Superior Drummer - Tool/Slipknot

So, with vanilla (and maybe the koloss preset) any experience users out there have tips on getting Danny Carey,s HUGE sound and slipknots crazy aggression. Is the high pitched kik/tom of slipknot required for his constant fills? How does one get such clean rides and accents to sit so cleanly ala Danny Carey?

 

Also without sounding like a machine...

 

Thanks!

Tool do crazy things in the studio: http://mixonline.com/recording/projects/audio_making_tools_days/

 

The guy who recorded Undertow is on one of the more recent Mixerman radio shows at The Womb forums, he was talking about having different amounts of the room in different sections of a song.

 

Couldn't tell you anything about Slipknot though.

Been playing around A LOT. Have managed to get 3 separate drum's in 3 separate songs. They're all the same, just...mixed differently. 2 use multi-out while the other uses stereo out. It's definitely good to know that they don't just "set a forget" some perfect meters+fx on the drums though - so that when I switch from stereo to multi-out with 3-4 bus verbs I'm not breaking some mixing rule.

 

That sounds lame, but one thing I've learned is that there is often a right way and a wrong way, and sometimes doing lots of crazy things ends up in the capital of Wrong Way =/

 

Still don't have his HUGE sound, but really that whole band has this masterful mix that's...so spacious. I always seem to "hear" the reverb - any tips on avoiding that? I guess it's almost impossible when you're faking a real recording but I try to use the "ambient" mics as my "room" sound. I even played around with a bus that was using a reverb with the "room mic's" of a guitar cab sim (the free marshall IR's from the IRbox guys). was a thing...don't know if a good thing...

Don't forget that those Redwirez room mics are still reproducing the sound of the Marshall cab in the room. As in, the sine sweep used to create the impulse was played through the cab. But if it works, who cares?

 

I tend to keep the room mics subtle for drums, and sometimes use a little plate reverb on the snare. EQ'ing the room mics and other reverb can open up the sound a bit too. For more extreme cases, I sometimes sidechain compress the reverb, so it ducks a little when the drums hit, though I usually reserve that for vocals.

 

The thing is, without that band, those instruments, that room, that hardware, the desk, the producer, the engineers etc. etc., you can only get so close to that sound.

 

Having said that, the stock Avatar samples in Superior do have a great room sound. Maybe try some subtle plate settings from Space Designer on the snare, but other than that you can get some monster room sounds from Superior.

 

One thing that I've always wanted was sets of impulse responses of the studios the Superior libraries are recorded in. Then I could apply the same room sound to other instruments.

O man that would be so nice @___@ I think that's the best part about the recabinet amp sims that someone on here got me hooked on. They SOUND like they're in a room. It'd be nice to change the room, but I'll take it!

Superior 2.0 is awesome. All the libs are, Metal Foundry is a must because for metal/prog.

 

I just replaced a short (24bar) section because the drummer played poorly only on that part and I felt it was a waste to replace an otherwise great performance, and the band couldn't tell it was replaced. I tuned the drums to match the tuning of the actual recorded drums (first picked samples that as resembled recorded material as close as possible) and then used multi out and routed them through the same processing sub-mixes. If you know what I did you can still tell, if you don't, you can't.

 

I always use Superior 2.0 as Multi-out, I completely disable all rooms in superior and use 2C B2 or Aether for room - merely because thats how I usually approach acoustic drum recordings.

 

I also often layer snare drums (along with original recordings), so when I use programmed drums exclusively I use two or three snares, usually map the "rimshot" note to trigger two/three standard center samples + additional rimshot of the main snare. That way you can still have the versatility of center/rimshot/side drums just use rimshot on powerful passages to accentuate the snare.

 

I *always* destroy the sequenced drums with a degree of humanisation, if I didn't record the main groove myself.

 

There's no right or wrong here, just do what sounds good. There are scenarios where stereo superior 2.0 with a preset will fit a mix perfectly, albeit they're among rarer

Yea I am always told to get Metal Foundry - one day for sure I hear they have much better splashe's in there.

 

What is 2C B2 and Aether? And when you say you disable the rooms do you mute the ambient mic track? Is there another source of room sound?

