Need help with samples

[CJthemusicdude]

Hello workshop people! So my last couple of submissions to OCR got rejected or form lettered because of poor quality samples, I was wondering if anyone could point me to some good samples because I'm a little lost. I have a looot of samples (Mostly for percussion) and to me a good chunk of them sound fine alone, and when I try out different drum samples in my mix they sound alright to me. However I've never been good with drums so I need some help on how to spot good quality sounds and how to avoid bad ones.

Here's an example of a submission of mine that just recently got rejected for poor sample quality. http://ocrwip.fireslash.net/?fid=1257 It's a battletoads double dragon remix. Maybe you can help point out the bad samples.

Any and all advice would be appreciated, thanks.

[prophetik music]

wow, that intro is so cheesy. all the voiceovers are really 80's bad, man

bad samples would be anything that doesn't sound realistic and/or good. so, like, those terrible fake guitars would fall into that category. those brass and flute samples in the middle are bad AND robotic, with no effort given to humanization, so that's likely a big part of the issue. the bass is a decent sound by itself, but it's mega robotic and doesn't have any character either.

your drum sounds don't really match the style, either - they're super dry and don't have any room sound to them, and they're super clean, so there's no body to the tone - and really unimaginative programming certainly don't help.

[SnappleMan]

I can't stand it when people say that something is bad because it's not realistic.

For the most part, samples are meant to be played via MIDI controller, that's your "humanization". As for that song up there, it's more a matter of the bad production than the samples themselves. I can take those same samples and make a great sounding song out of them, you just have to know what you're doing.

There are so many cases of people being incorrectly told that their samples are bad, when it's actually their skill with any samples that's bad. So they get a huge sample set, fill up their hard drives with 500gb of professional samples, and then they think all is well, but they keep turning out awful music.

[CJthemusicdude]

Ok, that cleared a few things up for me. But I guess now I'm not sure exactly what counts as "samples"

For example the "brass and flute" samples in the middle are from a layered synth vst. But do they still count as "Samples?"

When I rework this song I'll definitely try to spruce up production, I need some ideas. Prophetik was right about the cheesy 80's vibe because that's what I was going for. I've always envisioned battletoads to have a sort of "BATTELTUDS RADICAL" sorta feel, but that doesn't excuse my poor production so I still want to have like, cheesy guitar bits but have them sound nice if that makes any sense.

Also Snapple when you say samples should be played with a midi controller, how far does that go? I can understand playing melodies by hand but I could never do drums live, I'd have to sequence them, how do I humanize them more?

[DarkSim]

Humanising drums is down to velocities, "swing", and lots of nice fills and interesting notes. Sounds like your drum writing is good in this, but the velocities aren't changed enough, and it's very mechanical, as well as lacking some polish on the production side.

As for the production on the remix in general, it just sounds like it needs a load of effects and stuff, as well as some "more interesting" synths. Play around with your synth vst and really get to know it INTIMATELY. Even if your synth vst sucks (although IIRC you have a decent one), some plugins like chorus and phasing stuff can make them sound great, as well as reverb and delay effects.

[prophetik music]

I can't stand it when people say that something is bad because it's not realistic.

it's bad because it's bad, man. i'm the first one to say that something can be completely unrealistic and still balls-out awesome, but if you're going to chug on midi-quality guitars, it better fucking rock or it's just going to sound terrible.

compare it to a game. if the graphics are really, really bad, most people will have trouble seeing past that and accepting gameplay or design that's not completely awesome. minecraft is a good example of 'poor' graphics becoming cool because of the great gameplay and great design work.

when the judges say "samples", they mean your instruments, synths...anything that's making a musical sound, be it percussive or melodic. so yeah, those turrrrrrible trombone and flute synths count.

my issue with the drums is twofold. they're mega-robotic, meaning that every hat hit is the same, every snare hit is the same, etc. as a result they sound more repetitive than they actually are, because your ear gets tired of the sound quickly. my other issue is the tone that you're getting from them. they'd sound great in other genres, but the very dry and poppy sound that you're getting from them doesn't fit the grungy YEAAAAAH RAWK sound you're trying to go for, and it just adds to the disconnect.

i wouldn't say that it needs loads of effects, honestly. first, take that 'guitar' and burn it combining a decent set of guitar samples - shreddage is mega cheap and awesome! - with some good distortion will get the basic geetar sound you're looking for, and then it's just a matter of humanizing it. beyond that, remember that 80s stuff had loads of room sound and reverb on it to make it sound extra epic and awesome, so maybe listen to a few 80s tracks and try to simulate that same sound with your drums. then just keep rolling through each instrument in the track, and instead of just scrolling through presets and finding one that's close, try to actually mold the sound more, whether it's through playing with the envelopes, using filters or other effects, whatever you can do with your synth.

