Chernobyl Studio Scott’s thoughts on Hertz Drums

what’s up everyone scattered from Trouble Studios today
we are finally gonna be looking at these Hertz Drums
now I’ve been sneaking this
drums into a number of songs already
on the channel you heard these drums for example
on the Solar Guitar demo that I did
these are the same drums
now if Hertz is kind of ringing a bell for you
that’s because this drum library has been created by
Hertz Studio yes
the exact same studio that’s worked with behemoth
Vader Hate
yes
they the literally that famous Polish um metal studio
they have created their own drum livering out
one of the reasons I was really excited about this
is because the guys that hurts
have a very interesting way that they work on drums
right yes
they can sound programmed and they can sound plastic
and they can sound really sampled
but somehow they have the attack of the bite
and they cut through the mix
so the great thing about this is the processing
and the genius of those guys
and how they have worked on drums
for the last 20 years or more
is now in this plugin
and we get to use it and it’s fantastic
so you heard the demo track here just now
the drums are great
very little work needs to go into the drums okay
so in this video I wanna
go over a couple of the most unique aspects of this
because I mean a drum library
is a drum library right
we pretty much got the idea of what it’s supposed to be
what you’re supposed to be able to do
and there are a couple things that set this one apart
so first and foremost let’s kind of close this actually
and let’s show you the MIDI okay
cause the first thing you’re gonna notice is
the MIDI looks complicated
and that comes down to the fact that they have sampled
the like for example
Tom 2 center and Tom 2 side
now there’s only one other library
that I personally know of
that did this and it did it five or six years ago
and that was stigmatized drums
from a company out in Greece
where they sampled a
essentially a right hand and a left hand
now
Tom center and Tom side is basically the same thing
cause if you think about it
when you’re playing drums
if you come and you start playing
you’re actually never playing directly in the center
when you’re taking two hands
so it’s very common you know
how many times have you seen this right
if you go to a drum a drummer’s Tom for example
and the really good drummers have a hole like that
where they always hit in the dead center of the drum
really bad drummers
it’s like they hit the drum wherever
and there are different total aspects of the drum
if you don’t hit it dead center okay
so this makes humanizing the drums
even more interesting because you can basically go
okay I have a dead center hit and then I hit
have a hit that’s a little bit off to the side
and that helps
create a difference in the tone of the drum
so instead of having just a drum machine Tom sound
you can get already a different articulation
just because
it’s a different part of the drum being sampled um
then it’s up to you to humanize it correctly
now
the other thing here is that they have snare edge side
rim shot center rim shot side cross stick
a lot of dynamics on the snare
this is pretty unusual
often you’ll see like center edge rim shot stick
that’s
that’s usually the bare bones of what a good library
should have
we’ve got center edge center side edge side you know
and all these different articulations
lend itself to certain plane mechanics
you know if you’re laying into the snare
in a really slow groove like we are right here
you can see it’s definitely snare center
now if I’m doing more of a scape beat
it’s just by the way it works
sometimes we sort of will play off to the side
or we won’t hit as hard or both
which is what I’m simulating here
and then during very fast blast beat
I’m actually pushing the stick
way out to the side of the drum
cause that also happens
but it’s also helping accentuate
it’s also helping differentiate
the different articulations of the snare
so we don’t have the same snare center all the time
and have to work really hard
to make it sound different
to humanization
we can just use a different articulation
bring down the velocity a little bit
so to humanize it
and then we have a completely different result okay
so there are tons of articulations here to include
you know the Tom center and sides
we’ve got crash crash choke
all the stuff here
for symbols is pretty much part for the course
and what you would expect
we got ride tip ride side
ride bell ride
ride side
I don’t know why I put it like that and ride muted
you know that’s more of a crash bell obviously side tip
now the cool thing about this is
I didn’t do it in this song
cause I didn’t feel it needed
is you can go between like a ride side and a ride tip
and it changes
the articulation of how things will sound
