Hello, and welcome to another episode of Inside the Recording Studio. I am Jody Whitesides, and with me as always is Mr. Chris Hellstrom. How are you today, Chris? I'm doing great Jody, how about yourself? I'm doing all right. Very cool, good. My self. Yes. What are we talking about today? Drums, but specifically drum programming versus real drummers. Drums. Yeah, so hopefully we're gonna be able to give at least some food for thought here, right?
And see how, what might be appropriate for people's projects. Nom nom nom nom. No, I'm using your food for thought, feeding myself. Are you eating at the moment or? No. Okay. Oh, that was a little bit far fetched, but okay. All right. I'm with you now. All right. Well, I'm going to steer us back on track here. So you're working on a project. Mm-hmm. What are your considerations with going real live drummer or programming your own stuff? What's your first thing that kind of comes to mind?
Yeah, that's obviously a big one. style of music right off the bat style of music Right. [Laughter] Explain yourself. What? Yeah, sure. Well, generally speaking if I'm gonna be working on an EDM track or some sort of like dubstep or something of that nature I'm not likely to be using live drums that's just a given right there However, if I'm going to be playing some sort of like 70's era funk soul kind of stuff You're damn right I'm going after a real drummer.
Sure, absolutely. Yeah, it's very, you know, it's very style That's what I mean by that. dependent. And there are maybe some blurred lines in there. Obviously, you know, you're talking about a country track or jazz thing, or certainly like a rock thing. And you I know, so I You're putting words in my mouth. I said none of those three, but I agree with you. Yep. did that. But you know, but you're onto something there as
well, though. So say that if you're going to, perhaps like a modern soul track, I think there's some flexibility there because do we want it to be more of a throwback thing and you can certainly have the real drummer feel, right? Or are you going for something more contemporary perhaps? More of a modern static sound Yep. perhaps programmed part might be more appropriate. But we have to consider that obviously style of
musical style, what's appropriate, what do we want to get out of it. Other things to consider, And I think this is a little bit of a cop-out if we don't, but do we have access to a drummer that could actually do it? Make it sound like they're locked up in a room or something. Yeah, but let's say that Do you have the key to let them out of their cage? Yeah, it's called the interwebs right in all seriousness, let's say that you're perhaps living in a smaller town and You mean like I am right now?
Like you are right now, yeah, but you actually know a lot of drummers There is that, yes. So that's less of a problem for you. That's the kind of point that I'm trying to make though. Sure. But if you're starting out your music career and you don't really know any drummers, I would say 20, 30 years ago, Sure. that would have been a very valid thing, right? You don't have an option, but there are so many players I guess it depends on the person that you know.
and session musicians out there today that do remote work. I don't think that's necessarily an excuse anymore. Now it could be a matter of budget 'cause they don't generally do this out of the goodness of their hearts as much as they love doing it, right? It is a job. This is true. Yes. So, but I'm saying that if you don't know anybody, There's also a variety of services that you can go to find those kind of players too.
you know, there are players out there that can provide those services for you and it could, definitely. When they say the world is shrunk, right? With the internet, it goes without saying, right? Sure. But you can find people to do this kind of stuff for you. if, like we talked to our friend Robert Navarro, Or Christopher Alice, for that matter, an actual drummer.
he's very, yeah, but I was gonna say, [LAUGHTER] but somebody like Robert, when he does his productions and things, he is very much in, hire the right musicians to kind of do it and elevate it and don't cut any corners. So he would be very, Well, that's the concept difference between a yeah, that's an argument that could be made, you know? professional and an amateur. Do it. But I could come down, I could play devil's advocate and say that, you know, there are a lot of producers
Sure. That's asking a lot, but I agree with you. and things that can do it themselves. They can program and get that part just as good as a live performer, right? Now it could also be a time constraint thing, right? If you're up against a deadline and you don't wanna spend a week programming drums, whereas you hire a guy and he can knock 10 tracks out in a day, you know, that type of thing. So yeah, I just wanted to make an exaggerated point, right? (laughs) Exaggerated it was.
