

Drum replacement<\/strong> is what you can use to solve this issue, in few words is the overlaying of samples (or the complete replacement) on each hit of the drum tracks. Particularly on kick and snare, but also used on toms. You can find samples on internet, there are a lot out there even for free. Famous producers have to opportunity to build their own samples, we mere mortals have to use a drum replacement software like Drumagog<\/a> or Slate Digital’s Trigger<\/a>. They’re both great software, you can find a lot of good tutorial on how to use them on youtube or google, they have just a little problem (at least for me): they’re expensive<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Maybe not all of you know that with Reaper (it’s definitely my favourite DAW! Moreover, it has a really fair license price<\/a>, you should check it out) you can use your samples without spending a cent, it’s just the license of the DAW. But you should know in advance that it’s a time consuming process, but I promise you that it’s worth! <\/p>\n

The good starting point is what you have: the drum samples you’ll use to replace the recorded ones. You can find lots of them, even really good ones and free to use just searching on internet. You should follow Andy Sneap’s Ultimate Metal Forum<\/a>, you’ll find lots of useful stuff and samples, the guys on the forum are great, check it out.<\/p>\n

Let’s suppose you already have great samples that you want to use. In Reaper duplicate your kick and snare tracks and, starting with one copy of them, right click on the track and select Dynamic Split<\/strong>. In the dialog box select At transient<\/strong>, as you can see on the tracks there are some vertical dotted lines that identify where the split will be done. You can arrange the right splitting by clicking on Set transient sensitivity<\/strong>: now you can set the right threshold to let the program recognize each hit, you can see it from the lines on the wavesforms. If you notice too many split you can control them with the Reduce Split<\/strong> parameter.
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