[SnappleMan]

Also Snapple when you say samples should be played with a midi controller, how far does that go? I can understand playing melodies by hand but I could never do drums live, I'd have to sequence them, how do I humanize them more?

That's what I thought, that I couldn't do drum parts via keyboard, but it didn't take long for me to get really good at that too. Now all my parts are live. You can record simply too; do one pass with just kick and snare (maybe toms too), go back for a second pass with the hihat, then come back a third time and add in your cymbals.

If you really can't get the hang of keydrumming, then go into your quantize settings and see if it has an offset function. This gives you a "fuzzy" slightly misaligned quantize simulating a very slightly off-time performance which sounds much more natural than something that's completely snapped to the grid.

[SnappleMan]

it's bad because it's bad, man. i'm the first one to say that something can be completely unrealistic and still balls-out awesome, but if you're going to chug on midi-quality guitars, it better fucking rock or it's just going to sound terrible.

GM guitar is actually 4 or 5 patches, and you can program great sounding fake guitar if you know which of those articulations to use at what time, then apply some EQ and distortion to it, and it'll sound good enough (though most people will just use DISTORTION GUITAR and not bother with the muted patch, or the harmonics patch). Something like shreddage will sound good half the time, but there's always that fakeness to it, and when you hear it, the entire illusion falls apart and the trick is exposed, making it sound more lame than a GM guitar which was never meant to fool you in the first place, it was just trying to sound cool.

Listen to some SNES and arcade soundtracks which use sampled guitars, they always know which articulations are needed, and it always sounds awesome. You know it's just a sample, but it's well done and sounds great within the song.

[prophetik music]

wait, you're saying that midi's better than real samples of a guitar for doing rhythm stuff? looooooooooool! nice try, man, but not true at all. even if shreddage didn't have like five times the articulations that midi does, it's still more playable than midi simply because there's KV switches in there to MAKE it more playable.

[Nabeel Ansari]

wait, you're saying that midi's better than real samples of a guitar for doing rhythm stuff? looooooooooool! nice try, man, but not true at all. even if shreddage didn't have like five times the articulations that midi does, it's still more playable than midi simply because there's KV switches in there to MAKE it more playable.

I think Snapman is trying to say that sounding unrealistic doesn't really mean it's BAD.

Going for absolute realism, yeah of course you don't use GM bank guitars but GM bank guitars can have a good sound in their own way (just maybe not how a real guitar sounds).

- shreddage is mega cheap and awesome! -

I wouldn't call $450 cheap. Shreddage is cheap, the sampler is not.

[CJthemusicdude]

Thanks for all the advice guys.

I'll definitely improve my sample manipulation and I'm slowly but surely working on live part recording.

I'm not too worried about guitar samples though because I rarely use them in my mixes. That little 5 second snippit of guitar in the battletoads mix is about the extent of my guitar use. I'd rather just burn it and replace it with something else. If I reallly needed a significant guitar part I'd just bug someone hear to record a guitar part for me.

[SnappleMan]

wait, you're saying that midi's better than real samples of a guitar for doing rhythm stuff? looooooooooool! nice try, man, but not true at all. even if shreddage didn't have like five times the articulations that midi does, it's still more playable than midi simply because there's KV switches in there to MAKE it more playable.

You should try reading my post next time. What I said was that when something is desperately trying to be real (like shreddage) it fails much worse than a very simple sample set that's just made to sound cool. But what do I know, I'm just one of the most prominent and respected guitar players/remixers in the scene.

[prophetik music]

even more loooooool...have you ever even used shreddage, or just listened to a bunch of terrible examples of it?

shreddage isn't meant to be awesome at everything, just rhythm guitar. for 99% of what non-guitarists do, it's awesome. although i'm sure you've got a deeper knowledge of it since you've used it and all. and it doesn't "fail much worse" than something else - it doesn't fail at all, really, if you're using it reasonably.

but what do i know, i'm [insert something semi-relevant here].

ok, i think we're done berating that point

looking forward to hearing a new version, cj.

[SnappleMan]

I agree with shreddage in theory (I mean shit it was basically my idea and I was the original guitarist meant to do it with Zircon, I just flaked out on him). What I don't agree with is the notion that rhythm guitar is just a simple and mostly percussively grounded style of playing the instrument. Most non-guitarists get it completely wrong, so regardless of how many multisampled libraries you throw at them, they'll continue to get it wrong. This ties back to my earlier point that it's not the samples that are the problem, but the programming and sequencing abilities of the user. There are so many MIDI CCs tailored to expression and realism that nobody here on OCR uses because they've been taught to just get better samples, which solves nothing. You can argue this all you want, but what I'm saying is completely correct. For the past 30 years professionals have been working with ridiculously small sample sets and have been making amazing sounding music with them, all it comes down to is the programming and the users experience with MIDI controls.

