Audio Recording

I have successfully produced drum tracks without a drummer. And the good thing is that the tracks are still playable live with a real drummer. With this type of set-up I get these following benefits :

a. Save money on drums.

b. Save time on tracking drums.

c. Save space on the studio.

Unlike other drum sequencing, I think this produces the best sound. Try to hear one of my produced tracks using this type of drum sequencing method:

(” Sure” by Jeanine Maningo)
(Song Publisher info: www.musicforlicense.net)

It is now hard to distinguish the difference in sound between a real drummer and this type of approach. Also, it will be 100% in timing because of the sequencing is software driven.

Above are the basic but complete parts of a real drum kit. The important parts are:

1. Kick drum

2. Floor toom
3. Snare
4. Left and Right Mid tom.
5. Open/pedal hi hats.
6. Right (Crash cymbal)
7. Left (Ride cymbal)

All of this are possible to produce,thanks to the use of Hotstepper Drum Sequencer. This is a freeware courtesy of Christian Knufinke.

Please try to download Hotstepper, so you can try the demonstrations below. To open the archive, you need RAR software. You can download it on that link that I provide.

Above is the view of a default hotstepper program. To open hotstepper, open the archive and click hotstepper.exe to run the program. You can then see the default drum parts setting:

Hotstepper can play audio in a programmed sequence using its audio file library of real recorded drum tracks. You can record you own drum sample and name it using the following…

Update July 19, 2009: If you are confused because you do not know the specifications for the drum audio sample to be imported to Hotstepper sound library. Do not worry. I will write a tutorial soon covering this topic. Thanks.
Update September 23, 2011: You can read this tutorial on adding new drum sounds to your Hotstepper library.

Take note these are real drum sounds beat with real hands not the midi sounds that will produce the common “demo” sound. The respective audio file names in the hotstepper library corresponding the real drum kit parts are:

a. Kick drum- “rock kick.wav”
b. Floor toom- “floor toom.wav”
c. Snare – “tama snare.wav”
d. Left and Right Mid tom.”Mid toom.wav”
e. Open hi hat- “Open hi hat.wav”
f. pedal hi hats. – “Pedal hi hat.wav”
g. Right (Crash cymbal)- “Cymbal crash tama”
h. Left (Ride cymbal)- “Ride cymbal.wav”

Then change the following default settings to real drum sound mode(the default is midi):

Change default:

1. “Bass drum ultra” at No.1 to “rock kick.wav”, you can change by selecting the arrow down besides the mute “m” symbol.(see screenshot below)
2. “Kick” at No.2 to “floor toom.wav”
3. “Snare gated” at No.3 to “tama snare.wav”
4. “Snare short” to “mid toom.wav”
5. “Snare cool” to “Open hi hat.wav”
6. “Full Claps” to ” Pedal hi hat.wav”
7. “Pedal hi hat” to “Cymbal crash tama”
8. “Open Hi hat” to “Ride Cymbal.wav”

After changing the default to it’s proper real drum sound. The sequencer menu should look like this:

Today in 2011/2012, there are a lot of great drumming software that you can use to produce a much better sounding drums than Hot stepper. I would recommend checking out Superior Drummer by Toontrack:

http://www.toontrack.com/products.asp?item=30

Although this is not free, but for a relatively low price you can get the most important features shown below:

1.) Ability to integrate in your existing DAW easily such as Reaper digital audio workstation software.

2.) 24-bit drum samples (HotStepper does not have 24-bit support only 16-bits so the quality is not good) for near analog recording sound quality.

3.) Tons of brilliant drum tone presets by professional drummers and producers in the recording industry.

Content last updated on February 4, 2012