DISCRETE DRUMS "HEAVY MENTAL" DRUM SAMPLE LIBRARY

[Anderton]

DISCRETE DRUMS: HEAVY MENTAL DRUM LIBRARY

I’ve been wanting to do a Pro Review of a sample library for a long time, for two reasons: I get to make some music while I’m doing it, and it always seemed that being able to present audio examples made a lot of sense when reviewing something like a sample library. So here we are with our first one: Heavy Mental from Discrete Drums.

FWIW, I still reach for Discrete Drum’s Series One sample CD collection when I need quick drums for a soundtrack; it’s stood the test of time. Why? The sound quality is excellent, the playing is dynamic and human, and the files are presented in multitrack format so it’s easy to mutate the tracks as you want: Process just the snare, replace the kick, bring up the room mics, that sort of thing. As a result, even though it’s a drum sample library, you can personalize it to a large degree. So much so, in fact, that I did a “remix” of it and played it for the Discrete Drum guys. I expected them to throw me across the room (“We spent thousands of hours getting it to sound right, and you put it through distortion pedals!”) but instead they said “cool” and put it out as a sample CD called “Turbulent Filth Monsters.”

Okay, on to Heavy Mental. For more details, you can check out the Discrete Drums web site at http://www.discretedrums.com . But expect to be somewhat confused, as there are multiple versions of Heavy Mental.

* Heavy Mental Super Pro Bundle. This has 14 data CDs, two audio CDs for auditioning, four CDs of 16-bit stereo files (for when it’s too much work to do multitrack, and the Heavy Mental Drum Kit Samples DVD. This has kits for SampleTank, Reason NN-XT, EXS-24, Halion, Giga, Mach 5, Kontakt, and Battery. Total price: $379

* Heavy Mental Pro Bundle. This is the same as the above, but doesn’t have the four CDs of 16-bit stereo files. It costs $329. (Hint: It’s worth the $50 to have the stereo files for when you’re pressed for time.)

* Heavy Mental Pro Tools Edition (Mac only). This has three DVDs 3 with 24-bit multitrack Pro Tools Sessions, 16 projects, and MP3s for auditioning, and costs $279.

* Heavy Mental Pro Tools Edition Bundle (Mac only). This is what’s mentioned above along with the Heavy Mental Drum Kit Samples; the bundle costs $329.

* Heavy Mental Drum Kit Samples. This is just the kits, and is available on one DVD for $99.

* Heavy Mental Drums DVD - Stereo Apple Loop Edition. This one costs $124.

* Heavy Mental Drums - 16 Bit Stereo WAV Edition. This is two CD-ROMs of 16-bit WAV files with two audio CDs for easy auditioning, and costs $129.

Confused yet? Well no matter at this end; as I have the Super Pro Bundle to review, I have all the subsets (except for the Pro Tools projects). And hopefully I got the prices right - they aren’t list prices, but the price if you buy from the Discrete Drums web site.

[Anderton]

Let’s begin at the beginning, with Disc 1 of the multitracked drum projects. This CD has one set of drum files called Earth Shaking. The tempo is 140BPM, so if I want to slide it into a techno dance track, I can J

One song per CD? Well, it’s 598MB of files, with 87 folders and 684 files. Click on the picture to see the folders included on this disc. That’s a lot of stuff, which is why it really helps to have the two audio CDs that let you audition what the different “songs” sound like…you wouldn’t want to have to wade through all those files just to find out what the song sounds like.

Within each folder, there are 8 different tracks with particular characteristics (see the second picture):

Big Room – This sounds really compressed and huge
Gak – Dirty, distorted, and fun to mix in the background.
Hat – Hi-hat track
Kick – Kick track
OH – Overhead
Room – Ambient drum sound
Snare – Snare track
Toms – Toms track

[Anderton]

Note that the individual drum tracks aren’t isolated; you do get some leakage. What I’ve done here is include the sound of just the kick drum file, kick+snare, and kick+snare+room. Now remember, we’re only dealing with three tracks – and I haven’t even processed them or even paid much attention to setting levels – and there are five more tracks we can bring into the mix.

You can either listen to these samples or download them. To listen to them, with Explorer, click on the file and select open; it will play in Windows Media Player. With Safari, open the file and it will play in iTunes.

Check ‘em out…this is just the start of what we'll be posting, but I wanted to get at least some sounds up before heading off to dinner Just wait until you hear the Gak tracks...

[Anderton]

Just for kicks, I made a loop that consists only of the Big Room, Room, and Overhead sounds. As you’ll hear, the difference compared to using the dry drum sounds is pretty striking. Leakage city!