So, However, to kind of riff off on that for a moment, I do agree with you in that sense is that hiring somebody that knows what they're doing and doing it as you're saying over the internet by going through whatever means and finding them on some sort of find a drummer.com type site which is not real as far as I know. I was gonna say, is that a real site? Oh, sure. If it isn't, let's get it right now.
The idea there is that you would hopefully have some sort of interaction with this drummer and be able to talk them through what you want. Oh, I'd think Fiverr would be like that. That would be the hope and I'm sure nobody's just gonna do. Okay, I'm gonna play to this and you're gonna get what you're gonna get. I'm sure most people will ask you the questions, oh, well, what are you looking for? What kind of track is it? Do you have any ideas that you'd like me to do? That kind of thing, right?
I'm not even going to comment on that, but yes, probably. (laughs) That's what they say. Yeah. But then again, you'd kind of get what you pay for, right? Oh, that brings up the whole concept of, Right. if you think a professional is expensive, See what an amateur will cost you. try working with an amateur. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. But he does a great job. Have you ever had a drummer that you've had access to tell That's the thing as well, right?
If you're hiring somebody to do it, you want to make sure that you get quality tracks back, just in the way of performance but sound wise and all that. You mentioned Christopher Alice there earlier and we just see the lengths that he goes to to make sure that everything is like top-notch when he does this kind of stuff. So absolutely and that's what you want. No I don't think I have. Whenever
you they couldn't do it. I have. Yeah. It was more the limitations of what they had I've reached out, yeah, no, whenever I guess I've been fortunate that way then Oh, okay, but I'm guessing you may have had some extraordinary needs at that point. for the recording setup based on what I wanted. My needs are always extraordinary. What are Or do you remember what the issue was? What are you talking about? (laughs) I rest my case. Do you remember what that was that they couldn't do?
Yes, I was looking for the recording to be done at 96.24 with a certain amount of microphones Oh, that's unfortunate. and they didn't have enough inputs nor could their system handle 96.24. No, actually this was within the past year. I'm guessing this goes back a bit though, right? Oh, really? Yeah. Wow, that's a little surprising to me. I thought so too. I thought so too.
Yeah. Sure. Now another thing to consider here is if we don't want to go the outsourcing the job type of thing where we have a remote drummer do it is if we don't have access Which I've done. to a space to track drums in a good way, right? You could argue, yeah, just set the drums up anywhere and do it. But yeah, oh yeah, absolutely. And you can do it, That's program dependent. but is it always the most appropriate thing or is that compromising of the
sound that you want down the line for your track. I don't know that you it sure is. It's not like you can't get quality sounds from a less than ideal room, right? Are you speaking from experience? If you just think about miking and stuff but if the only room that you have is right next door to the kindergarten, you know, when there's gonna be a lot of
noise and stuff, then that's a problem, right? I am not, but that sounds like a nightmare My favorite one along these lines involves a studio owner and engineer who in the middle scenario. Or if you get traffic bleed from different places and blah, blah, blah, there's all those things where you just don't have the option to do it, right? of tracking suddenly I'm hearing coming out of the master speakers. That's a problem. Oh, yeah. Good afternoon.
So I turned to the guy and I'm like, is this going down on the recordings? [silence] Oh, no, no, no. No, not at all. Are you sure? Yes, I'm positive. It's something to do in the master bus. It's only after the record chain, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Because I tried to get my guy in here to fix my board multiple times. He can't seem to figure it out. I said, do you know what it is? And he goes, no. Do you want to know what it is? [laughs] And I said, "It's a capacitor blowing."
Yeah. And he goes, "How do you know that?" And I said, "The experience of capacitors blowing." because that's what they sound like. That's what that sounds like exactly. And the guy was flow mics. Mm hmm. He's like, "I don't believe it. I get those tracks back to my studio." Sure enough, that fucking sound was in there. Not very loud, but it was definitely in there.
