# Natural sounding drums in modern metal production?



## rockskate4x (Feb 20, 2015)

I've been thinking more about drum sounds lately, and was wondering, with the pressure to sound more and more polished, especially in very technical music, is there any room for drums to sound natural in what is considered a good metal mix today? Obviously there are bands that slay live without the aids of studio polish, so I feel like that sound could still be captured and mixed well in a modern day setting, although I'm having a lot of trouble thinking of recents bands that do that.

Long of the short, have y'all been spinning recent albums (i'll be liberal... within the last 15 years) that have excellent modern production without the super-pumped, surgically-altered porno drums?  Furthermore, what do you consider to be a good compromise between a "natural" or "organic" sounding kit, and really polished production?

Discuss


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## Sumsar (Feb 20, 2015)

I think what makes the biggest difference is samples. Samples removes any kind of dynamics the drumming might have, and it makes all the hits sound the same, basicly turning a nice sounding drum recording into sounding like a drum machine.

Using samples for kick drums is fine in my book, i also do that myself, but for the rest of the drums people should stop doing sample replacement or sample enhancement of the existing drums, it just makes it sound like garbage.
The weird thing is that alot of times you get an album by a band where you are pretty sure the drummer is excellent, so stuffing samples on everything should not be necesarry but they did regardlesss (examples would be Beyond Creation or Conquering Dystopia).

Also using quantize / beat detective on anything (but especially drums) is just weak and stupid to me. If you are going to use beat detective and sample replace everything on the drums recorded why did you not just program the drums to start with? wouldn't that have been easier and the result the same?


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## Seybsnilksz (Feb 20, 2015)

The best drums I've ever heard is on "Dead End Kings" and "The Great Cold Distance" by Katatonia. Good examples are "Dead Letters" or "Consternation" by those guys. In an interview with the guy who mixed the records he said that he doesn't like to use samples for drums, although the kick drum sounds very similar on their three latest records. No problem though, since it's my favourite kick ever. So meaty! And I guess you can get pretty close if you have the same mic, drum, drum head, and mixing.

"Fear of a Blank Planet" by Porcupine Tree is another great record with pretty natural drums. The kick doesn't sound as full as Katatonias, but the drum sound is over all pretty much natural. The only thing put on afterwards is som kind of klicky sample blended with the kick on the faster parts. If you're playing very fast and want the kick to sound articulate the only option really is to trigger or blend some samples in.


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## keshav (Feb 20, 2015)

As perfect a natural drum sound in metal as it gets imo


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## InfestedRabite (Feb 20, 2015)

Opeth's Ghost Reveries has a great modern polished but natural drum sound imo

overproduced/overtriggered drums are an absolute blight on modern metal, alongside with the MIDI guitar sound some bands are going for now


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## wankerness (Feb 20, 2015)

Seybsnilksz said:


> The best drums I've ever heard is on "Dead End Kings" and "The Great Cold Distance" by Katatonia. Good examples are "Dead Letters" or "Consternation" by those guys. In an interview with the guy who mixed the records he said that he doesn't like to use samples for drums, although the kick drum sounds very similar on their three latest records. No problem though, since it's my favourite kick ever. So meaty! And I guess you can get pretty close if you have the same mic, drum, drum head, and mixing.
> 
> "Fear of a Blank Planet" by Porcupine Tree is another great record with pretty natural drums. The kick doesn't sound as full as Katatonias, but the drum sound is over all pretty much natural. The only thing put on afterwards is som kind of klicky sample blended with the kick on the faster parts. If you're playing very fast and want the kick to sound articulate the only option really is to trigger or blend some samples in.



Great examples! I also agree with Ghost Reveries, that's IMO one of the best sounding metal albums ever.

I was just thinking about this the other day when listening to "Joy of Motion." The drums on that barely sound any more like a real drummer than those on the debut album! It's got the most tasteless drum sound I've ever heard on the quieter songs, it's the exact same huge triggered mechanical smash sound on the clean ballads as on the heavy tracks and it really brings the songs down a notch imo. It sounds amazing on the heavy, proggy stuff, but they could have definitely gone with a much more natural sound on the ballads at the very least. Not my favorite trend.


