Benedikt: one shots were, almost the only way to do drum samples back then. used hardware samplers where they loaded the drum sample into this thing and then they found a way to trigger that off the tape machine, like really crazy. But they did it like a lot of the eighties bombastic snares of that era, are actually one shot samples. Hello and welcome to the Self Recording Band podcast. I'm your host, Benedictine, and if you're new to the show, welcome. Thank you for joining us. So glad you are here. If you are already a listener, thank you for coming back. If you got any value out of these past episodes, please go to your podcast app of choice and leave us a review there. Preferably five stars and a couple of nice lines about the show. This would help us reach more people like you and help more people like you make exciting recordings and mixes. So, um, yeah, thank you for your loyalty, your trust, and for coming back to us. Now, if you are. Starting to mix right now. I have something for you. this is a mixing guide that I made specifically for surf recording bands. I don't think there's anything like that out there in the world. So if you go to the surf recording band.com/standout mixes, you'll get a guide, a video, a long video plus a checklist that shows you what really matters when it comes to mixing so you can get better mixes instantly and make your songs connect without overwhelming, complex mixing techniques or buying new plugins. This is really made for the self recording musician so you can focus on what really matters, instead of going down rabbit holes and being confused in overwhelmed. So again, the self recording band.com/standout mixes. You'll also find it in the show notes of this episode. Now. As always, I'm here with my friend and co-host Malcolm Olu. Hello, Malcolm. How are you?

Malcom: Hey, Benny. I'm good, man. How are you?

Benedikt: I'm doing good too. except the fact that I can't really talk, but

Malcom: Yeah, it's, it sounds like you've been screaming. loud rock and roll music, man.

Benedikt: I've been, I've been, uh, we had our first, uh, show with my new band of Farewell Signs, and it's a hardcore band and I, I'm not the vocalist, but I do a fair amount of backing vocals and screams and shots and couple of high singing stuff that I haven't done as much before. And so I underestimated the importance of warming up before the show and like the damage that one or two cult beers can do. And, uh, and then, you know, took three songs for my voice to be totally trashed.

Malcom: Oh geez.

Benedikt: I to remove. I know. But I, I made it through the show though. I didn't miss anything. So I, I, I have to say, I made it through the show and managed to, do all my parts, but after that it was like painful and I'm still suffering from it.

yeah.

Malcom: Yeah. We'll rest that thing up. But unfortunately you've got a podcast to record so you can rest after this

Benedikt: Yes, exactly. Exactly. , how was your weekend?

Malcom: Uh, it was, it was good. Yeah. We winter kind of hit out here in Canada, um, and our driveway turned into like a lose run. Uh, so I like came back from a, a gig and was driving up. It got stuck and then so started sliding back down the driveway. , I was just like, uncontrollable, be sliding down my icy driveway backwards and landed it in a hedge. So that was great.

Benedikt: So that was the mess message you were sending me when I asked you to do Yeah, yeah. Okay. I was, I was messaging Malcolm. yeah, I wanted to, we switched a, portal that we use for our podcast show notes and everything, and I, wanted to have a quick chat with Malcolm about, uh, about this. And I just got a quick message back that you are about this. Basically, you just said your car was stuck in some ice or whatever, and I'm like, yeah, okay, then probably not gonna work today.

Malcom: Yeah. Yeah, it was like in a hedge, but also turned sideway, so blocking the whole driveway so nobody could get out to go to work or

Benedikt: even

Malcom: Um, so it kind of had to be solved at that moment.

Benedikt: Oh God,

Malcom: Yeah. But the car's totally fine. Hedge is

fine. Everybody's fine.

Um, just classic snow happens and chaos breaks out. but you know what I did wanna mention in this episode is that the, the whole Spotify wrapped thing has been going on and it has been really great and lovely to. Everybody's sharing on like Instagram and stuff. their love for this podcast and how much they watched it or listened to it, I guess. Um, that is incredible. Thank you all very much for that. It's, yeah, it's really awesome knowing that people out there are getting a lot from me and, uh, Benny meeting up every week.

Benedikt: Oh yeah, absolutely. And, uh, I'm so glad you said that. let me just quick, um, actually go to the numbers real quick because I gotta say, I gotta give you some of those numbers. Um, I totally forgot about that, but you're right, it's, it's wrap time. apparently like this is Spotify alone. I don't know, but like all the other platforms, I know that our, uh, most used platform is I think Apple Podcasts. So I think so. I mean, that's what our stats, I think, say, if I'm not wrong, let me see. But this makes it even cooler. So just real quick, if I go to stats on our podcast host, I see that under Absent Devices, uh, yeah. Apple Podcast, 31% Apple Podcasts followed by Spotify with 22%. knowing that this is like 22% of our listeners, Spotify says we have, 1700 listeners, like individuals who listen to our podcast, which is great. Like this is like five times that. So we almost have like, I dunno, seven to 10 K listeners or something, which is

pretty.

416 people who follow us on Spotify, like, who have subscribed to, um, to the podcast and or like, who have it in their catalog, which is pretty amazing too. This also shows how inaccurate sometimes the podcast hosting apps could be, or like, there's definitely a difference. Bew, because it looks less than that on the podcast host, um, looks much better on Spotify itself. yeah, it was like, 17,000 streams, which is also nice. So I don't, I don't really care how accurate these numbers are, but it's a lot and I'm very, very

Malcom: Yeah. Yeah, for, for podcasts. Those numbers are good. That's great.

Benedikt: Yes, you gotta remember, it's not a searchable platform, like people have to actively find a podcast like that and then, so it's not something like, like YouTube that recommends that stuff all the time and, and shows you what, what's relevant for you. So really, really, really grateful for every single listener. Um,

Malcom: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you all out there. That's fantastic.

Benedikt: So, yeah. I don't know. My Spotify rap looked really weird. My personal one, I don't know about yours, Malcolm, but like in my case, if you have kids, it, it starts to get really weird because my top three or something are, some child's like, no. Top number one is actually the Power Rangers , because our son loves to listen to the theme songs. So that , so my Spotify rep says, number one most listened artist is the Power Rangers

Malcom: That's so amazing. ,

Benedikt: and it's actually always the same song, followed by a Lego Ninja Ninjago, I think is the, the thing. it's some Lego thing. And that theme song there, the Lego song is fun. Fact is mixed by cla, at least it says CLA mix in brackets. So he's done that and my son likes it. So

Malcom: cle just crushing the, the Children's Power Rangers music. That's awesome.

Benedikt: Yeah. So my Spotify rep's pretty useless. It doesn't show, doesn't really show what I'm listening to. I know about

Malcom: right. Yeah. I, I actually haven't looked at my rap yet, but I, I got my, uh, my bands wrapped. my band is called Band of Rascals, and it's the intro music for this podcast listeners, if you weren't aware of that. and the listening time on Spotify for our music was 5.6 years worth of listening, which just blew my brain apart, like

That's ridiculous. So that made me really happy that people are still listening to that music and liking that. but I haven't done my personal rap yet to see like what I listened to.