[Moseph]

I agree with shreddage in theory (I mean shit it was basically my idea and I was the original guitarist meant to do it with Zircon, I just flaked out on him). What I don't agree with is the notion that rhythm guitar is just a simple and mostly percussively grounded style of playing the instrument. Most non-guitarists get it completely wrong, so regardless of how many multisampled libraries you throw at them, they'll continue to get it wrong. This ties back to my earlier point that it's not the samples that are the problem, but the programming and sequencing abilities of the user. There are so many MIDI CCs tailored to expression and realism that nobody here on OCR uses because they've been taught to just get better samples, which solves nothing. You can argue this all you want, but what I'm saying is completely correct. For the past 30 years professionals have been working with ridiculously small sample sets and have been making amazing sounding music with them, all it comes down to is the programming and the users experience with MIDI controls.

QFE regarding use of CCs. I've spent the past year or so trying to figure out how to do a decent orchestra mock-up with samples. The things I'm automating at this point are expression, volume, low-pass filter, master tempo, pitch (every instrument's pitch is slightly different and constantly changing -- the ensemble is never perfectly in tune with itself), and velocity layer crossfade on certain instruments. And all of this stuff, except for volume, is continuous automation, not just occurring in certain places. And it's never copy/pasted -- it's rerecorded for each individual instrument, and in cases where I layer instruments, each individual layer. And I've had to start using the motion sensors on a Wiimote instead of standard controller wheels/fader/pots just to get automation curves that sound natural enough. And there are still a bunch of things that I'm NOT doing that would probably make the music sound more realistic (automated sample attack time, custom articulation combinations, articulation crossfades, performing instrument notes instead of drawing them, etc.). At this point, the big question is just how much time I'm willing to spend on a diminishing return.

And my orchestral ReMix that's waiting to be posted is no longer up to my own production standards, which makes me kind of sad.

I've even heard official demos for expensive sample libraries that sound bad because the people the company hired to write demos that are supposed to sell the library just didn't use the samples very well. And probably the engineers and marketing people can't tell, because they themselves can't use the samples at such a high level (presumably, they'd be writing the demos if they could). (This issue makes it discouragingly hard to tell how good a library is just by listening to things other people have done with it.)

[eilios]

it doesn't fail at all, really, if you're using it reasonably.

Not to be a dick, but that was pretty much SM's point. If you use a realistic sounding library terribly and it sounds awfully unrealistic, it's a lot more in-your-face than if you use a fake sounding library and it sounds unrealistic, because at least in the latter it's cheesy about it and has no pretence of realism.

[Rozovian]

itt prophet misunderstands. Stop picking on him for it.

As has been said, you can do a lot with bad samples and basic synths if you get a decent performance out of them. Whether it sounds real or not is then no longer the issue, it's whether or not it rocks, it has groove, or whatever it's supposed to do.

While it's best to have both, production plays a big part in it too. Badly mixed samples that are great won't sound great, just like crap samples mixed processed right can make for a decent mix. One of the biggest problems with cheap-sounding instruments is that they become static and often lack phat. These are both problems you can usually solve with effects, if not in the instrument itself. Chorus and overdrive are two useful effects for that. Someone recently suggested a short, warm reverb (before the big long obvious reverb) on bad orchestral samples to make them work better. Use whatever technique gets you a sound that works.

While better samples make most of this stuff easier, you can do all right with cheap and free stuff as well. I got posted before I had bought any cool new synths, and I won a round of the GMRB without them too (main computer hard drive crash, used old laptop instead).

[Moseph]

Not to be a dick, but that was pretty much SM's point. If you use a realistic sounding library terribly and it sounds awfully unrealistic, it's a lot more in-your-face than if you use a fake sounding library and it sounds unrealistic, because at least in the latter it's cheesy about it and has no pretence of realism.

I think perhaps a comparison with the uncanny valley in robotics is apropos.

[SnappleMan]

I think in the end there are two equally valid arguments when it comes to sample quality, and the one thing everyone should agree on is that the performance and experience of the artist make the biggest difference.

[prophetik music]

I think in the end there are two equally valid arguments when it comes to sample quality, and the one thing everyone should agree on is that the performance and experience of the artist make the biggest difference.

definitely agree here. the uncanny valley point is also a definite thing to state here as well - an almost-realistic animation of a face bothers a graphics designer a lot more than it bothers your standard consumer.