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## GunpointMetal (Feb 20, 2015)

I never really understood it either, if you can afford to record real drums... a lot of even "signed" bands have no budget to work with, or they're album was recorded before they had someone to distribute it. I can't count how many times I've been seriously disappointed at local shows because I hear a band's tracks online and they're awesome and then you go see them and the drummer can't even play steady double kick at 120BPM....
I get it if you can't play drums, or have a drummer, but for the most part I'd rather hear real toms and real snares, maybe even a roll or two that -gasp- isn't perfect. We just tracked drums for five songs, and we're doing kick replacement, but we're using samples we took of the kick, and were only doing it because we had to muffle the .... out of the kick to keep it out of the overheads. If you're drummer can't play the shit you write, or needs to be beat corrected on every hit, find a different drummer.....don't even get me started on "hand-built" guitar tracks....... recording clean guitar, chopping, quantizing, and reamping...GTFO.


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## bostjan (Feb 20, 2015)

Great discussion.

If programmed drums sound better and better, and drums in the studio are more and more reliant on triggered samples, what do we do as the two begin to overlap in sound quality?


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## Underworld (Feb 20, 2015)

The first album of my Death Metal band Progenies hass ALL NATURAL drums. No quantizing, no replacements, no sampling (except for a few kicks). The sound engineer beat the crap out of my drummer to make sure every single hit is perfect (he doesn't like to edit). For 8 songs, the recording took 5 days. 5 DAYS! I've been in studios where you could do the same in 1 day. We used a lot of sound from the actual room, so quantizing was a no-go. 

Of course we had the chance to have a great sounding room, top-class mics, and Pierre Remillard as sound engineer (one of the best in Quebec, did albums for Despised Icons). Also, our drummer knows how to play his shit, and practices a lot.


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## Blasphemer (Feb 20, 2015)

Intronaut is my go-to for natural sounding drums in metal. 

I'm getting so sick of overly-slick production. The Helix Nebula album is pretty much unlistenable to me due to how fake it all is (yes, I know they recorded real drums, but I can guarantee you that they sample replaced just about every hit). Quantizing and slip editing are good tools in moderation, but the way they're used now is just ludicrous.


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## bhakan (Feb 20, 2015)

I'm a huge fan of Kurt Ballou's production, which is really raw and dirty sounding. His production always is really distorted and dirty, but yet everything is still audible and clear. He uses almost no samples ever and his drums always sound great to me.


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## gunch (Feb 20, 2015)

Defeated Sanity


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## JamesM (Feb 20, 2015)

This is the pinnacle of metal drum production for me, and it just so happens that they're very natural sounding by design. In fact, the only triggered element of this set is the kick drum. Something that's so appealing to this approach, and very appropriate to the music, is that they sound like war drums.


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## ShadowAMD (Feb 20, 2015)

Reason I bought a 2Box, yes it is an electronic drum kit but sounds night and day compared to clicking away with Ez/Superior drummer.

Actually it sounds damn nice, not exactly cheap though.


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## Mike (Feb 20, 2015)

This whole CD:



Actually nothing on that CD is DI, samples or vst. Sure that stuff is convenient, but for me it will never capture music the way rooms and mics do.


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## wankerness (Feb 20, 2015)

bhakan said:


> I'm a huge fan of Kurt Ballou's production, which is really raw and dirty sounding. His production always is really distorted and dirty, but yet everything is still audible and clear. He uses almost no samples ever and his drums always sound great to me.



YES, I barely listen to any hardcore or metalcore or whatever Converge qualifies as but I loved that album. The sound is so in-your-face and alive, it's not even remotely sterile, but it sounds amazing. It's one of my favorite sounding albums ever, right up there with Radiohead's "In Rainbows."


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## Kurkkuviipale (Feb 20, 2015)

Sumsar said:


> I think what makes the biggest difference is samples.



