Let’s start off with just saying; there are some real amazing drum libraries out there now! I do remember trying to use electronic drums, back in the 80s, to record my drum parts at home… and wow has this technology come a long way. There are some really great advantages electronic drums have, but there are also some drawbacks that need to be considered. Let’s take a brief look at some pros & cons of tracking sampled drums.

If you are looking for realistic sounding natural drums; one of my favorite programs is Superior Drummer from ToonTrack. As an engineer; I love the flexibility they give. As a drummer; I love the awesome selection of great sounding drums that are available. However, as with most sampled libraries, there are some drawbacks. One commonly forgotten drawback to using most sample libraries is called “Repetition Suppression”. This is a studied condition, that exists for all animals, where the neurons in the brain will actually stop firing as the brain detects repetition… in other words; our brains are wired to ignore repetition. I have talked about this before, with noise filtering, and now I bring it up with using sampled drums… in particular drum loops. Repetitive drum hits and especially loops can fall victim to repetition suppression.

One of the best ways to avoid this from happening to your drum tracks is also one of the coolest parts of using drum samples. Many times when drum samples are used, they are triggered from MIDI signals. If this is how you are using your drum samples; then time to get dynamic. Although you may not have control over using multiple samples for each drum, you may have control over making changes in the velocities of each hit. Going into your MIDI performance and changing the velocities of the drums is a great way to humanize your sampled drum sounds and to avoid repetition suppression.

Now that you have taken an even drum track, with all the same velocities, and totally messed it up… it is time to bring it back to a usable state. Send those drum hits, with the varied velocities, into your compressors. You may even want to set up a sidechain compressor and keep some of the original tone. As your velocities change your compressor will react differently while evening out the performance (depending on your ratio setting). Now you have variations with your sample library.

There are some sample libraries that utilize several sample of the same drums. These are great because they help to avoid this entire issue. However, if you are stuck with one sample per drum… then try out this trick. It will bring new life into your sampled tracks.