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Maki ng a Classic In the May issue, Chris Whitten shared some of the background to his first VST pack. This month, he picks up after the round of recordings in the UK.
WE’D RECORDED EVERYTHING into ProTools and agreed with Toontrack from the outset that producer Peter Henderson and I would perform a first edit, essentially separating the individual hits we needed from all the chatter, coughs, splutters and creaking doors, etc. I would also ask Peter to remove any strokes that sounded badly performed from a drummer’s perspective. We then tried to group all the individual hits together as ‘articulations’, as the drum software companies call them. In other words, rimshots, centre hits, flams, ruffs, hi-hat tips, hi-hat edge, ride bell, ride shank and more. Then, we grouped them in terms of velocity of hit: soft, full volume, etc. After that, hard 38
drives were copied for safety and the main drive was sent by courier to Toontrack in Umea, mid-north Sweden. Over the next couple of months, Toontrack did some more work on the edits and assessed what we had and how it was all going to come together in the final product. They’d done this once before as they’d recently released a new product called Superior. Peter and I really had no idea how the software worked or how hundreds of samples became a virtual instrument. Finally, in February 2005, Peter and I flew to Umea to hear the software in action, witness the final www.digitaldrummermag.com