[DavePiatek]

Normally, I use SSD to slightly augment the drums on straightforward rock, punk and hardcore sessions. I use Drumagog and usually end up triggering directly off of the mic'd performance, which generally yields good results.

A band of the "deathcore" persuasion has contacted me about recording and referenced Job for a Cowboy and the Red Chord as their preferred drum sounds. During some downtime over the last few days, I've been trying to figure out the most time-efficient way of getting the drum tones they requested, but I'm hitting a wall.

I know lots of guys use the SSD samples (quite successfully) in these styles of production, so my question to the community is this: What are the best practices in terms of fast, blast beat type drums?

I have triggers recording directly into tracks in Pro Tools, as well as close mics on each drum and appropriate cymbal mics. Quantizing the tracks to the grid is mandatory, of course, and I have no problem performing this operation. My main question is what to do after my tracks are quantized. It seems that on especially fast sections, the SSD .gog files don't quite sound the way I need them to, even when triggering directly from the trigger ticks (with auto-align off).

I suspect that some of the features in the Kontact player would be helpful here (envelope, etc), but triggering Kontact from Drumagog seems to be overly complicated. Plus, MIDI latency could be an issue. But in some ways, it seems like drawing the drums in MIDI by hand is the way to go. What do the big players in metal recording do for these types of drums? Is Drumagog/SSD the right way to deal with the trigger ticks? Or is there another software package and workflow that is the industry standard?

Any tips or advice would be much appreciated.