Of course it was. Yeah. I called the guy back and said, and said, "You cannot tell people that that sound is not in their recordings." He goes, "What do you mean?" I said, "It's in there." He's like, "Are you serious?" Yeah. And I said, "Yes, I'm serious." Wow. Yeah, that's. He was a... Yeah. Yeah, that would be a bad thing to happen. That could be a problem. That can blow your budget right there when a guy is lying to you about his own gear in Yeah.
his studio that is supposed to be a professional studio. Right. Now, it doesn't necessarily have to be necessarily a lie because that would assume that he knew that it was going to be in there. Right. But. So that's a problem. No, but he didn't know and that's actually even more problematic. Right. If I'm thinking in terms of like the scene from the movie with JK, he plays the jazz Right. teacher and Miles Teller plays the drummer and he's his first day in this high level We have, yeah.
jazz band and the teacher is like, do you know that you're out of tune? And the kid's like, no. He's like, get out of here, you're out of here. And then the guy's like, it wasn't him, it was you. And the fact that he didn't know he shouldn't be here anyway. It's reality, it's like, you call yourself a professional, you should know your gear. And we've actually done episodes on that of knowing your gear. So when it comes to your recording drums and all that,
Yeah, right. And if you go on the route where you set up in your own space where you have, make sure if you're going to a place and you're not the actual owner of the studio that they know what they're doing. Otherwise you're wasting money. That's kind of the point of the whole amateur professional thing. [ard Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Okay. So, I'm going to take a look at the screen.
that's not necessarily designed for tracking drums, but or tracking anything possibly. Tracking drums, I know we mentioned this on more than one occasion, but because there are so many movable parts, if you will, like there's, you know, a multitude of mics and you have to deal with phase and all (silence) Lots of them. those things, while it being a very, very educational process, it is also one that can be
prone to mistakes, right? There might be, right. If you're on a time crunch to get this done, (silence) maybe outsourcing is a good alternative for that. But it is also very educational experience doing it. I remember the first time I tracked live drums, it's like, okay, let's figure out how this goes and see how we get the best results type of thing. One of those things also where there's not necessarily one way to do it, right?
You know, how you point the microphones and all this kind of stuff. So yeah. Okay. Ooh, that's a good question. No, there's nobody that I have sort of in mind. Just to bust in, 'cause it sounds like you're about to ramble and we keep this slightly focused. Is there a drum engineer that you would have as your go-to drum engineer for this kind of thing? (laughs) Myself. No, not necessarily. I mean, it depends again on the kind of stuff that we would be doing. [BLANK_AUDIO]
But I've always liked Bob Rock, the way his sound he kind of gets on, you know, Sure. you think about like Metallica's Black album, although that's a little bit dated now, but huge kind of drum. So no, I don't have necessarily one particular person that I would do. I guess the [BLANK_AUDIO] only person I would want is somebody that knew what they were doing, you know, and that I could Mm hmm. There you go, all right. pester with questions and learn more about it, you know. What about yourself?
Ronan Chris Murphy would be my choice. I am unfamiliar with it this person He's a pretty top-notch drum engineer and he's really good. Yeah, any productions that I would know about that he's done I mean, he's an engineer in general, but he is kind of specializes in drums and he does a really amazing job. Yeah. That's how famous he is right You know, I can't think of one off the top of my head. I just know him as a, well, no, but I know him as a friend and I know that that's like,
Gotcha, right. Oh, okay he gets hired a lot for that particular kind of stuff. So while I don't follow his career in that regard, Gotcha, yeah just because he's just a friend, he's done those kind of like masterclass workshops that people go to. And he's one of the guys that like teaches Right that kind of stuff. So he's very good at what he does. Yeah So. No, if I had to throw out a name I would I wouldn't mind working with Adam, you know Adam Moseley Okay, well, there you go.
I know he's you know, just like there you go. Yeah, that's my thoughts on the live drummer A lot of movable parts but you can inject a lot of stuff in there. No, let's move on here to the programmed parts kind. Anything you want to add to that? Right, here's something that I enjoy doing. Okay. I enjoy programming drums. Not because you're an actual drummer. I like doing it. I like to think that I'm relatively good at it.
The reason I'm good at it is because I have done it for years and years and years and years. I am certainly not an actual drummer. I can look like I know what I'm doing, but I am horrible [LAUGHTER] behind a kit. I can air drum with the best of them, but no. The reason why I like it is because I can get down my ideas quickly. If I have a thought for a part, this is how I want it. the sound because of the software that I use is going to be top notch and it gets me in the Sure.
ballpark right away even when I'm just riding but then I always go and fine tune but that's not what we're talking about here. Yeah. So let's take a trip down memory lane for you here. When you first started programming drum parts, were they actually realistic to how drummers would actually drum or did you just go off that it didn't matter how many drummers it took to pull off?