Benedikt: Okay. Well that's, that's amazing. And also considering that your band hasn't been really active for

Malcom: Yeah. But I think that music came out in 2016

Benedikt: yeah. So cool. So cool to

Malcom: something like that. Yeah. That's

Benedikt: Cool. All right. Very cool. Now, I think let's get to the extra episode.

Malcom: Yeah. Let's do it. What are we

talking about, Benny?

Benedikt: we are talking about rum samples, specifically one shot drum samples, which is, something where I think I can learn more from you, than the like. Definitely, definitely. because I use rum one shots, but I only recently really, I don't know, started to enjoy and use 'em more. I was always the, the more like organic drums type and yeah, I, I, I mean I saw the value in using one shots, but I don't know, for whatever reason I didn't use 'em a lot unless I wanted to have some, some sort of effect in a breakdown or something. But I've, I've heard your mixes and they obviously sound great and you use one shot much more than I do and I started to look into it more and, um, found a couple of new like. Use cases or like started to embrace them. But still, I, I, I'm curious to hear your thoughts on why you use them and, and more specifically how you use them and how you can use 'em without making it sound robotic or intentionally making it sound robotic, whatever, all these different things. So I can't wait to, to talk about this because one, the beauty of one Trus is that it's, easier, I don't know if it's, it's, I don't know if it's easier, but like, it's easier to understand. it's like one sample that you add to the existing drums that is kind of always the same. You can of course manipulate it and, and all, but like, it's, it's, it feels less complex to me than having multiple layers of velocities and round robins and stuff. It's a very basic way of explaining drum samples in general, and it even has an advantage over the dynamic samples in some cases. So I'm excited to talk about this, uh, specific way of using drum samples. And I think, Malcolm, you have a resource on drum samples as well that we absolutely should mention in this episode.

Malcom: Yeah, yeah, if you're new to the podcast, or actually maybe even if you're a longtime listener, you might not know, but I've got a YouTube channel going on DIY recording, mixing kind of tricks and stuff like that. Um, and it's just Malcolm own flood. so pretty much just look at my name and YouTube and you're gonna find it. But yeah, our latest video, I can, I, you know, at the time of this coming out, it might be one more video back, but you'll see it is, uh, about using drum samples. So you should totally check that out. And there is a link to some drum samples in there as well. but yeah, I, you're right, I use one shots a ton. I use one shots. At least 90% of the time over like multi, like round robin, multi sample samples, um, multi velocity samples. I, like, it's, it's always the first thing I'm trying to use. and part of the reason that is, is because they're so easy to in that it's like a, pretty much, you throw it in for one like measure and you're gonna tell if it's a good fit or not, pretty quickly, pretty much as soon as you hear it. Um, where I found that, More natural, like round robin samples, it, it kind of, they're, they're not as like kind of mixed and far along in the, the process. So it's like a little bit harder to kind of figure out if this is like a home run, you know, , I just want you to like contrast. I want you to be able to audition samples and be like, yes, no, no. Maybe yes, no. Okay, I've got three options. Let's look at those three. This one's awesome. Here we go. And that's kind of like the process. but as far as, being comfortable using them because there is a little bit of a thing that you alluded to Benny, where I think, you compare the two options you've got. One shots where it is just one way file, so the same sample gets played exactly every time. The only difference being velocity, like or, uh, not velocity, just dynamics. So it's really just, volume. That's the only thing that gets manipulated is the volume that the sample gets played at. But it is the same hit every time where with a round robin sample, it's an actually, it's actually a different hit each, each time you hear the sample and that is trying to be matched to, the loudness of what is triggering kind of thing. So it kind of represents the performance more accurately, where if it's a quiet hit, it's gonna sound different than a giant rim shot.

Benedikt: yeah, even round Robin, just to be correct here, round Robin means that even within the same velocity layer, There's different samples. So even if it detects the same volume, it randomly fires different samples so that you don't get the machine gun effect, meaning they do, you know, like, it, it can be like with a multi sample thing, it can be dozens and dozens, if not hundreds of hits within one single drum. And, uh, with a one shot, it's one hit, it's processed, and that's what you hear every single time. It's only played back in different volumes.

Malcom: Now when you know that and you think about, okay, option a same hit every single time for three minutes of a song that's crazy sounding, why would I do that versus this round robin technique where that's clearly gonna be better. But what I found is that when I was, you know, paying attention to the mixes I like, and the mixers that I, uh, have always followed that they were using one shots just as often as they were using. And Robin's actually maybe more so one shots. so why would that be ? Why would if, if this is clearly a better option, in theory, why are so many people using one shots? And that kind of gave me some confidence to be like, okay, I don't think I have to really worry about this too much. I should just use what sounds good to me. and then number two, it made me think, okay, like why can't a one shot even work at all? cuz again, in this kind of theoretical, when you just think about what they are, it sounds like a bad idea. But clearly works. and what I've come, like, the conclusion I've come down to is that generally as engineers, we're trying to make people less human because they're too human when they drum. Um, so we're, we're always watching their dynamics like crazy, trying to get them to hit the drum perfectly and. Most drummers fall a little short in that, uh, unless they've got quite a bit of experience in the studio, and are kind of like a session drummer level. So a one shot kind of helps us get closer to that because . When you use a one shot, you're not actually deleting what the drummer did. You're just like adding to it. So you're adding a layer of consistency. even if you fully replaced the close snare mic, for example, and just have your overheads and rooms and bleed from other mics, that human element is still gonna be present there. So there's still gonna be off hits, there's still gonna be dynamic changes. and you're really just kind of like reinforcing it. And that's why one shots work. If it was just like the only thing you could hear at that instance, whenever that snare one shot was played, was that one shot, it wouldn't work. But because there's the human element of essentially. Humanize drums where it's dynamic and maybe overly dynamic, you can get away with using them very effectively. Does that make sense? That was

Benedikt: that absolutely, absolutely. And the main thing to me is the idea is two things, the consistency one and the other one is making things explode. Using it as sort of a creative thing where a real drummer just can't do, you need an overprocess, sort of explodes, exploding sample to, to even do that. And you can do that with the, the natural drums or with round robin samples, but then it's not, it's not quite the same effect because, it's not gonna work exactly the same on every single hit. If there's one hit that's a little weaker, it doesn't explode as much, you know? So if you'd really want that massive room or reverb or whatever baked into it, if you want the. intentionally very processed fat, big larger than life, stadium, snare, whatever. Then you get a much more reliable, reliable, predictable and consistent results with one shots compared to trying to do that with processing, because then one hit will have slightly more room than the other one. And, you know, all these things. So, the consistency and the bombastic, um, sort of thing is now I've said bombastic, that's your word actually

Malcom: Yeah.

Benedikt: but

Malcom: Well, I'll share it. Um, I'm glad it's spreading though. That's great. I've had people message me about the word bombastic because of this podcast. It's

Benedikt: The side note, Wayne, who's doing, who's creating content for us, when I share snippets for the podcast and stuff, like he's doing that, he always adds new, quotes and like snippets and stuff and reels to, to your folder. And I just looked over them and like, I, I was looking for something that I could post and there was. Single slide Instagram post, like a quote and it just said, bombastic Malcolm moon flood. So I'm gonna, I'm probably gonna post that very

soon,

Malcom: Wade Wayne. That's awesome. I really like

Benedikt: Yeah, yeah. but anyway, that's, that's a good use case for it, the bombastic samples and, uh, so yeah, your explanation totally, totally makes made sense.

