ReasonTalk.com

I'm not sure. I have this sinking feeling that it'll degrade the overall quality of my works.

Not that this is exactly the same thing, but most drummers use the same set for years, often changing out snare drums/cymbals in the studio but using the same snare live for the most part. Their kits become their 'sound', and their fans expect that sound! Personally speaking, I still use the same Gretsch kit I've used for almost 20 years now, but have multiple snares/cymbals to choose from.

What I look for with samples is a collection of several kits that serve different purposes. I find that kits that are versatile sonically (can be EQ'd/compressed to sound different) are very handy, but so are 'signature' kits (808/909 as some examples).

I also have individual samples that I use again and again over time, some from back in the 80s! I don't always use them, but I find myself coming back to them from time to time.

So I'd say one and only one kit is probably going to get old if you don't approach it differently for different tracks (changing decay time, EQ, compression, etc). But you are the 'artist' and only you can know if you need a 'sound' for your drums or if you need constant change with your kits - or something in between! That's my take on it, fwiw.


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Not necessarily. Rock groups use the same drum set for every song. A lot of EDM is the same kick, snare and clap over and over again. It also adds consistency to your tracks. Something that ties your different tracks together.

I generally use the same base set for everything. I have a sample set built that I really like and it works really well for most songs. I'll change elements to fit another song better but there's 1 sample I use in every snare. Since reason 1.
Overall, it's fine. If you have something that works than keep it. Good sounds are good sounds. Just don't be afraid to evolve. I use the same set but tweak it regularly and save my patch. Also just tweaking the hats/cymbals can change the whole feel of a beat.

After listening to your tracks on SoundCloud I would not assume you are using the same drum set all the time.

Most drummers use the same drum set (hardware) for years. Nothing wrong with that, even in the digital world

Dammit Selig. Posting something similar to me again, but way better and with more detail at the same time as me. YOU'RE MAKING ME LOOK BAD, MAN. Lol

I love me some 909 open hats and ain't nobody gonna tell me otherwise!

CYSYS8993 wrote: ↑

14 Aug 2017

I'm not sure. I have this sinking feeling that it'll degrade the overall quality of my works.

Ask Prince.

Then wrong I be.
Same Rogers kit for decades occasionally switching to my Yams cos I can
Cymbals as the song requires.
Almost always an Acrolite snare cos that's just how I roll, pun intended.

It's absolutely wrong... because you are questioning it. If you weren't questioning it, there'd be no problem with it.

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CYSYS8993 wrote: ↑

14 Aug 2017

I'm not sure. I have this sinking feeling that it'll degrade the overall quality of my works.

15 years ago Amerie released Touch featuring hit song Why Don't We Fall in Love.

Now I can't find the album, but pretty much every song sounded like this

I think it had more to do with composition than using the same kit and instruments.

CYSYS8993 wrote: ↑

14 Aug 2017

I'm not sure. I have this sinking feeling that it'll degrade the overall quality of my works.

That's prolly the same thing as sticking to one drumset, since that's exactly what you are doing if you actually did stick to just a kit

It's absolutely fine. Both with real drums and with samples IMO.

avasopht wrote: ↑

14 Aug 2017

15 years ago Amerie released Touch featuring hit song Why Don't We Fall in Love.

Now I can't find the album, but pretty much every song sounded like this

I think it had more to do with composition than using the same kit and instruments.

Yes it is socially acceptable to sound like everybody else in the current wave.

The average listener outside of our technical comprehension expects certain things of you and they want to fit your work into a cozy slot in their consciousness in relation to what else is going on. The hipsters might front like they have special taste but in reality everything is connected - even drone music. We as producers even expect certain things of each other with composition, theory, mixing, etc. Keep those four consecutive semitone chords and 3/32nd snares to yourself please. Anyways, you can be experimental all you want as you stray away from the herd but I encourage the development of a contingency plan and contemplation of longevity as you develop your sound. Now back to the thread.

Drums are probably my strongest point as a producer - composition AND mixing. Somebody else here made a point about continuity and relative elements so I would like to expand on this. I dip into the same kick sample pack just about every time for the low end of the kick and I experiment more with the top layer of the kick. Top layer can come from anywhere; I can overdrive it through a filter or maybe push it through Decimort. Yummy! I use 909 open hats in just about every track I do. Plenty of people say they are tired of the 909 open hat sound to the point of it being cliché but guess what? I don't care and I'm gonna do what sounds good to me as I implement it in different ways. Sure a 909 hat would sound cliché with boom-tss-boom-tss but my drum compositions usually have so much going on to ease the 909 hat back into appreciation. So much of music is playing with people's minds anyways ya know. In addition, I get 909 hats to sound different with decay, pitch, low pass filter, reverb, maybe delay in production. The point here is you can use the same drums repeatedly but produce them differently. Those are my constants. I also like a wide variety of other drums e.g. handheld percussion, found sounds from a junkyard, overdriven toms, lesser known world percussion, etc. and that is how I keep things lively for myself. There is a balance to everything which I find myself saying in a lot of areas in life. I mentioned mixing but composition is a rabbit hole as well of course with such techniques as ambiguous displacement, call and response, ghosting, drum fills, etc. You could give us all the same freaking sample pack and we would all come up with something different. The spice to make it nice isn't out there in different sounds but rather inside of your mind with knowledge of composition and mixing. And yes, avasopht, you are in control of your own mind.

Hold your constants down but also develop your own experimental artistry.

In 35 years of getting paid to play I only ever used 4 kits during that whole period.. During that time I never bought a cymbal from a retailer, I'd always hear something I liked in someone else's kit and then try and buy it off the drummer after the gig sometimes for extortionate money. I reckon that answers two things, there's nothing wrong with using the same kit over and over and also your sound will evolve over time as you hear and start to include other elements you like the sound of and ditch stuff that doesn't work for you anymore.

Getting a 'sound' that works for you is part of it, but in an electronic music context I treat drums and other rythmic elements as 'sections' that work well on their own or when layered together in different combinations. If you break-down what roles your rythmic elements are taking in the context of a piece you'll find some logical groupings of instruments, such as hats and shakers, patterns, glitches, stabs, snares, other percussion and so forth.

If you work on getting some good sounding 'sections' like that you'll find you can use them as a basis for layering all the common elements you end up using in your songs. I find this helpful in being able to quickly change things up at will to fit the context of the composition.

So the sound is one thing that needs to work for you but the rest is kind of like auditioning members for a band, you wouldn't take on someone if they didn't bring something extra to the whole so make equally sure everything is performing in your composition to a high enough standard. So, if you've got, say, a virtual conga player in your virtual rhythm section that isn't cutting it, either make him pull his virtual weight and perform, or kick his virtual butt out of the place.