I did not do that. I actually had that sort of idea right off the bat. Now, if that was just The DDR 16 or the Dr 16 or whatever it was. circumstance or the limitations of the gear, because I'm going to take you back really far back, we're going to go back before color. This was black and white, right? But no, no, it's not going to be that bad. But oh, no, oh, good heavens, no, no, I'm not going to have that. Oh, the SR-16 Bialysis. Yep.
No, not drum machine. When I first started, my first venture into this was when I had the Atari ST running Cubase and samples were coming from the, what was that, the Ensoniq, what was it called, Yeah. Sure.
the ESP16, something like that. It was one of the old samplers, initial samplers. But programming things in Cubase at that time, we didn't have the same level of control that we do now, of course, but we did have four different, I think it was four different velocity levels that you could do that with Yeah, that's all right, one. with each hit, right? So you got some sense of realism, but it really got me thinking about Gotcha.
the whole idea of, okay well what's the kick and snare padding doing and can the drummer physically play this? So I was playing with those like velocities early on, but then that evolved from there right because the gear got better and all that and I can't remember what came after that. Yeah. Dain't watch, you share entertainment. I think it was probably battery from Native Instrument as the source where I think it was Yep. Uh-huh.
Yep. Okay. that and Logic had the EXS sampler at that point with all these different kits and libraries from that. So that's where it got in and now I'm I've been a tune track guy forever started with their That's how we eat and talk " original samples actually for the EXS that they had. It was like the drum kit from hell that you N N imported and now you have the multiple velocity levels there multi-sampled all this kind of stuff.
O So that was it and then it became modern and easy drummer and then superior drummer N too and as of recording this three. So what was the question again? I just rambled on it. [LAUGHTER] But that was the journey, right? And because this was a part of my journey [ ob 244 Iraq ] and I was always doing it for my own projects, I ended up getting decent at it. [ [ And today I've done it for other people as well.
I've had players come in and guess they don't want [BLANK_AUDIO] a live drummer and I've done drum programming for other artists when they just want it. So I enjoy doing it because it's that instant gratification. I do love working with live drummers and recording drums and things, but there are things that fading to silence Nothing Add annoy the shit out of me, you know, when you have to do some editing and I am very sensitive [LAUGHTER] gotcha. Gotcha.
to timing issues. I'm not talking feel issues where I'm doing kind of like air quote feel issues here, but when things are just out of time, I notice that really, really quickly. It really, really annoys me. There tends to be a fair bit of cleanup that I have to do these days when I work with live drummers. Yeah, what about you though? What's your deal, man, when it comes to programming stuff? Yeah. My early drum programming was horrendous. I knew that drummers had four limbs.
So four things can happen at the same time. So four things could happen at the same time. I don't think I knew that about you. Realistically or not, that's what I did. The irony of this is, is us, I originally wanted to learn to be a drummer. I didn't want to be a guitar player. I wanted to be a drummer, but of course, yeah. Parents were like, nope, that'll be too loud. Okay. Can't do that. So if my car, I'd get a guitar and then amp Right. and then crank that sucker up and piss him off.
Yeah. But when it came time to start writing songs and doing things with songwriting, I did what you did. I did drum program for my own thing initially, as it was easy in terms of having the four track that I had and the computer and the software Yeah. that I had and a drum machine that I could then play back in stereo as things were playing back when it was all tied to SIMT back in the day. So I would program these drum parts that sounded relatively in my mind anyway. Sure, yeah.
Cool. And when I was living with the infamous singer, Jeff Scott Soto, he heard some [Laughter] Yeah. of the stuff and he's like, you know, a drummer can't play that kind of stuff. [Pause] And I'm like, uh, so I had to rethink and I started being very aware and very Yeah. Yeah. acutely aware of that kind of thing. So my programming changed up to the point where I can take it or leave it. I like to actually work with live drummers.