[Anderton]

One of the big advantages to the multitrack approach is that you can process the different tracks individually. In this example, the first two measures are just the Kick, Hat, Snare, and Tom tracks. In the next two measures, PSP’s Vintage Warmer has been added to the kick to make it punch like Muhammed Ali I his prime, and the snare has a touch of IK Multimedia’s CSR plate reverb and some Sonitus:fx EQ giving the upper midrange a bit of lift. Finally, there’s a little bit of the Big Room track mixed in as well.

Of course, for a real world situation, you’d probably want to mix the kick down a bit…or maybe not.

[Anderton]

You can also take individual tracks and mix them in with other loops to give them more character. In this example, the first two measures are a loop from a Sony sample CD. In the next two measures, the Room and Gak tracks from the same Alt Beat pattern we’ve used for all the examples so far gets put into play. Yow!

Oh…I should also add that I cheated just a little bit. Because the loop was metronomic and the Discrete Drums parts weren’t, I used Sonar’s AudioSnap function to get them to line up. The Discrete Drums snare provided the snap transients, and I snapped the loop to the snare so that the loop would follow the “feel” of the Discrete Drums loop.

[Anderton]

Fun stuff, eh? Now, remember we've used only one folder from one song out of 14 CDs. There's plenty more to come, but this should start to give you an idea of what you can do with multitracked drum libraries.

I should also add that I really didn't put too much work into these, so the mixes are a little off compared to the ideal...but I figured you'd prefer that I spend my time posting some examples instead of agonizing over the mix for each loop.

[Anderton]

Well I'm back from the road, so let's dive back in. We'll return to Fun with Multitracking, but for now, we'll look at another aspect of Heavy Mental: The stereo WAV files.

It's important to understand that there are "Construction Kits" with lots of segments, fills, and sections you can put together to create a complete, long track. When I'm in a hurry and need a quick drum part for a soundtrack, this is considerably easier than using the multitracked versions. Of course you don't have the sonic flexibility of being able to, say, process the kick separately, but when something's mixed -14dB behind a narrator, no one's going to care.

Disc 1 has 11 different projects/construction kits, while Disc 2 has 5 projects and some additional folders:

Misc isn't a big deal; it has three stick sounds, "one" and "two" counts for countoffs, and some vocal that sounds like "allright".
Crashes is your resource for endings. You'll find cymbal hits (china, choke, crash, cymbal swell, drum end, ride end, etc.), usually in conjunction with a kick drum hit. But there are also snare, tom, and hi-hat endings.
Drum Solos Great for when you introduce the band Seriously, there's a 29-second solo, 21-second solo, and a 2'18" mother of all drum solos. This is fun stuff, you wouldn't use it every day but I don't know of any other drum CDs with solos on them.

Of the project folders, there are a lot of elements - one called Neuronic Whip tips the scales at 142 files, but it's typical to have 50, 60, 70, and more files in a project.

For example, there's a project called Head Trip with 96 files. Rather than list them all, check out the picture: As you can see, there are a ton of bridges, verses, breaks, tom beats, and the like.

Most of the names are obvious; some aren't. Fortunately, there's a PDF that explains that if a file says METAL or MTL, it's a flashier segment; TOP means just cymbals and hats are being played, DBLKIK means double kick drum patterns, and the like.

[Anderton]

The reason for having so many patterns and variations is that you can put together extremely realistic-sounding drum parts. You can repeat one Verse loop, say, three times in a row, then throw in a different Verse variation for the last pattern.

The first audio example plays two different Verse patterns in a row; the first is somewhat simpler, and the second, more complex. Alternating these two can add a lot more interest to a part.

The second audio example goes a couple steps further. As the part progresses, note how it becomes progressively more complex until it finally ends in a tom fill. This was assembled from four, four-bar Verse patterns that play one after another (not necessarily because it makes the most sense musically, but so you can hear the level of variation among these different parts). But to add a little interest, I pasted the last two beats of a fill over the last two beats of the existing pattern to add a sweet tom fill at the end.

In fact, if you’re willing to do a little cut & paste action, the loops are played with such consistency (by Tony Morra) that it’s easy to cut out parts of a loop and overwrite other sections of a different loop and get away with it.

[Anderton]

Calling Discrete Drums people...as I'm listening to these samples, I gotta say I'm really impressed with the room sound loops. If it wouldn't be giving away any trade secrets, could you describe a bit about the room you used, and the miking?