Partly true. However, I would honestly argue that big amounts of processing can (and has) done the same thing as sample replacement/enhancement.



Sumsar said:


> Samples removes any kind of dynamics the drumming might have



Untrue. Samples do not remove "any kind of dynamics". There is no reason you couldn't trigger lower MIDI notes for lower transient in the recording.

However, triggering has _compressed_ many modern mixes (as in, the majority of the hits are closer to each other in volume). This doesn't necessarily mean it's bad sounding though.



Sumsar said:


> , and it makes all the hits sound the same



No it doesn't. You can trigger randomized drum samples in order to reduce sameness of each consecutive sample, thus tricking the listener into believing it's not a machine that's playing half of the hit. (Which I by the way don't want present as anything bad)



Sumsar said:


> , basicly turning a nice sounding drum recording into sounding like a drum machine.



Partly subjective. Most people however won't notice.



Sumsar said:


> Using samples for kick drums is fine in my book, i also do that myself, but for the rest of the drums people should stop doing sample replacement or sample enhancement of the existing drums, it just makes it sound like garbage.



Entirely subjective. Again though, the majority of the listeners are not on your side, so maybe have a more open mind to the subject and you might like what you hear.



Sumsar said:


> The weird thing is that alot of times you get an album by a band where you are pretty sure the drummer is excellent, so stuffing samples on everything should not be necesarry but they did regardlesss (examples would be Beyond Creation or Conquering Dystopia).



Subjective. I think sample enhancement can be a great way to add more sonic content to your drum tones.



Sumsar said:


> Also using quantize / beat detective on anything (but especially drums) is just weak and stupid to me. If you are going to use beat detective and sample replace everything on the drums recorded why did you not just program the drums to start with? wouldn't that have been easier and the result the same?



Quantizing and beat detective can be used to achieve a certain type of "over processed" sound to your percussions. Some people like it, I don't mind it. I don't hate it though, I don't see why I should.

Some people prefer the sound of their own kit to a drum program, that's probably one reason why someone would record and then use quantize. Bigger part (I'd imagine) would be dynamics in the playing. And no, they won't all be compressed by the evil that sample replacement is.


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## Defi (Feb 20, 2015)

nightbringer, deathspell omega. when the double kick goes up in tempo it's nice to not notice a blatant beater click assault. it just sounds... ominous. nightbringer is the epitome of that. the drums sound great altogether. earlier albums sound more triggery. deathspell omega simply has the most pleasurable drumming i've ever heard.


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## bigswifty (Feb 20, 2015)

This has really been irking me as of late as well.

I'd prefer to hear big boomy natural sounding drums as opposed to snappy and overly processed drums. Also, I think mistakes have a place in music, as nobody is perfect and sometimes it's nice to hear a blemish on a take!

Also, superior drummer doesn't even have a sample for a snare with the wires loosened off (like Intronaut's drummer likes to use often). This saddens me.


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## Force (Feb 21, 2015)

It's ironic really, years spent trying to make drum machines sound natural, all the while real drums are being made to sound like it's enemy.

I don't care either way, i make my judgement on each production, fake or real.


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## Esp Griffyn (Feb 21, 2015)

Good topic, I'm looking forward to the trend swinging round to natural sounding drums again. The robotic, quantized sound really does nothing for me. I understand it's easier to mix, but when you replace everything with individual samples and quantize it all into place, you remove the human element. I want to hear a performance from a drummer, let's have some dynamics back, and natural sounding drum kits that can breathe a bit.


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## mongey (Feb 21, 2015)

Seybsnilksz said:


> The best drums I've ever heard is on "Dead End Kings" and "The Great Cold Distance" by Katatonia. Good examples are "Dead Letters" or "Consternation" by those guys. In an interview with the guy who mixed the records he said that he doesn't like to use samples for drums, although the kick drum sounds very similar on their three latest records. No problem though, since it's my favourite kick ever. So meaty! And I guess you can get pretty close if you have the same mic, drum, drum head, and mixing.



yeah Katatonia drum sound is really great .great snare and cymbal sounds as well as kick


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## Necris (Feb 21, 2015)

bostjan said:


> Great discussion.
> 
> If programmed drums sound better and better, and drums in the studio are more and more reliant on triggered samples, what do we do as the two begin to overlap in sound quality?