It makes things a lot easier, especially if you've got a guy like Christopher Alice or Donnie Grunler or Matt Gendl or any slew of other drummers that I've worked with in the past, including guys like Greg Bissonnette. Programming a drum, at least for the songwriting portion of it, can get you in the relative ballpark of what you want so that you can present it to a drummer (no audio) [ Pause ] and say, I want to go in this direction. And it gives them a good idea of what you want.
You've done your drum programming and if you're pretty good at it, you can stick with the drum programming that you did. And that happened on one particular song that I did a few years ago, where in the studio, we're tracking the vocals as the last thing to be tracked on this particular song. And the engineer is like, "Who played the drums on this?" Question comes up as to why. Yeah. This is like the most amazing fill I've ever heard. [silence]
And it's so subtle that you don't notice that there is a time change going on right there in terms of the length of the bar. And I look at the co-writer who recorded the track with me. And then I tell the engineer, I was like, well, I programmed those drums. And he's like, are you shitting me? Hm-hm. And I'm like, no, we're not shitting you. That's good. This is the version of that particular section of the song that we decided felt best.
And up to that point, he didn't even question whether or not it was a real drummer or not. And I've actually had that question asked me on multiple projects of whether something [Silence] is a real drummer or not a real drummer. And it's a good question to be asked, especially if it's in regards to your programming. You get better at it over time, especially if you're not particularly a drummer.
And I'm sure there are drummers that can program the living bejesus out of samples and make it sound like a real performance. And there's probably drummers that can't do it. Sure, yeah. Being a drummer doesn't necessarily mean I... that you can be a good drum programmer. No, because it... oh I can attest to that, because I'm a horrible drummer. And being a good drum programmer doesn't necessarily mean you'd be a good drummer.
(laughing) But it is another thing that we're talking about program parts, that's a big ( audio cuts out) Right, but before we get into that, benefit today and a lot of the software comes, or a lot of these softwares they're mentioning like the superior and all those kind of things, they often come with MIDI parts played by an actual drummer. So you get... yeah. let's actually take a quick word from our sponsors. And we're back.
Yeah, that part I needed to get off my chest there first. When you get a lot of We're gonna talk a little bit about the differences here between the real performance of a drummer and an unrealistic programming, which we've kind of already been hinting at. Stick into this, Chris. Mm-hmm.
these like MIDI performances that are played by actual drummers. Those can be not only great launching off points when you're programming stuff, because it gets you an idea and it's like, oh I never thought about doing that with a hi-hat and the alternating on the ride or whatever it is. So that's a valid way that you can have as a starting point but then perhaps tweaking those Right.
a little bit. It can also be very educational when you look at those MIDI performances how drummers essentially play and how ghost notes and things play into it to have certain authenticity Right. to them right as opposed to you mentioned the SR16 before where it's basically doo doo dat doo doo dat like pattern number one like rock beat whatever and that's why those things Mm hmm. sound the way they do it's not just the sample thing but it is velocity levels and all this kind
stuff. But that is the programming thing. So while those are all good, the biggest thing for me is with a drummer being recorded, is that not only the feel that they can impart, because they add all of these things by nature, right? Things that the ghost notes and all this kind of stuff. Mm hmm. But it is their ability to come up with parts that often are going to be a lot better than mine would be.
Because I might, "Oh, I would have never thought about doing a tom-fill over the verse or whatever." So they can bring something to that, assuming that you don't have that laser focus that, Sure. "This is the part I want." And if you have that, I'm sure they'll be happy to oblige. But sometimes it's nice to open up the floor to them too and say, Well, what do you think of this? What do you kind of hear? And they can bring another dimension to that
So I think that's that's a big one for me. What why you would do it There will be a different sound if you're recording an actual drum part. That's gonna be that's drums. That's live drums Mm hmm. That they're not done in isolation, generally speaking, generally speaking, That's what live drums sound like, you know Well, they can be right, yeah they can be, but generally, they're not always done that way. No, I'm talking about all the drums being recorded at once.
My preference is always to do that though. Are you talking about recording drums with you know a bass and a guitar player present is that what you're killing?
