I know some prefer 3rd party drum packs and I use them too, but the integration and drum pack capability makes it easy to dial in studio sounds quickly and easily.
Session drums comes with multimic kits too, which IMO sound great but you need to fiddle to get the required results and therefore I wouldn't say they are quick, or that easy.
With the other kits you get, I use a work around using sends to simulate the room and overhead mics and I find this makes it easy to mix a quick studio simulation and to enable you to mimic different spaces in which you might imagine your drums were recorded.
Works for me and it might help you too.
First, select a kit and drag it into your set. I've chosen Kit-StudioBasic-Stick-FX(Cross EQ). This comes with some EQ and compression on snare and kick, which I find work well out of the box. They can of course be removed and/or tweaked if you want to change them. For the purposes of this tutorial I'm leaving the EQ and comp settings as they are, they sound nice to me.
Play in a pattern over 16 bars. I say 'play' because your controller will allow you to record the velocity and timing variations that 'humanise' your drums. If you have to draw them in then you can insert something like the 'Velocity' 'Add Some Random' Midi effect and tweak to taste to get some variation on your drums. But playing them in allows that timing variation on, say, snare ghost notes that give you your groove.
I used an Alesis Control Pad, much maligned, and while I wouldn't use it Live due to dropped notes, for studio work and as a midi input controller, it works like a charm!
Once recorded I quantise using an appropriate setting just to ensure rogue notes are brought back in line but my groove is retained.
I ended up with this:
Initial Recording
Sounds OK, The decay on the snare is nice and there is a reasonable balance but I did open up the drum rack and reduce the cymbal level slightly as i find they are always slightly too loud. You can mix as appropriate at this point of course.
Next, I split out by using the extract chain option on right-clicking, the snare and the kick. I do this because I want to mix in 'Room' and 'Overhead' mics to these separate from the rest of the kit. I also grouped the rest of the kit into a group, which I will add the snare and kick back into later for final processing of all the drums as one. Here's some pics showing the three midi patterns for the kit, snare, and kick.
Note for the snare midi nice strong velocity on the 2,4 and varied velocity and timing on the ghost notes.
Again velocity variation is essential for the hi-hat humanising.
For the kick, you can choose the velocity that brings out the sample you prefer, here I've gone for a medium velocity via my controller so that my kick is consistent and plays a sample that I think fits the feeling. You can choose to vary it if you like or go softer or harder but I always find a consistent kick is best.
Now to set up your room and overhead mics.
Set up two sends, one called 'Room' and the other 'Overheads' and set both sends to 'pre' so that you have independent control from the drum faders.
I've used Live's own reverb on the room mics to simulate the space and at 100% wet have gone for a preset called 'Snare Room'. Remember we're going quick and easy here, you can fiddle with the reverb of you like or choose a different preset of course. I like this as it gives my snare that additional space working well with the natural decay.
For the overheads I've gone to simulate some stereo width by using a Filter Delay with the L+R channel turned off, open the filters on both L and R channels, match the settings across the board, reducing the channel vol to 0db on both to avoid the plug clipping. Set both L and R to 'Time' setting and gone for 12ms and 24ms to create that width.
Now, you can dial in some of that mic ambience. Tun down the main drum faders and bring up the room mic and overhead fader. First off, dial in the snare to taste on the overheads, snare capture through the overheads is the way to go. Then dial in the room to taste and finally bring up the snare fader to bring back the punch. Now bring in the kick room mic blend and bring the kick fader up to give the direct mic punch. I don't use any overhead for the kick even thogh in reality there would be some bleed. Finally dial in overhead for the kit picking up the cymbals and hi-hat and some room ambience.
Heres the room mic mix:
Room Mic Mix
Nice and subtle.
Here's the overhead mic mix:
Overhead Mic Mix
Nice width!
And here is the mix with the direct mics mixed back in:
Full Mic Mix
Compare that to the original mix and I think we've captured a bit more realism by quickly trying to simulate the room and overhead mics, of course as I said before you can use 3rd party stuff or the mutimic kits, but if quick results are what you're after I think this is a nice little workround.
Finally, I drag the snare and kick to the drum group and add a bit of Vintage Warmer with some drive and EQ to the kick around 80hz and some 8khz for some air. You can use one off Live's drum processing effects racks also. Espresso Drums sounds good.
Here's the final result:
Final Mix
