Drum replacement
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Drum replacement is the practice in modern western music production, of a recording engineer editing a recording of a live drummer and replacing (or adding to) every sound of a particular drum with a pre-recorded sample. It is considered by some to be one of the most arcane practices of the modern music production industry and an example of the heavy amounts of electronics and computers used in even music that is not classified as "electronic".
[edit] Origins
The practice is a natural evolution of the recording techniques of the 1970's, where the goal was to get every instrument to sound as "perfect" as possible. In the 1980's with the popularity of synth pop, drum machines were used, but into the nineties with the emergence of grunge, producers began doing drum replacing. The most common use of this technique is to replace every snare hit in a performance with an "ideal" snare drum hit. Critics say that this defeats the purpose of having a live drummer, although the fact that the sample is usually recorded in stereo and uses the drummers real kit makes it sound generally more realistic then an off the shelf drum machine.
The job of drum replacement usually falls to an audio engineer during the mixing stage.
[edit] Association
Drum replacing is usually mentioned, along with autotune, harmonizers, and advanced compressors, as being symptomatic of the "artificial nature" of modern western music by certain critics. Others disparage it as a subtlety embraced by studio engineers to give their craft more complexity in an increasingly automated world.