Malcom: I got one more thing to add. And it goes back to the, the mindset of like, it's really easy to think that clearly one sample, one shot samples wouldn't be a good idea. But I think people in general overestimate, how important dyna, like how important humanization is. Because when you think about what most of the world listens to, it's not even a drum kit, it's electronic programmed pop drums, that aren't human at all. And there's very little dynamics going on there. Like humans don't mind really, really consistent sounds. So you can, you can get away with really like flat, consistent, dynamic drums and still have people enjoy it. It's kind of like, I think people overthink, okay, this needs to be a little tiny bit quiet here and a little louder, like every single hit kind of thing. And I don't think you need to worry about it as much as you think. So one more point for drum shots are, are pretty easy to use because it's not gonna be as, fake as you think it is.

Benedikt: I think it's kind of funny because we try to get the most consistent performance possible out of drummers most of the time. And we wish they would just hit it the exact same way every single time. And so, and then when we use samples, we kind of try to do the opposite in a weird way, which

is, you know, like that's, that's kind of weird. And I think especially if you layer it with your original drums, there is enough variety still in there just because you layer it with the original performance

Malcom: I, in fact, there's often too much, and I will sometimes limit the dynamics on my one shot to make it even more consistent.

Benedikt: yeah, totally. I do the same with round robin samples too, where I intentionally use the exact same velocity and maybe even turn off round robin if it has the option. Sometimes, if the original drums are too dynamic, sometimes I don't, sometimes I do the opposite. Sometimes if, you know, it's always depending on the material. Sometimes if there's a, for example, if you have an, a snare roll or something or some, you know, yeah, some, something very dynamic or some ghost notes or whatever, I might increase the dynamic range even because the original drums might not be dynamic enough. But when it comes to straight parts where it's just like averse or a chorus with like the back beat or something on the snare, then I want maximum consistency and I limit the dynamic range. Yeah.

Malcom: Yeah, totally. you know, one more. Perk for, for one shots, uh, that isn't on our little outline here, is that they're also like the cheapest way to get good sounding drums,

Benedikt: Yes,

Malcom: right? Like, they're, they're incredibly affordable. Um, you don't have to buy like a software program or anything. 10 bucks, you're probably gonna be able to find a solid little sample pack, that's got something great in it. And it, it's like a really easy way to kind of just be like, all right, I've got some great sounding drums now that are gonna get me at least a really good demo. You know, it's, it's pretty amazing that way.

Benedikt: Totally to Totally. Yeah, totally. Absolutely. The only thing, and we're gonna get to that, the only thing you might need might, you don't have to, but you might wanna buy a program that makes it easier for you to actually trigger these. But um, even if you don't do that, you can make it work. Like there's manual ways to use it. You gotta understand that if one shot this like a really simple thing because it's just a way file of a, like one recorded drum hit, which also means you can easily do it yourself too if you have access to some sort of cool sounding room. Doesn't have to be an expensive studio room. Can be a barn, can be know a warehouse, can be, you know, your living room. I don't know anything that sounds cool. Different rooms, whatever. And you can set up one snap room in there or a drum kit and you capture one hit of each piece in a cool way. You have your own set of one shots that you can

use and process like.

Malcom: fun.

Benedikt: And one shots is the easiest way to get into that, because you probably don't wanna start with complex multi samples. Listen to Dave, listen to our, our interview with Dave, if you wanna know what, what, what that means, if you wanna do it that way. So, um, you don't wanna do that probably in the beginning, um, but you can create one shots, .No, exactly. Uh, but you cant create one shot. Absolutely. So, uh, just to be, be clear that you know what, what we're talking about. Malcolm, I have a couple of questions for you when it comes to how you deal with certain situations and how you Yeah. But, but we'll get to that in the how section of this. So I think, do you have any more thoughts on the, on the, why you wanna use them or like what we actually talk about, we forget anything before we go to the how part.

Malcom: Yeah, I think like we got on, on here, life saving replacement as a last resort. That is definitely a good thing. to keep in mind as well, that sometimes samples are your only way out of the, the situation. at least for Benny and I as mixers. I haven't had a disaster drum track like that having been a long time though I think our podcast is working. The quality of the tracks we're getting sent is pretty awesome. so that's good. but just knowing that yeah, they can be a lifesaver. and then the, the final why would be yeah, the like uber creative with, uh, specific. Events inside of your mix. so the kind of most common example I think is having a giant room sample that comes in just for like the last power course of the song or something. So it's just like the, the drums level up at that one part of the song or, you know, you can have like the big explosion snare or, or floor tom kind of thing that just happens at certain instances in the song. Not every hit.

Benedikt: Oh yeah. Okay. Yep.

Malcom: Yeah,

I

think those that the, we got a bunch of why's

Benedikt: Yeah. Yeah, abso absolutely, absolutely. And these are, I just thought about like, what if I can think of anything else, but really to me it's really about, the consistency and the effects. So the one that I've always used or like that, those are the two that I've always used. The one that I use most of the time is like a specific effect in a certain part, like you just said, especially in like metal core or anything that's like larger than life or has a certain breakdown where there's, the classic example is a breakdown where there's a lot of space in between the snare hits. so the snare can really be long and powerful and have long sustained room and all of that. And then I might add a one shot sample, whereas in the faster technical parts, I might remove it because it's just, there's no space for it. Or it sounds too weird if I, I mean, if you have, for example, a metal song in a, in a blast beat, a fast blast beat a exploding one shot might sound a little weird, but when there's a breakdown after that with a lot of space in between the hits, you can absolutely edit in. So that's the kind of thing that I did. and then for Standard Rock or punk rock or whatever tracks, I would sometimes use it for consistency, but not as often. And I'm just now starting to do it which in a cool way makes my songs, my mixes even more dynamic because I have my typical round robin samples and I use more of those in some parts, and I use less of those in other parts. So I get really consistent, loud, heavy parts, and really dynamic natural parts. And the mix of that is pretty exciting to me. Anyway, I just, fell in love with one shots recently. So ? yeah. Okay, so we got the, we got all the why's. I think

Malcom: Yeah, yeah, totally. Um, so, so there's some, hows exactly. my biggest tip is having a very easy to locate folder where you can just audition them from, and find there's gonna be different workflows for different programs and stuff like that for how you're these samples. Um, so for me, as you'll see in that YouTube video I mentioned earlier, uh, there I use Slate trigger and I just like have a little shortcut to my drum sample folder there, and I can quickly just get 'em in. But I also keep that shortcut in my, like, main finder window on my back so I can just drag them into my session for like, special effects. that, that's like, yeah, I couldn't live without that being a click away at all.

Benedikt: yeah, absolutely. I have the same system too. I have my drum samples folder on the computer. and then I also have this dedicated like trigger folder that you need for the plugin to find the samples. So I have some of the libraries twice and um, yeah.