I think sample replacement has become so commonplace that the lines are extremely blurry by now.

I released a "demo" a while ago and eventually it popped up on another forum more geared towards underground extreme metal and the guys there, some of whom were in bands with real drums and others who would proclaim their hatred of programmed drums weren't sure whether or not the drums were real or fake (even though I had programmed in some really off the wall fills).  I hadn't even put a ton of work in to making them sound real, I just didn't crank the velocities for all drums to 127 and call it a day like I see a lot of people here doing.


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## TRENCHLORD (Feb 22, 2015)

JamesM said:


> This is the pinnacle of metal drum production for me, and it just so happens that they're very natural sounding by design. In fact, the only triggered element of this set is the kick drum. Something that's so appealing to this approach, and very appropriate to the music, is that they sound like war drums.





 The Apostacy is just an absolute masterpiece in so many ways .


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## RevDrucifer (Feb 22, 2015)

I'm beyond bored with the current standard sound of drums. The last time I put in a CD and thought, "I ....ing LOVE these drum sounds!" was either a Tool, Dream Theater or Sevendust (Animosity) CD in the early 00's.


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## EmaDaCuz (Feb 23, 2015)

I like to listen to industrial (where the drums are programmed 90% of the time) or grind/gore (where the drums are real 90% of the time), so maybe I am not the one who can really tell much about it.
But I think that *Opeth*'s "Ghost..." has an amazing drum sound, as already mention. Talking about more modern metal, my preference goes to *Gojira*. I don't really know in the latest production, but the older material has really fat, naturally sounding drums.

I think the major problem in drum sound engineering is simple: blast beats, and especially the combination between snare and kick. If you play very fast on the snare, the natural, full marching sound gets mushy. The natural sound, though, is ideally combined with a fat, low, booming kick... think about the marching bands, that's the traditional/original sound design.
Now, to reduce the mushiness you have to "close" the snare and get a "machine gun" like sound, which can be really ANY percussion (it doesn't sound like a snare anymore... listen to any of In Battle or Absu). The kick, which is naturally booming, doesn't match the snare anymore, therefore you have to engineer its sound as well, to something tighter and somewhat clicky. And the rest is like an avalanche, toms are getting like "rototoms" of the 80s, hi-hats and ride are just a joke. Overhead is usually still ok, but lately I have been listening to some china and splash hits that kill me... sounding more like an open HH.

In conclusion, slow music can still allow itself to have natural sounding drums, fast, modern, ultra technical productions need to be artificial. Al this in very humble opinion.


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## Blasphemer (Feb 23, 2015)

EmaDaCuz said:


> In conclusion, slow music can still allow itself to have natural sounding drums, fast, modern, ultra technical productions need to be artificial. Al this in very humble opinion.



I dont think that's necessarily true. Some examples that I can think of off the top of my head that have natural sounding drums, for the most part


The kick sounds a little sampled, but everything else sounds pretty spot-on


No samples here, even on the kick. I emailed Colin Marston about the drums sounds on this album a while ago, and what he said was "The ypm kick is a Ludwig vistalite see-through drum with nickels taped to the inside I the batter heAd [SIC] (not the part the beater hits). That's why it's so clicky without much eq. "







I'll admit - I'm aware that these are all mostly Colin Marston productions (maybe he's the answer to all of our drum problems ), and I know that they're no Meshuggah or Necrophagist in terms of technicality. The playing isn't quantized to the grid and sounding like Rings of Saturn, and some might go far enough to even say it sounds "sloppy", but they still represent a technical, yet very natural sounding album in my mind. Its because of these examples (and more that I can't think of off of the top of my head, ATM) that I think that moving back to natural sounding drums is possible, but it will take people who are tracking and mixing the drums who actually know what they're doing, instead of just throwing up Superior Drummer presets and calling it a day.


