The Stereo Bus Blog - Daily Music Production Tips

This post focuses on an experiment with my new Focusrite Liquid Mix, with which I mixed and mastered a song of mine that was in need of polishing.

First of all, I will be out of town until the 19th… meaning that I won’t be making any posts here at TSB until then.  But, I thought I’d offer you something to make up for it: free music!
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This post focuses on the technique of comping, or creating a composite performance from various elements of multiple performances.

It used to be that in order to get a recording of a performance the performers had to run straight through the material.  But ever since the invention of overdubbing people have been changing the way music is made and performed for recordings.  In the analog days, tape was cut a spliced together to create edits in the material.  Now this process is even easier with computers.  A standard practice for many producers is ‘comping’, or the creation of a track that incorporates the best sections of multiple performances.  This is in contrast to another common technique called ‘punching’, where a performance is overwritten for a while with new recording passes until the desired performance is captured (at which point the recording continues with the material already on tape).

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This post is going to focus on the subject of latency in the digital medium, mainly adjusting the audio buffer to achieve the results needed.

One thing that people who are new to the realm of recording on a computer will notice is that there is a lag between what goes into the computer and what comes out. This is due to the nature of how computers work. Computers are number crunchers. When audio goes into the computer it turns the audio into a string of digital information, ones and zeros. In order to play back the audio recorded, it has to convert those ones and zeros back into audio information and then present that information to you via the sound card. All of this takes time. That time is called latency.

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This post describes how to create your own multitrack drum kits by creating and layering samples from existing multitrack drum recordings. Despite the samples being sequenced, you’ll end up with separate, mixable tracks for each mic just like you would have from a live drum performance.

Samples are a reality of modern music production. Whether you’re recording a live band and need to augment a weak drum sound or you’re putting together a song that’s entirely created electronically, samples have become a indispensable tool for the producer. The most common application for samples is definitely percussion. One thing that kinda sucks about straight up samples is that they aren’t very flexible. With professionally recorded live drums you generally will have your choice of room, overhead, and close mic tracks with which to paint your the kit’s sound. A single sample is the equivalent of a single microphone - not too much to choose from. There ARE a big variety of sample packs available out there from hip hop kits to samples that mimic the feel and sound of live drums.

Despite the inherent limitations of standard sample packs, one of the coolest features of the more expensive ‘live’ packs is the ability to change the sound through the placement of virtual microphones in a virtual room inside the virtual instrument’s interface. I know the BFD series has this sort of flexibility. You can actually adjust the type and placement of things such as the rooms and overheads. Each of these virtual microphones can be mixed as if they were genuine tracks that you recorded into your DAW from micing an actual kit. But you don’t necessarily have to pay big bucks to get that kind of flexibility. Nor do you have to use someone else’s sounds. What I’d like to show you folks is how to roll your own multitrack drum kit with a virtual room track, virtual overhead track, and individual close mic tracks.

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