Malcom: Oh yeah. I just have that trigger library on my finder, like shortcut it,

Benedikt: Or I, or maybe I have to set up the same way, but I, I, I also, I don't even know, but I could be, but I can just go into the drum samples, um, folder and manually grab a Wave file if I want, and I can also access it, access it from trigger, so,

Malcom: Yeah, you can't overdo organization with drum samples, and you need to stay on top of it as you add them. and you'll, you'll find as your career goes, you'll start stealing things from projects you have. You'll be like, oh, you know what? This song ended on like, this really beautiful symbol crash where it's gonna steal that and add it to my library so that if I ever need to add to crash to a song, I've got one, you know, little accent symbols. Or maybe you make a little riser by reversing a symbol. Might as well throw that in your sample folder and just have a little riser folder. very handy stuff. I've just got like a little ever growing chest of tools.

Benedikt: Absolutely. One thing that I think we mentioned it on the podcast earlier in a, in another episode, two at least once. one thing I always recommend is when you record a real drum kit before you start the actual recording, like at the moment where the drums are set up and tuned perfectly and everything's in perfect condition, you should grab a snapshot of that moment. You should definitely record drum samples, of that perfectly tuned, perfectly set up kit and micro my kit. And then, um, so you have a tuning reference for later in the process just so you can check back if it's still the same. And also you can build your own library of samples that way. I have a lot of like folders and folders and folders of different drum kits that I captured while we were, uh, getting tones. And these are my personal one shot libraries and I. If I, if I remember a certain record that I did where I liked a certain sound, or when I think, okay, this could be a great fit for this one too, then I know where to look. It's organized, it's labeled correctly, and I can get the sample that I used on another record and blend it with the one that I'm working on right now. So, and this will make your productions sound more like you, more unique. Nobody else has these samples, so, and you can process them. You don't have to use 'em raw, right? You can make your own over the top samples with that, but it's gonna be yours. So I definitely recommend building that, um, that toolkit, definitely.

Malcom: Absolutely. there's, yeah, there's a little bit too. Making drum samples correctly again, go, go listen to our previous episode with, uh, Dave via Tech. Dave, you're a legend. and you'll kind of get a, a little bit of an understanding of what's required there, but I'm sure we'll maybe we'll do some more content on that eventually. but for now, yeah, make them, organize them, keep 'em in a folder that's easily accessible, you'll just keep adding to it as you go for sure. then I guess you gotta choose your sampler, and what you're actually using to, to fire these samples. with one shots you can of course just manually drag them into the session and line them up, but that is very tedious. so you're gonna want something like, like I said, I use Slate Trigger. Um, I think Logic has its own built in kind of system. I think, it doesn't really matter what you use as long as it seems to work effectively.

Benedikt: yeah. Let's just talk about the general, sort of what happens and then you can pick your tool to do that because I think once you understand what actually happens, you can find your, your method of doing it, because it's actually all the same under the hood. so what it does is some tool, no matter what you use, will detect the transients of the original drum kit. And we're not talking programming, now we're talking sample enhancement or replacement. So you have an actual drum kit with real snare hits, kit kits and whatever. And the softer you use is gonna detect those transients, those hits like the beginning, like the attack, where the drumstick is sort of hitting the, the skin. the software detects those hit points and then, it creates a, Yeah, it's probably accurate to say that I think every single tool uses MIDI to do that, but even if it's in real time, so it creates a mini note there and then that mini note tells the sampler to fire the sample. And it can happen in real time, like with trigger. So if you have a trigger plugin on Ana, the transient appears. Trigger recognizes, it creates a command that tells the built in player to play the sample basically in real time. that's one version and that's the real time option. With a plugin like that, you just put it on the track, it detects the hits and fires the samples. If you do it manually, for example, in Cubase, and you can do the same thing, I think with Beat Detective two in, in Pro Tools and with other tools too, is you, you detect the transients with the built in tool in your doll, and then you can turn those markers, those hit points, whatever they're called in your doll. You can turn those into mini notes and then use whatever sampler to fire your samples. That's what I did in Logic all the time. I used, um, their, I don't know what it's called, I don't remember what it's called, but their hit point detection tool. It created a mini track for me based on that detection. And then I just used the stock sampler plugin that comes with logic. and I put like with drag and drop, I just dragged the way file in there and it just, Fired the one shot and then I printed it. So that's what I, what I did. And you can, there's different ways of doing that you can do, I think you could do tap to transient and pro tools. You can detect the transients and then tap to transient and just copy paste,

Malcom: Yep.

Benedikt: go manually through the session.

Malcom: get very quick at that

Benedikt: I, I've seen people do that crazy fast where they tap through to transient through the whole session and it's just a, and then all the samples are in there,

you

Malcom: Yep. That is, uh, one way to do it for sure.

Benedikt: Yeah, yeah. But the important thing is you need something that detects the hits and then you need something that plays the sample when those hits, um, happen basically.

Malcom: Yeah, exactly. and learn that program because there's different parameters inside of there. Like with, with trigger, you have to set it so that it ignores the bleed of what's recorded on that track. Right. And, and does it, it's not too sensitive or whatever. Or yeah, using, generating key spikes ahead of time that that's the most accurate way. but it just make sure you read the manual on this one, it's worth it. Otherwise you're gonna have some weird results. And your snare will play twice as much as you want it to.

Benedikt: yeah, for sure. I would actually recommend doing either the key spikes method that you use, Malcolm, or creating mini notes and triggering from midi. You can do that with trigger too. You can send mini notes into trigger. Either way, if you define the hits before you, like, before triggering, like if you don't just put it on the track, but you define those hits and you send a cleaned up track and accurate track to trigger. You're gonna like, your life will be easier because then you don't have to deal with the bleed and all of that. It's, so I recommend that, but you'll, you'll figure that out once you know how to actually do that. This is, um, tough for another episode almost because, or like more for the manual than for an episode, honestly.

Malcom: Yeah, totally. All right. that's kind of like the settings. Uh, I guess there's always gonna be, even though we're using one shot, there's gonna be a velocity and dynamics control inside of most programs as well. Um, and that's just gonna on, on scale. I let you can adjust how loud it plays, the one.

so you can mess with that. Um, like I said, sometimes I limit that to make it even more consistently the same volume. sometimes that sounds more human to me, but again, it's all gonna depend on your source material. and then, I guess. Like, I want to talk about the auditioning process, cause that, that's crucial to me. there is a button inside a trigger where you can just like click, to audition. So I just like click the name of a sample and it fires it. kind of always outta time with the song, but I just like have the song playing and I click around and like just hear how it sounds against the mix. That is kind of my first method. You can also just drag it in and like have it just kind of firing away in the song. That is obviously really nice as well. But you want to, this, this goes back to the having the organized folder, because you need to be able to do this quickly. You just wanna be able to click play and audition different samples, and then quickly choose one. If this takes too long, it's kind of no fun. Uh, you'll forget what you just heard before. So it's kind of like, okay, did I like this one or the one previous, and which one was that? If I can't go find it, or with an like nice organized folder, um, where it's easy to select them so that workflow's more important than. I may be stressed before. You just need to be able to see all of your prime samples, at the same time.

Benedikt: Yeah, for sure. definitely.