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## JohnIce (Feb 23, 2015)

This thread makes me happy that I'm not alone in thinking the drum trends in metal right now are pretty bad  For me it's especially the compression that bugs me, and overly side chained snares.

My band is in the studio right now and just finished drums. Ended up with 28 mics on the kit (including micing up both kick drums, instead of using a double-pedal)  1 entire day of tuning, soundchecking and trying different snares and chinas etc. Re-tuning the snare and toms between each take once we got tracking.

Sounds so damn worth it! 







Oh, btw all the samples we made (and KPA profiles, Axe-Fx presets etc.) we'll share once the record's out, so you can try them for yourselves


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## EmaDaCuz (Feb 23, 2015)

Blasphemer said:


> I dont think that's necessarily true. Some examples that I can think of off the top of my head that have natural sounding drums, for the most part
> 
> 
> I'll admit - I'm aware that these are all mostly Colin Marston productions (maybe he's the answer to all of our drum problems ), and I know that they're no Meshuggah or Necrophagist in terms of technicality. The playing isn't quantized to the grid and sounding like Rings of Saturn, and some might go far enough to even say it sounds "sloppy", but they still represent a technical, yet very natural sounding album in my mind. Its because of these examples (and more that I can't think of off of the top of my head, ATM) that I think that moving back to natural sounding drums is possible, but it will take people who are tracking and mixing the drums who actually know what they're doing, instead of just throwing up Superior Drummer presets and calling it a day.



Yeah, kind of natural sound but the drums do no sit well in the mix, IMHO. The snare is "carton box" like or muffed, the toms are ugly as hell and the kick is either clicky (which is not what you should want from a kick) or quite low in the mix (like in the Aosoth's song). 
So, I agree, it is possible but it does not sound "modern" at all. Otherwise you can go back in time and found plenty of death/black metal albums with awesomely recorded and well mixed naturally sounding drums... but that was not the point of the topic, as far as I understood.


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## Nlelith (Feb 25, 2015)

These sound pretty natural:


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## Bloody_Inferno (Feb 25, 2015)

When it comes to natural drums in metal, one of my favorite albums to exhibit is this:



One of the most ferocious performances that Dave Lombardo has ever done (says a lot), you can practically hear the sweat and anger when he hits every cymbal. 

You can pretty much apply every Lombardo album. Reign In Blood is an obvious choice. 


Funny how this topic shows up right after I finished recording an album. I started insisting using the drums I programmed due to budget and time constraints, but my friend/producer insisted we use a live drummer. We then used the drummer from our prog band and got him to learn the songs and do the sessions. It was also the first time he's ever taken extensive notes for a session:











I've always preferred natural drums over programmed, and I learned a valuable lesson first hand with my own music. 

Programming the drums is one thing, and I'm glad to have played with some amazing talented drummers that have strengthened my drum sense. But getting a human to actually try to match my programmed patterns was another animal. Due to the difficulty of the songs, he got a tad angry and frustrated with certain sections and pretty much hurled every four letter insult at me for 2 straight days. However, we ended up capturing some of the best performances he'd ever done. Sure he responded to the difficulty but like a true professional, he pushed his boundaries and used that rage into positive takes. We ended up with drum tracks that far surpassed all of my programmed drum patterns. 






So with all the frustration, rage and insults hurled directly at me as well as spending an extra 600 bucks, it was all worth it. 


EDIT: I'm glad Fear Of A Blank Planet was mentioned as a great natural drum record. My friend/producer was citing that as a strong influence in my patters I had to relisten to it again to see what he was on about. Glad I did, I remembered how much I loved Gavin Harrison's work on that one.


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## Andromalia (Feb 25, 2015)

Natural sounding drums certainly exist in modern production. Pick one of the latest maiden albums. In what is called "modern metal" though, it' harder to find even in bad productions. It's just not part of the genre. Amon Amarth drums don't sound overly fake either.