 

I will investigate your snare layering idea because mine definitely feel wAAAy too one dimensional and adding reverb...well you just hear the reverb =/ But how do you trigger multiple hits to multiple sounds in SD? My system can BARELY handle one iteration of SD2 so I've been limited in my usual manner of stacking sounds on top of each other (when I was using battery I would do the same)?

 

On humanizing - I've always found that playing is just better and ideally I wanna grab an ekit but my padKontrol handles nicely and I just quantize what I mussed up or if I forget to click latency free in Logic.

I always use Superior 2.0 as Multi-out, I completely disable all rooms in superior and use 2C B2 or Aether for room - merely because thats how I usually approach acoustic drum recordings.

 

You're CRAZY!

 

Those great rooms are the most valuable thing about SD!

I will investigate your snare layering idea because mine definitely feel wAAAy too one dimensional and adding reverb...well you just hear the reverb =/ But how do you trigger multiple hits to multiple sounds in SD? My system can BARELY handle one iteration of SD2 so I've been limited in my usual manner of stacking sounds on top of each other (when I was using battery I would do the same)?

 

X-Drums, mapped to the same note.

 

Turn all bleed off, use 16bit samples if you have to. When you're ready to bounce down, clear samples and then use cache mode. Turn on whatever bleed you want, turn off layer limits, and play through the entire drum part once to load all used samples.

holy cow! I had no idea what x-drums did. I went to the 'tube and was educated. That's pretty awesome.

I always use Superior 2.0 as Multi-out, I completely disable all rooms in superior and use 2C B2 or Aether for room - merely because thats how I usually approach acoustic drum recordings.

 

You're CRAZY!

 

Those great rooms are the most valuable thing about SD!

 

I know - they really are great rooms! but I have a thing with reverbs and I don't like too many different "rooms" in the same mix. It makes me uneasy.

 

to OP:

I mute the ambient track and unload the samples from it.

the thing with superior2.0 is, if you play with amount of bleed in ambient and OH mics you can really get a good main picture just from the main stereo mics.

 

yeah playing beats sequencing hands down.

 

X-drums are amazing, when you have more libraries you can make combo kits... its pretty insane, it makes S2.0 even more ridiculous than it already is.

Hey I noticed when making mixer channels for the x-drums that there were things like far and mid room on the left like they were already created but I dont have those on my mixer.

 

Also do you guys have any grooves? I'm not a drummer and saw this one 'tube video of a guy who used em and it sounded like 20 came with some. In any event it seemed like a good way to "learn" drum fills in reverse and some of how ghost hits transfer to midi etc... that I could transfer to the stuff I want to make.

Also do you guys have any grooves? I'm not a drummer and saw this one 'tube video of a guy who used em and it sounded like 20 came with some. In any event it seemed like a good way to "learn" drum fills in reverse and some of how ghost hits transfer to midi etc... that I could transfer to the stuff I want to make.

 

You mean the midi files that come with SD?

 

I don't use them, but they would probably be good to study. That and trying to recreate drum parts you like.

I guess? In the Grooves Tab it looked like there were hundreds. I try to recreate the stuff I hear in my head (that often comes from other drummers like Danny Carry, the guy from Mastodon, or Slipknots guy) but I find there are apparently all these ghost notes and sometimes I'll really only identify the main hit of 3 tom hits at different "velocities" that make it sound REAL instead of edited, ya know? I imagine a lot of those grooves come from drummers on e-kits so you'd get more MIDI info and a better look at how to recreate it. Could be totally wrong - in any event I dont have any in my sd2 grooves tab so I'm guessing I somehow didn't install them?

I guess? In the Grooves Tab it looked like there were hundreds. I try to recreate the stuff I hear in my head (that often comes from other drummers like Danny Carry, the guy from Mastodon, or Slipknots guy) but I find there are apparently all these ghost notes and sometimes I'll really only identify the main hit of 3 tom hits at different "velocities" that make it sound REAL instead of edited, ya know? I imagine a lot of those grooves come from drummers on e-kits so you'd get more MIDI info and a better look at how to recreate it. Could be totally wrong - in any event I dont have any in my sd2 grooves tab so I'm guessing I somehow didn't install them?

 

You can download them from the Toontrack site, I think.

 

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