Malcom: And then, we, we've got some like, random tips. There's, like how to make it fit and, and how to find the right one. the drum sample you load in it's gonna sound exactly as you made the sample or bought the sample, but you can mess with the pitch of it and you should totally not be afraid of doing that. Tuning the sample to be a closer match to your recorded drums is a great idea. Sometimes you don't want to be a closer match and you make it totally different and that works too. But, um, as a good rule of thumb, if you find something that kind of sounds like it belongs in the recording, that is a pretty tried and true method for getting a more realistic sounding sample.

Benedikt: Oh yeah, for sure. And, and it's funny that you say that. You mentioned that because, you said earlier in this episode that you like OneTrust because, partly because you. You sort of know that you, you just wanna be able to quickly audition and know like, yep, that works, or note that doesn't work. And you wanna hear the, the contrast and all of that. And it's just easy. And you, you kind of already know your favorite tools probably, or your, you know, your library and you probably pretty quickly know what to reach for, for a certain type of sound or effect. And to me, the tuning samples thing always was very, very important or still is because I always, I always wanted to make the drum samples blend with the real kit as much as possible and not make 'em sound like samples. And what I do is, or what, what happens for me is like, similar to what you described with the one shots. If I hear a drum kit, I immediately know, okay, like, this is gonna work perfectly with this snare from this sampler. Um, like not one shots, but like my round robin, um, thing. to the point where I think like, okay, if I use this snare and tune it down 26 cents or whatever, then this is pretty much this one. You know, like, I know it so well because I always carefully tune that stuff and I, I know this so well. And when I, once I blend it, I always, it always makes me laugh a little because it's so sometimes indistinguishable from, from like, with, with, without the sample, it just sounds exactly the same. It just, it just sounds like I made the snail louder. but it doesn't have all the advantages of the one shot in terms of consistency and stuff. So, tuning was very important, but I always thought about tuning samples in the context of making it as organic as possible. And using Round Robins, I almost never tuned my one shots because I wanted the exact sound of the one shot, but still you can tune one shots. And, I just recently started to do that more and I, I was, I think I was always afraid of tuning one shots. And a lot of the one shots that I use are sort of blended samples where there's not only the close mic, but like the room or overheads or whatever. It's like a, a finished sound of a snare hit, more or less. And I, I always was afraid of tuning that because of the tail of the, the reverb, the room. And I always thought like, that would probably get, or something. But it's one of those things where I thought that this would be the case, but I never really actually tried it. And then once I tried it, I figured, well, you can absolutely do this and so, so now I started tuning my one shots, which gives me the advantages of the one shot and makes it blend better, which I like. So that's why, why I wanted to talk about this because I never really thought about trying to get one shots closer to be, it was always about the contrast and about just either it fits or not, but you

Malcom: Yeah. In fact, I think the, like the room decay is the main reason I reach for the tune knob. because if it's like some rooms just have that really bright, like. Decay on like the, the room side of the sample and that if your drums weren't recorded in a room, that sounds like that stands out really, like, present to me. Um, and, and makes it sound more fake. So like lowering of like a room sample to, to be kind of less obvious is, is something that I found to be very useful.

Benedikt: Yeah. Yeah, totally. Cool. Now, um, setups, you can audition samples quickly. We already talked about that in a way. So have it in a folder that you can access quickly or with trigger. There's the audition kn, just make sure you. Audition quickly. I think making the decision on using a certain sample and especially one shot is like a, is really a very quick thing. You either know it works or you immediately know it doesn't work. It, it doesn't take you minutes of having to, like, of listening to the song. You, you need a couple of hits and then you know if it's gonna work or not. At, at least that's the case for me.

Malcom: You know, what we haven't really talked about setting up is just having the tracks there for the different samples in, in your session. Um, so we, like we talked about having a folder with all your samples, but if you look at, one of my mixes, there's like, in my mixed template, there's like, like four

snare sample tracks just sitting there. And there's gonna be like my primary, there's gonna be a room one, there's gonna be a little distortion track, and those are just gonna get filled up as needed. and then, yeah, I don't have to like stop, make a new track, route it around, just have the presets there so that you can quickly then plop them in is a very handy move.

Benedikt: Oh yeah, for sure. I have the same thing, actually. Pretty complex, but I don't use all of it all the time, of course. But I have, tracks in my template for all kinds of situations, and if I need them, I can quickly access them. Yeah, sure. So this brings us to the routing options, and this is where I think, um, I have a bunch of, like, I started having questions and I'm interested in, in how you do it, because my routing is always relatively complex because I like to treat my samples like the kit, which means, and this was part of my issue with the, with the one shot, because many of the one shots, as I said, are blended samples. So you have one hit that is mixed, a mixed thing, a blend of the. Snare, top and bottom, maybe then the overheads, the rooms, maybe multiple rooms, maybe even some effect or whatever. And I always had a hard time mixing with that because I like to think of my drums as a real kid. So I like to send my snare into a snare bus, and that goes to my drum bus. And I like to send my overheads to my overhead bus, and that goes to the drum bus. And, and if there's one piece of the kit that has everything on one track, I don't know where to send it to really. And I don't like the idea of sending it to the drum bus and sort of bypassing the snare. If I have a snare sample, for example, that's a one shot with everything on it. I don't quite like the idea of sending it to the drum bus directly because then if I just wanna, turn up the snare in my. I, if I reach for my snare, it will not include that one shot and, or I have to link it to that and use a VCA or something like that. And I, I just don't like that. I wanna have one fader, that's my, all my snares, but that shouldn't include any rooms, you know? So, when I use one shot, now I do it more and more and I, I kind of got used to it and I just link it to Myna master. So if I pick, if I, change the volume of one, it will also change the other one. So I found ways to work with that, but oftentimes I still do what I've, what I've always done. And I have a one shot that's just the close mic. If there's the option, if my pack gives me this, these options, I will have a one shot that's just the close mic. And I might have a one shot that's just a room. and one, maybe that's the overhead, but mostly close and room for me. And then I will send the close one shot to my snare bus and the room, one shot to my room bus, um, and mix it in that way. So I'm curious to hear about your routings there and how you deal with just having one blended, one shot, and where that goes in your mix.

Malcom: Yeah. I, I send everything to a snare, like staying on the topic of snares, but this, this would be the same if it was Tom's or Kick or whatever. but they all go to their bus. So if I have a snare room sample, it's still going to my snare bus. so I don't know if that really makes sense in a logical. But it works . so I, I, I'm kind of the same as you in that I like to use, specific samples for specific jobs. So if, if possible, my there'd be a close mic sample and then a room sample. Not one that's both, but always happens that like the good sounding close mics have some room mixed into them just to make them shinier, I think by whoever made the sample so like it does happen that I'll have like a primary one shot that has like, has some room in it, and then I've also chosen a different room sample, and I just try not to like, overthink about it. Like I, my, obsessive nature doesn't like that, that's the way, but if I just ignore it and keep mixing it, it doesn't really usually cause a problem. Right.

so.

Benedikt: to what's coming out, the speakers anyways.