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## WildBroskiAppears (Feb 25, 2015)

I saw someone mention Kurt Ballou's work earlier. Gaza has to be one of my favorite examples of a natural heavy drum sound. Just like previously mentioned, it's very raw and VERY distorted, but obviously not sample replaced.


However one example of sample-replaced drums that I love would be Gojira's The Way of All Flesh. The toms are definitely very much sample replaced but I think it sounds awesome and very well executed. In general, I think TWOAF might be my favorite heavy mix of all time. Unreal separation.

Check 3:55 onwards.



H


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## Solodini (Feb 26, 2015)

Opeth and Mastodon's drums always seem to have a pleasant airiness, to me.


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## Sumsar (Feb 26, 2015)

Kurkkuviipale said:


> Some people prefer the sound of their own kit to a drum program, that's probably one reason why someone would record and then use quantize. Bigger part (I'd imagine) would be dynamics in the playing. And no, they won't all be compressed by the evil that sample replacement is.



Seems we are talking about the subject from different perspectives - You are talking about what you can do with samples - I am talking about what is most often done with samples. Yes you can use a lot of different random samples, and yes you can have different samples depending on velocity - but atleast to my ears, it is rarely the case. Usually modern drum production sounds like: 1 drum, one sample and one midi velocity .. and then BAM! awesome drum sounds ... ehh .. or not!

And yes you can also use sample replacement / drum machines / beat detective to get an overproduced sound - but (again to my ears) that sounds more like electronic dance music than metal.


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## vansinn (Feb 26, 2015)

bostjan said:


> Great discussion.
> 
> If programmed drums sound better and better, and drums in the studio are more and more reliant on triggered samples, what do we do as the two begin to overlap in sound quality?



Simple. If not using natural drums, then do use triggered samples, but refrain from overdoing the compression and drone add-on.

The way I look at it, every music epoch has it's main-stream wanted narrative, like the latter years use of triggered drone.
It can be very effective, but IMHO is often overcooked, just because.. because..
Or rather, because the label says it'll sell better vis-a-vis the current narrative.

Just an example. At times I find the kick sounding a Bit too unlively. A touch of EQ and a non-uniform/scattered room reverb with short delay and decay times can do wonders.


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## The Omega Cluster (Feb 26, 2015)

Hybrid might be the best examples, no triggers, no nothing.


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## -Nolly- (Feb 26, 2015)

It's interesting, I think this discussion is more about how drums are mixed rather than the use of samples. Several of the examples of natural drums given in this thread are actually fairly heavily sampled, and I could point to a lot of natural drum recordings that people would assume are sampled. If Kurt Ballou mixed a CD with programmed/MIDI drums I would be willing to bet it would still have his signature sound and aesthetic.


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## GunpointMetal (Feb 26, 2015)

-Nolly- said:


> It's interesting, I think this discussion is more about how drums are mixed rather than the use of samples. Several of the examples of natural drums given in this thread are actually fairly heavily sampled, and I could point to a lot of natural drum recordings that people would assume are sampled. If Kurt Ballou mixed a CD with programmed/MIDI drums I would be willing to bet it would still have his signature sound and aesthetic.



Like Genghis Tron's "Board Up the House"?


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## TedEH (Feb 26, 2015)

On the subject of sample vs real drums....
The last Dream Theater album... is it just me, or is there's something wrong with the snare sound? It's so mechanical that I can't even listen to it.

In contrast, I fully agree on Gojira as an example of how modern/sampled/etc drums can sound fantastic if you do it right.


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## Floppystrings (Feb 26, 2015)

The drums on this album sound pretty real:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXKX7MZxsQU

Me and a friend back in the day found a tiny mistake John Longstreth made on a recording, and we were listening to it over and over. He was like, look, this proves he is really playing that, and I was like dude I know.


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## Floppystrings (Feb 26, 2015)

Dave Witte never used a double bass pedal with Discordance Axis.

Everything is on a single pedal, no triggers.


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## DXL (Mar 29, 2015)

Sorry to dig up this thread but I recently started listening to these guys again and felt their drum sound fit perfectly into this thread.

Drums come in at 1:40


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