I've fallen in love with this new plug-in that's currently solving all my home studio problems.

It's called Drumagog and it's a drum replacement software.

You see, recording drums is difficult in the home studio. But I still like the actual performance of a human drummer so I always prefer recording live drums over programming them.

However, sometimes the drums are a bitch to mix and I'll take any tool I can get to help me solve my problems.

Make Any Drum Recording Sound Great

That's where Drumagog comes in. A poor drum sound is a recipe for a subpar mix so having Drumagog help me flesh out the drum sound really comes in handy.

I usually use it to add an extra kick and snare sound on top of my recorded drums so that they punch through the mix a bit better but it also helps me change the sound of the drum-kit entirely to better fit the song.

Take this sort of funky folk song I was working on the other day. The drummer played the beat with a really big and deep snare, very Rumours era Fleetwood Mac. The beat was funky in the verses but it had a sort of half-time feel in the choruses.

So when it came time to mix the song the snare sound really shone in the choruses but it sounded off in the verses. So instead of settling for a snare sound that didn't quite fit I just multed the verse snare, found a crisp and tight snare sample inside Drumagog and replaced the entire sound to better fit the style of the song.

Moral of the story?

Sometimes you can't get great sounds in your home studio.

Sometimes it's impossible to get it right at the source.

Sometimes it's just simpler to record knowing that you can fix it in the mix.

It's definitely easier to fix a drum sound than a vocal but knowing you have the technology to make any song have a killer drum sound is exciting.

It doesn't mean that you should do a piss-poor job of recording. It just means that you know you have a plan B in case that kick drum sound you thought was so interesting is in fact just terrible...

It's not the solution to the entire drum mix of course. You'll still need to make the drums fit in the frequency spectrum. Take this kick sample I was layering on top of the bass drum the other day. It was the best overall sample I could find that fit the drum beat and the song.

But I still needed to EQ it to make it fit in the context of the mix. I still needed to balance it with the other drums and mix them all together with the rest of the instrument.

Sample replacement isn't a "set it and forget it" kind of deal. It's more of a "find it and fix it....and then mix it in" sorta thing.

So you still need to know how to EQ, or understand the strategy of mixing to fit those samples in.

But man...it sure does help make things easier.