Malcom: Just don't worry about. If it sounds good, it's gonna be fine. and, and there's things you can do like, uh, use translate designers to try and eliminate that room from one of the samples. you know, stuff like that, that's, you know, manipulate your samples as you need. It's totally possible if you can change actually, and trigger the, the decay and sustain times of the samples as well to try and chop that kind of stuff off too. so in my session for, again, the snare as an example. There's like snare one and two, which are just gonna be the two best, kind of all in close samples that I can find. And then I've got my attack, which is just like literally the click top end attack of a snare. Then there's a distortion channel, which is like kind of like a white noise blast and then a room sample. And then those are like five tracks that I've got sitting there ready to go, and they don't always get used, but I like to find those ingredients and then manipulate them individually if I can. But then they all do go to a stair bus and that goes to my drum bus. So that's how I do it, ,

Benedikt: Yeah, yeah,

Malcom: don't have to do it that way.

Benedikt: yeah. That, that brings up a bunch of like really practical questions because it's part of me is like the, yeah. The obsessive part of me that just wants to know that everything's going to the correct places. But then there's the other like really practical side of it where, for example, my snare bus is a mono track in my template. Um, so if you do the, the one shot, including the room that goes to the snare bus, you have to make sure that it's a stereo track or like, unless you want the narrow mono room, which you typically don't want. So that's one thing you need to just, I mean, that's not a big thing, but you need to be aware of that. Like in my case, I would've to change my template to, and make the scenario a mono, uh,

Malcom: Yeah,

Benedikt: a stereo. Track, I just said scenario, I wanted to say stare and snare and stereo, and I said scenario anyway. Uh, the scenario master track, uh, has to be stereo. So that's one part. And then, um, the other thing is, so I I, I, my question is then yours is stereo probably then,

Malcom: always a hundred percent of the time. Yeah. Every, every sample track is, always stereo. Unless it's a, a, close mic floor. Tom,

Benedikt: but the, the, the snare bus, I mean,

Malcom: the snare bus as well. Yep. Yeah, because of course it would have to be if it's going there. but that my like, snare close mic is of course a mono track. Like cuz it was one mic. Right. but yeah, when, when using samples, uh, it's almost definitely gonna be a stereo track for me.

Benedikt: Okay. Yeah. Okay. So that, that, that makes sense. and then the other question is what do you do? I mean, yeah, you probably don't, just don't think about it too much. But in my case, if there's some processing that I like to use on the snare, I would have to be careful. I, I would have to try it, I guess. But like, I assume the, for example, the amount of top end that I often add to snares, uh, real recorded ness, especially DIY recordings that I often get to mix, where they have a kind of muffled room where they didn't hit the snare really hard or maybe even the skins were old. Like, if you listen to this podcast, you hopefully have new drum heads, but sometimes snares are dull. And if I add a bunch of top end to my snare, and if I have a, a one shot going to the same bus sort of, and IQ there on the bus, which I like, I don't like to mess with a lot of different snares. I do a lot of my processing on one thing. Um, then I will not only be queuing my snare top, but also that room or whatever is on there. And I kind of, that's the, that's the part that I don't like about it. Not so much the volume that's part of it, but that the processing affects the room. Or when I compress the snare really hard. The K will sound a lot different when I actually just wanna affect the transient, like the attack of it and that sort of stuff. So do you actively think about this or do things to avoid problems or do you just react to what you're hearing and, and make decisions based on that? Maybe you don't even have to do as much because of the one shot. I don't know.

Malcom: Yeah, I think that is more so it, like if you're choosing a one shot, it, it's gonna kind of solve a lot of the mixing just inherently because it is a premixed file, so it's like, okay, there's probably, yeah, it's probably a lot brighter. instantly just by adding that in, right? but if I was worried about it, I would just have to go to, you know, my snare mono track and boost there instead, you know. but the, the thing I actually like about all of my snare samples and my real snares going to the same bus, is that I can glue them together more like including the snare room sample that I maybe have added. It's like by being able to crush them all there, for example, that is kind of making it, that's like taking all these ingredients and turning it back into one piece for me,

Benedikt: Okay,

Malcom: so, so it seems to work for me that way. I do have an outside bus set up these days where if I want to sneak something past the, our, the bus where it all sums and, and past my drum bus, which is usually pretty demolished and heavily processed, that's an option. I haven't used it. Much at all, but it's, uh, it, it is there and it has come in handy a couple times.

Benedikt: Okay, cool. Now, Nick, next question. I'm gonna have a, a couple for you, mark on there. Um, hope you don't mind.

Malcom: Not at

Benedikt: Next question, and this goes back to the dynamic thing that I made a note before. and it still has to do with the, the room then, uh, yeah, but also about the dynamic. So let's say you have a part where like, let's say you have the bombastic part with all the room decay and it just explodes, and then there's some sort of more intimate, quiet part or like a very reduced verse of something where that just doesn't fit. But you want the same sort of snare sound, just not that massive decay and all of that. If I have two, if I have my close mics in room, one shot sort of separate, I can just automate down the room bus like I always do, like I would do with the real kit and I would keep the same snare sound, but with less room. If that is a one shot, including the roommate goes to my snare bus, then I would have in that part, in that quieter part, you would have to automate, I guess the, the sustained knob on trigger or something, or you would have. down the whole sample, I don't know. Or bring in another sample instead, or how do you deal with that sort of, those sort of drastic dynamic changes, if there's something like that in the,

Malcom: Yeah. that is probably the trickiest part of using one shots is those moments. Um, there's like the, the moments where it just needs to not be bombastic, and then there's the moments where it's like a, a really quick ramping snare roll. Something like that can be pretty intense . Um, so because you, that's when you get the machine gun sound right, even if the volume is rampy and it's still the same giant hit when it obviously shouldn't be a giant hit when it's starting a really quiet snare.

Benedikt: And even if you automate it, not just the volume, but even if you bring in the sample later or whatever, it's like there's this some, there's this one point where it's sort of switches to the machine gun no matter what.

Malcom: Yeah, exactly.

there's, there's kind of multiple tricks. Um, my first impulse is to turn down the sample entirely in like the situation you explained where we don't want it to be big and just try and lean heavy, more heavy on our, our real snare

Benedikt: Which requires that you tuned it or you made the tuning sort of match pretty well, because otherwise you'll get a completely different snare in that part. Right.

Malcom: Yeah, for better results, but also I don't care if it's a totally different snare I think that's awesome.

Benedikt: I thought so. Yeah.

Malcom: I mean, sometimes you totally care, but, uh, but in general, I think it's, it's lovely when, like imagine if the drummer had two snares and they could just go from like .It's, it's awesome

Benedikt: like a side snare

Malcom: Um, so I, I embrace the inhuman sometimes, um, as long as it makes it more impactful, right. but yeah, so it's showing, trying to lower the samples my first move, or, if I, it's really tricky, like you said, trying to manipulate with automation part of like the sustain or whatever you need to do there. it's not uncommon for me actually in situations like that to, round off the attack on like my main snare, or delete my attack sample entirely for like a quiet part. So it just sounds like less of a ri shot. that's another kind of solution. Yeah, or, or deleting the sample entirely at points. like with the SNA situation, I'm probably deleting samples, so I would just like delete the, the key spikes that are firing at that section. Or what I do is I mute the clip, and it's amazing how well that can work.

you'd be amazed. Another thing I should mention, this is kind of back in the how is that . Sometimes it's not every snare hit that's getting sampled, it's just the big back beats. Um, and the ghost notes in between are, are, I'm not using samples on because one shots don't do a good job with that stuff. and that can be really time consuming and frustrating

Benedikt: Yeah.