Oh sure Yeah. Yeah, it can happen and you still have to somehow transfer that feel into the performance So yeah That was something that Chris Alice mentioned as well that he had an experience when they went in and they actually recorded because of recording limitations one kit piece at a time and I on the flip side of this of working with and you mentioned bringing in a part which can be difficult. Yes. that's programmed that you want the drummer to do or at least to give them Yes. Yes.
into that mindset like this is the kind of part that I'm looking at. Have you ever had the experience of whether it's a drummer that don't want anything put in your head they just want to come in with a clear space and see what they come up with and then if it doesn't turn out better they go okay now let's hear what you had in mind. Yeah. Donnie Grindler, I did that with, Okay. and it was on a particular song called Days of
our lives. And we were tracking that the bridge portion was not working. And I had an idea Okay. of what I wanted. And I had to explain it to him, because it wasn't really programmed [ Pause ] out. Well, actually, it was programmed out, but it was not programmed out extremely well at that point. And in explaining it to him and what exactly I've wanted, he's like, go away for 15 minutes. So I did, I went and made some tea, came back to the studio, 15
later, boom, knocks it out in like two takes. The trouble was is the way the sticking pattern happens in that portion of the Mm-hmm. That's awesome, though. Yeah. Okay. song was extremely difficult. And he had to sit there and work it out for 15 minutes so that he could actually pull it off as a
human. But he did it. And it's really amazing. And the funny thing about that is, is that I had other drummers that took Donnie's classes that when they met me, they were like, dude, our [LAUGHTER] drum teacher used to use this song that was your song in his classes at MI. So he was using that song as an example of how to do certain things in the studio, which I thought was really flattering. That is pretty cool.
It was like, it was a fun experience to have, you know, just random drummers come up to Yeah, absolutely. me in LA. I was like, dude, I know this song. And then you wrote it and that Donnie played on it and how it happened. I'm like, wow, that's kind of cool. Don't do this right now. Yeah, no, that's cool. Assuming it's not the other way around. Yeah, when you're programming drums, don't do this, right? (laughs) Wasn't that? If you see Jody White has punched him in the face. But yeah.
Or give them a throat punch. Right, yeah. Almost started. Now, obviously we talked about the sound there, how you get a natural sound. And again, obviously style dependent here, right? Okay. The jazz track would be much more of a natural feel. And I would think that programming Sure. more of a jazzy performance would be very difficult. And I would say the same thing when you go on for like a soul thing, you know, 'cause there's so much dynamics that go into that kind of stuff.
So having the sound of it live drummer is imperative in those cases. That, however, doesn't mean that we don't enhance or replace certain things if need to be imposed, right? Once you have that live performance, right? when you're saying replace, you're referring to the sonic value, not the actual played (silence) (silence) value. Nope. Yes, so I mean if we have a tremendous performance, really love the feel and everything, but the snare sound is wrong
for the track come next time. You would go in and this is something that most DAWs can do, but there are specialized software that does this too, where they detect the transients and extract the MIDI information from performance. Right? More often than not, I would enhance but >> Sure. not replace but if you have to, you can just take out the snare, the direction or the top and bottom and replace that with Sure. Sure. samples so that it would fit better. Now, if you listen to Mm hmm.
that just by itself, that might sound really unnatural, because you're presumably going to have the snare in the overheads and some leakage and stuff. But because you're taking the performance out you can just replace or enhance that to get the sound that you want and the same thing with virtually any kit piece whether that's the kick or any of the toms as well right so there's the yeah Logic does fairly well Logic does that. Pro Tools does that. Pro Tools does that.
Yeah, I think just about anything does that but there are you know, there's yeah Pretty much any dog has the replace drums Any cool thing with the way logic does that and I'm not sure if other dogs do this the same way or enhanced drums kind of set up to it that you can just hit a button, it will analyze it, figures out where all the transients are, you tell it which drum is on what track and then it will replace that with whatever samples you choose to use. Mm hmm.
Yep. but when logic does it it extracts the velocity as well. So if it's a loud snare hit, for example, it's gonna have a higher velocity value than if it's a softer one. So it even detects the dynamics of the performance, which is imperative, you know? What's your favorite drum software once you've got this performance? So, well, I've said it about eight times already, I think. Right. Okay. I got two that I use more often than not.