[Anderton]

Okay, here's a fun audio example that takes advantage of the multitrack drum aspect.

The first measure has the snare, kit, hats, and big room sound playing naturally.

The second measure has the same roster of sounds, but the room sound has been transposed down by 3 semitones. Note how it makes the room bigger and heavier.

The third and final measure has the same sounds as the second measure, but the room sound has been transposed down two more semitones, and the original (non-transposed room sound) has been mixed in as well. Now that's one heavy-sounding room.....!

[Anderton]

This is another example where the tracks were left alone, except for the room sound.

The first measure is as-is...just the various drum tracks from the sample CD.

The second measure applies downward expansion to the room sound track, and everything else is the same. Check out how much this "tightens" up the sound.

The third measure is JUST the sound of the expanded room track.

The fourth measure is JUST the sound of the original room track.

So what, you say? Well, I've exaggerated the effect a bit for clarity, but one good application would be to use expansion on the drum sound in a verse, when things are a little more intimate, then taking off the expansion in the Big Effing Chorus to fill out the sound more and make it bigger.

[therage57]

Originally Posted by Anderton

Calling Discrete Drums people...as I'm listening to these samples, I gotta say I'm really impressed with the room sound loops. If it wouldn't be giving away any trade secrets, could you describe a bit about the room you used, and the miking?

EQ Magazine did a short review (been like maybe two years now) and mentioned the studio and some other info in the article.

[MitchG]

Hi Craig,

I remember Rick DiFonzo from DD invited me to drop by and sit in on the sessions for Heavy Mental. They were done in the Big Boy Room at Sound Kitchen in Franklin, TN (outside of Nashville) — an amazing space with a beautiful API console.

Tony is a great drummer, and Steve Marcantonio did an awesome job of engineering those tracks. There was quite an array of mics around the kit, plus the "Gak" -- gotta love that thing.

I even got to play a few rounds of "Guess the Hair Band Song" as Tony played through the various styles he recorded that day...pretty fun.

I like all the DD sets, but I really enjoy this one a lot.

Mitch

[Anderton]

Mitch, it's always a treat when you find the time to come here and contribute, and thanks for the insights. Rick is probably too busy making megabucks doing themes for NBC sports or whatever to spend too much time here

[HKSblade1]

This is cool !

I had been making my own with E drums and a Boss Dr. Saving the tracks to sep files to be composed later. Takes a long time to assemble something individually. This may save me the work!! thx for the review Craig!

[Anderton]

Originally Posted by HKSblade1

This is cool !

I had been making my own with E drums and a Boss Dr. Saving the tracks to sep files to be composed later. Takes a long time to assemble something individually. This may save me the work!! thx for the review Craig!

You're very welcome! Doing a sample library as a Pro Review is something we haven't tried before, but it seems to be working well. I will say that as a user, the DD stuff is uniformly great, both in terms of sound quality and performances. I think their "secret sauce," aside from the multitrack aspect, is that there are enough variations included so you don't get that dreaded "cookie cutter loops" issue. You can make parts that really "breathe."

[the stranger]

Originally Posted by Anderton

Calling Discrete Drums people...as I'm listening to these samples, I gotta say I'm really impressed with the room sound loops. If it wouldn't be giving away any trade secrets, could you describe a bit about the room you used, and the miking?

I really like this Pro Review. I really want to know what kind of drums they were using, especially the bass drum. That dry sound is the perfect mix of tight and fat. Tasty.

When the room kicks in, I think it almost has a certain artificial sound to it. Not bad, I just hear a bit of ring that is almost sounds like a plate or something similar. It's big (maybe more deep than big), but it has a lot of slap to it. I'd guess two verbs, maybe. Or the room, enhanced with some early reflections.
It is a cool room sound. It has a big Led type thing, with a bit of Beasties trash thrown in to balance out the equation.

I do like the examples posted so far. I could get serious results with a library like this. I'm going to take a closer look at DD's website and see what's on offer.

[Anderton]

The room sounds are genuine room sounds, any ringing you hear is from the room itself. Do note, though, that I messed with the room sounds in some examples (transposition). I noted these in the text.

I'm working on some more examples right now

[Anderton]

Before bidding adieu to the project in Heavy Mental Disc 1, here's a real-world example of using the library.

I just finished writing a review of the HD.6X-PRO (also known as the Les Paul Digital Guitar) for EQ magazine, and wanted an audio example of what it sounded like. So I cranked up a DD loop, and laid down some sounds with the guitar...here are the results. And yes, that's just one guitar and one drum loop...