Malcom: to, get figured out and find what does work. And sometimes you have to make key specs for all of them just to find out it doesn't work, and then go and delete all of the quiet hits. but you find this balance of what works as like little buzzes don't need a sample, but the big hit does need

Benedikt: Yeah. Okay. Cool.

Malcom: it's a little bit of a balancing act.

Benedikt: Yeah. What, what we do here is, that's where so wonderfully, because I have Thomas, thankfully, like Thomas, who's editing this podcast. So, um, he's also my partner engineer here at the studio. Uh, and he edits drums for me and like he edits. Everything for me and, and perhaps the sessions. And what he does is he goes through the original drums and creates, um, the midi information with I think superior drummer's, um, tracker, which works pretty well. And then, You actually, pretty much depending on the performance, but oftentimes you see pretty quickly what the ghost notes are, what the choir notes are, and then he separates the, these velocities from the louder consistent ones, adjust the, the, the velocity by hand if like needs adjusting, like based on some guidelines that I, that I gave him, type like some sweet spots that I want. And then I get in my session, there will be a snare midi track that has the consistent parts on one mini note and the ghost notes and the choir stuff on a different mid note. And then I can quickly just trigger the louder hits with a one shot, like you said, and leave the other ones alone or trigger the other one with round robin sample or something. So, but it's like separate. It's the, it's like exactly because of that reason, because it sounds stupid if you have ghost notes and it's, it's the exact same sample as the loud ones, you know?

Malcom: Yeah. That, that did remind me, uh, that another solution for like the snare roll or, uh, yeah, the ghost note things is just boosting, like the bottom mic, uh, like the real snare bottom mic for those ghost

notes kind of thing. Um, and that, that can kind of help fill the void of the, the sample not existing there. yeah, it, it's, it sounds all complicated and tedious, but it's kind of intuitive after a while, you know, you start

reading the Matrix

Benedikt: Totally, and I mean in some parts of, some aspects about mixing and music production are tedious and complicated, but like it's, if it's worth it, you might, I mean, you know, that's the thing. I, I think that's also something that is, isn't talked about enough. You always want like quick and simple things and, but there are some parts of making music or producing music that are, that require work and are tedious no matter what. Like you can make it more efficient, but sometimes you gotta go the extra mile to make it work. And that's just what it takes. It's not always convenient. and drum samples is one of the more tedious tasks I'd say. Um, so okay. And then final question.

let's assume it's not a whole. Different section. It's not like a loud part and then a quiet part where you can just be okay with the fact that the snare sounds different and you just, um, mute or turn down the one shot. Let's assume that's not the case. Let's assume we have a part that where you use the one shot and it's heavy and consistent and within that part there's just one fill or one, role that sounds a little weird or stupid. With the one shot, uh, do you still just turn the one shot down for that one roll and uh, and just go to the natural snare there? Although it might be completely different than the rest of the part? Or do you just embrace the machine gun? Like what do you do when, when it's like within a part and you don't want that drastic change, to another part, like

Malcom: Right. Yeah, I mean that's probably more so, a volume automation move where I would lower the entire snare bus, for that role. So it keeps the same tonal kind of quality of the, well, okay. I lied. It's gonna be both. I'm gonna duck the sample volume there a little bit, but not as much maybe as I would've in the other scenario, and then lower the entire snare bus, so it's just quieter for the roll. That's almost definitely what would end up happening for me there. Um, and again, maybe boosting that snare bottom. So like the buzz is kind of more in focus, but it's like a little, there's always like this little teeter-totter balancing act there. that's probably because the more I turned down my snare bus with how I have it eroded where everything goes, everything snare, sample related goes to a snare bus. Is that the overheads and rooms of the real snare don't get turned down. Right. I'm just turning down the direct stuff and the samples so that human role in the overheads and room is becomes more in focus. Even though I didn't turn it up, I just turned the other stuff down.

Benedikt: Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Okay. Yeah, it's always this, it's always this balance. It's pretty similar to, to what I do too. I'm ju I just, I think the reason for why I didn't use it for so long, or that much at least, was that I was afraid of like the unnatural stuff that I've heard on so many records without actually and seeing if I can make it natural still. so now that I've got, I've, I've used it more. I, I see that there's nothing to be afraid of and you can make it natural and use all the advantages and it's pretty similar to what you do. I just always thought that there would be so many challenges or so many things that wouldn't quite work well, that I didn't like it. But yeah. partly because a lot of people don't use it correctly too. Like there's so many songs out there where on some it's intentional and part of the aesthetic, but I've heard so many. Especially in like the, not the very heavy stuff where it can be intentional, but like in the punk rock or, um, more sort of authentic organic sounding rock stuff where people want a real drum kit but they don't know how to use 'em properly and it's all like robotic machine gun stuff. And I think I got so turned off by that that I, yeah, I didn't use it as much as I, as I should have probably, and I only used it in the genres where it's appropriate and you can even, you can even use it audibly, like modern metal core stuff or

Malcom: Yeah. where

it's just blasting

Benedikt: gun sometimes, you know?

Malcom: Definitely, definitely. Yeah. It, it, it's a lot of fun. Um, and then used in like parallel with round robin samples can be really great too because you can like really go to town processing a round robin sample in a way that you can't really with a one shot cause it's kind of already baked in. if I need to like, make the, the drums really gritty and vibey, not robotic sounding around, Robin's probably gonna save the day. But then I can still, once that's done, grab a one shot of like a, a giant room for a section of the song and, and mix it in from there. yeah, it.

Benedikt: approach. Yeah,

Malcom: It's such a great era of drums we're in right now where we have such powerful tools. it's why it's so fun to mix drums,

Benedikt: absolutely. Yeah, it's like, that's exactly my approach. By the way. I still always start with the organic samples. Like, first of all, I see what I can get out of the natural drums. Then, I bring in my, my, one of my organic sounding samples, usually by room sound. And by the way, if you want room sound drum samples, you can go to the self recording band.com/room. Sounds to me they are the best when it comes to organic, sounds. So, uh, yeah, this, by the way, this is an affiliate link, so if you go through that, I get a small commission, but I have bought them all with my own money before I ever partnered with them because they're just amazing anyway, like so I use them first or one of those, sometimes also superior drummer and stuff. But most these room sound for me. And then, like you said, I, I treat them as part of the kit, get the most out of that. And then if I want the extra consistency or the extra effect or whatever, then I, I might add a, um, a one shot in addition to that. So it's not even either or. It's usually a combination of all those things. And by the way, it has been done. It's not a modern thing too, because people always think that the one shot strong samples or the, the, the machine gun thing or this overprocessed larger than life thing. This is something very new or modern or has been like part of the la of the, I mean, it's been two decades or so that we have metal core and stuff, but it's way older than that. Even

in the, like, back in the day, like . One shots were, almost the only way to do drum samples back then. So people used in the eighties, or I don't know how long ago, they used hardware samplers where they loaded the drum sample into this thing and then they found a way to trigger that off the tape machine, like really crazy. But they did it like a lot of the eighties bombastic snares of that era, are actually one shot samples. Just, they used it differently. they, they used it the same way, but it works differently. So this is not something new. It's, it's always been done like that. And, uh, so yeah.