But "Superior Drummer III" is what I use now the level of detail and stuff that's in there. I'm only really scratching the surface of what it can actually do. It doesn't fit my workflow for everything that it can do, but the sounds and the dynamics and everything, that's by far my favorite. What about you? What do you like? Mm-hmm. The one that I use the most is Logic Drummer. And the main reason why is it comes with a pretty good range Cool.
of drum playing, so to speak, that's already in there. Plus you can modify the bejesus out of it with it rushing Cool. or dragging behind the beat, how much swing it's got to it, that kind of thing. Cool. In addition to that, the other one that I tend to use a lot is drum libraries that come from native instruments. And one in particular that I've used quite a bit Cool. Yeah. And all those libraries obviously have the round is the Abbey Road Drums. they just sound really, really good.
Now they're not super extravagant with the amount of mics and all that that you get with Superior Drummer 3, but they still sound really good and they sound quite natural when they're hit. And they have such a velocity range that you can tell that there's a difference in the hits, which is great too. So those are mine. Well, if that, let's move on to our Friday finds. Robin triggering as well so you don't get the sort of machine gun effect even if you have the same velocity level on hits.
So yeah, it's all great stuff. All great stuff. Let's do this. I have been... I'm up. Cool. You're up, Chris. up. Mm hmm. Well, I don't have necessarily a particular piece of gear or piece of music this week, but I have a particular technique Yep. Oh, well, yeah, convolution reverbs and also, of course, guitar amps and that I've been messing around with this week and When I post a question to you, you're thinking of convolution and I ours
What do you think about probably reverbs and things right spaces? Yeah Right so that's what most of us tend to think about cabinets with microphones. There. [BLANK_AUDIO] But I have been messing around in space designer. There are whole other classes of [BLANK_AUDIO] I ours that are in there and they're more for tonal qualities and just experimental like sound design things and Mah.
Just goofing around with that has been really really interesting because this is an avenue that I hadn't really pursued [BLANK_AUDIO] Right. I was thinking the same thing. You know, you got I arts. It's a reverb. It's a guitar cab like 99.999% of users presumably using it for but the idea of Mm-hm. [BLANK_AUDIO] using Convolution as a sound design tool has been really really inspiring to me So what I think I'm going to do is I'm going to start a new library of just sound design stuff Okay.
Which is something that I wanted to do for a while, but I'm gonna actually take the time and do it So just using convolution for sound design is my kind of Friday find, I guess. All right. So without long drawn out an answer to a quick question, what is yours? (laughs) I found a little application. (sighs) Mm-hmm. This is specifically for those of us who use the Apollo recording interfaces. And more even specific than that, Mac Apollo users. (sighs) Sorry, Windows guys.
There's a little app that has been created called UA Companion. and you can find this at uacompanyan.com. And what it is is a little extension app that goes when you run it up into your menu bar on the right hand side, and allows you to set function keys to control the Apollo from your keyboard. It is extremely cool. That's really cool. [ Pause ] And it allows you to now use the Apollo with the up and down volume keys or the mute key.
And then you can set other things to have like, well, I always know that I wanted at this particular sand level for this and this particular sand level for that. And you can have a function key that sets it to that specific volume level. And you can switch between the two. You can also mute the entire device and you can do several other functions. So UA companion for Mac users and the Apollo interface users Very cool. Like it. is my Friday find of this week. Go get it. like it.
It's very, very handy. While we've got your attention, [ Pause ] We ask that you go to insidetherecordingstudio.com and sign up for our mailing list. You'll get weekly reminders about the Tuesday tips [ Pause ] when they come out and we'll make sure you don't miss any future episodes of the podcast. Send us an email at goldstar, G-O-L-D-S-T-A-R at insidetherecordingstudio.com with the word drumming and you'll get something cool back in your inbox.
If you have a topic of suggestion for Chris and I to explain in a future episode, contact us at the contact page and we'll put it into consideration for a future episode. And with that, I'll say, see you next week. I'll talk to you later, Jody. You Thanks for listening, everybody.