Malcom: it's like one of the greatest ironies because it's the, the old kind of rocker purists that are most against drum samples, but they are the most, like their era is populated with the fake of sounding drums and the fakes drums ever

Benedikt: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, for sure, for sure. Not all bands, but yeah, for sure. Like if 80 stuff is crazy sometimes, and it is also part of what we love about it. So, yeah, it always, people always, I think the great producers and musicians always used whatever made their songs work and didn't care about the, the tools and stuff, you

Malcom: Exactly. yeah. just be grateful. It's so easy. Now that's, that's the thing. And it's so good. Like I, I, I just had a realization as we were talking Betty, that like a week ago I was talking to my mixed prep assistant, Stacy, and, uh, we had like a little velocity, mishap where I got my, all my KeyPass came in at the same velocity, so they didn't match the dynamics to the song. And uh, and we were just trying to figure that out and, uh, he was like, well, did it happen on the last song? I'm like, oh, I didn't use snare samples on the last song. So I don't know. but I did, I just, it was a programmed kit that was sent to me, so I was using a round robin snare , so it was still a snare sample, but in my head, it's so good. It sounded like a real drum kit I'd been sent that I was like, oh, I didn't end up using any drum samples on that mix, but the whole thing was drum samples.

Benedikt: This is crazy. Yeah. This just goes to show how good that stuff

is, like. Yeah, totally.

Malcom: crazy.

Benedikt: Totally. And by the way, is, uh, shout out to Stacy because I don't know him personally, but he's, he's programmed drums or, at least cleaned up the programming, but I think he programmed a lot of it himself for a coaching student of mine who was struggling with getting like realistic and still bombastic sounding, metal drums for long progressive like sort of progressive death metal song, which crazy complicated drums and stuff. And it's very hard to make that stuff sound good. yeah. Yet I won't say names here. I don't wanna throw anybody under the bus, but he had. Making that work. And then he just thought, I should hire a professional to do this, or someone who helps me with this. And then he sent it to Stacy. And what came back when I listened to it was I was blown away by how well it worked. Like all the parts made so much more sense. The transitions worked, it had the impact it needed, it had the dynamics it needed, it like sounded like a drummer, like a real thing. It was good before that and the basic ideas were there. So it wasn't terrible at all, but what, what came back from Stacy was amazing. So shout out to him.

Malcom: Yeah. Yeah, he's great. He, he get him to humanize what gets sent to me and it's like always better. It's like, yes, great,

Benedikt: yeah, for sure. And, uh, one more thing, by the way, I way too many calls to action in this, in this this episode. I don't know if you guys, if you listening to this, we'll click on any of those links. But, um, here's another one. If you want to be part of the coaching program, the self recording syndicate that I. you can go to the surf recording ben.com/call the surf recording ben.com/call and book a free first one-on-one call so we can see if it is a great fit for you. and you'll get a roadmap, a step by step action plan for you to follow. And then you can either implement that on your own or together with me and be part of the syndicate the coaching program. And the one little bonus that we just added there is I actually partnered up with a room sound even more, and everybody who joins this program now gets one of their libraries for free just on top of it, just so you have a good set of tools to work with. So that's just one bonus that you get when you join this coaching program. You have one of the best sounding simple libraries as a, as a free gift.

Malcom: Yeah.

Benedikt: the surf recording, bent.com/call and I'd

Malcom: That's so awesome. All it blows my mind. All you need today to make a great sounding song is, a two channel interfa. Well, really a one channel interface, a drum library like any of those. Drum a room, sound, drum libraries, and, uh, a di channel. And you can make a killer rock production

Benedikt: Yeah, it's fascinating, right? Yeah, yeah. Totally. Totally. It's never, yeah, I, I, I agree and, uh, no, I agree. It's, it's amazing. It also means though, and this is like a little spoiler to like the next episode that you're probably gonna hear one of the next episodes. This also leads to the fact that like, every single day, 60,000 songs are uploaded to Spotify. because everybody thankfully can record their own, uh, music at home now. And the tools are there to make it awesome, but not everybody is using them to the full advantage or like

their full potential.

Malcom: those tools doesn't mean it's awesome. That's right.

Benedikt: But you can, and this is fantastic and I love the fact that you can do that. I just gotta make the most of it. And um, that's why we here to help you exactly. Do that. But it's never been a better, like, it's never been a better time to make, to make music or to be a musician and get your stuff out in, in the world. It's just fantastic. And it's even evolved in the past, like years or decades. Like we are not that old so we can't really talk about how hard it was in the old days week we came up with computers and that sort of stuff. But even during those past one or two decades, it evolved so much that it's now completely different to, compared to when I was starting in 2008 or seven or six. So whenever, you know, so

Malcom: Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, hopefully you're ready to play with some drum samples after listening to this, um, or. Maybe, uh, you just wanted to learn about it and you don't have any intention of using them. It doesn't really matter as long as you know that these tools exist and that they're, they're pretty easy to utilize, um, at least for like, for demo purposes and stuff. Really easy to implement for, for using them in a, a mix, little more of a process involved, um, to get it right. But it's like, like in Canada you have to make demos for like ground applications, uh, and or just kind of sharing around kind of thing and just being able to make it like hit this quality bar with some one shots really quickly. Super handy tool, I think. just kind of add a little bit of polish to your demo, at the very least for a ground application. Totally handy.

Benedikt: absolutely. Absolutely agreed. Um, yeah, and final thing here again, to the first. Or one of the first things that we told you about in this episode that you should check out, um, if you go to YouTube and you search for Malcolm own Flood or YouTube slash at Malcolm own flood, then you get, you get to Malcolm's channel and this is the sort of the how, video, I think where, or like it's at least, um, yeah, an actionable video on how, on how to use drum samples basically.

Malcom: Yeah, you'll visually,

Benedikt: that we've been talking about on this episode.

Malcom: yeah, you'll visually get to see how the different ways you can do it and, uh, wrap your head around it. And you'll then see also how my samples are kind of laid out a little bit and it, uh, it'll kind of visualize this whole episode actually. I think so. That'd be good.

Benedikt: yeah, totally. So go there, subscribe to Malcolm's channel. Um, very exciting future because, uh, is a hat because. Malcolm Cups channel is amazing and I'm looking forward to everything that's, that's coming. There we are at some point finally gonna start ours properly, so I can't wait for that too. And then you're gonna have to really kick ass, channels, resources on YouTube as well. And I think our, like in depth long form conversations here in the podcast compared with the quicker actionable howtos on YouTube is really like, I can't believe how much value actually is in that sort of stuff. Like I'm really excited for that.

Malcom: Awesome.

Benedikt: All right. So, uh, talk to you next week and, uh, thank you for listening.

Malcom: Thanks for listening.