I can show you very quickly so I just try to do this
I opted not to do it do it during that part
because most people will be fairly consistent
when they’re playing the ride
at that slow but tempo
it’s just Bing Bing Bing Bing Bing
so generally you’ll be pretty consistent
I just um
humanize the notes a little bit to get more of the dot
dot dot dot grew into it but um
this library works very well with fast music um
it’s just
it’s the way that the guys process the drums and
you know the transients are there
they poke through the mix
there’s a lot of snap and they just
it worked without sounding ridiculous
you know cause there are snares out there
where you just kind of tap it
and it’s an explosion I think
there’s a meme online
where someone’s doing a snare roll
and it’s just a machine gun
because you can do that
but here we still have an element of neutral
natural sounding drums
but they are processing the degree
that can work in a super dense mix
and not only
I’ll show you guys some of the presets later on
so these are the drums um
that I programmed and
the other cool thing that I really liked
about working with this
the great this is a side feature of why
I personally enjoy the Tom Center
and the Tom side you know
if I decide for example that you know what
there’s not enough differentiation
and velocity between the Tom rules
like they sound to machine
like instead of having to go again
through all of the Tom hits and select every other hit
again
we have the ability to just drag select like this
because I know the Tom sides are gonna be the weekend
and here we go I can just literally clicking drag
I have all of the left hand articulations
and I can move them up or down as needed
so it’s it’s definitely an aspect of speed here
that I really enjoy
um symbols
symbols are always the weakest point of a drum library
most of the symbols here are pretty cool
the only one
I personally don’t like that much is this one here
uh it’s a custom dark 20
it just in comparison like these are very snappy
and then that was just like really washy
for some reason um
don’t know why don’t know how it is
but you can sort of work with it by uh
increasing the um volume
either by the trim knob here or the actual volume knob
or decreasing the reverb and the amount of ambiance
um I don’t know
I just think that
that particular symbol really sticks out
it’s just like you have Bam Bam
super wash so
I would like to hear a more fast symbol there
instead of a washy slower one
um I’ll go over the interface here a little bit more
just a second but the
as far as using the drums
if you can program drums
this will be really easy and intuitive for you
to learn uh
set up your drum map correctly
and you’ll be totally fine
um I beta tested this
and in the beginning is loaded horrifically slow
uh there they have fixed that significantly
like right now I’m on the version 1 point uh
0.4
the loading times are significantly faster
like if I change a preset
it’s about 8 seconds when I loading from zero
it’s about 28 to 40 seconds
and generally I’m fine with that
cause if I’m loading something in
I’ve gone to you know
get a coffee or I’ve gone
go to the bathroom
or I’ve gone to see what my daughter is doing
I’m usually when I’m loading something in
in the beginning of the session
I’m generally not sitting here waiting
so it doesn’t bother me that much
now the UI itself very interesting you
I when you look at it it’s all self explanatory
you pretty much are used to seeing this
if you worked with other jungle libraries in the past
you got a mixer knob self explanatory
got all your faders here oh 10 channels
11 to 20 channels and then the groups
now the groups are already routed within the instrument
so if I press play
it’s already routing
you can’t really change or do anything about that
however it does mean that the ease of use is
oh my kicks are allowed I can
I have two options
I can come into the plug in itself and turn them down
or you know
if you are doing a massive
multiple output routing system
you can create the bus in your dot and do it which
you know why if they already have it in the plugging
I think that’s great
then you have the different libraries
and the samples that you can choose from here
you can select which instrument
either here or by clicking okay
so when you click for example
the kick or the snare
it shows right there what you’re selecting
or you can just come down here and select it yourself
um it’s good to have both ways
I think that’s pretty cool groups now
uh they are coming up with a lot of interesting groups
now if you look at this here
you’re gonna see a lot of time signatures
that you’re not used to seeing
and BPMs that you’re not used to seeing as well
so we have rock not 4
4 and here if you write a lot of interesting riffs 7 4
11 8 19
16 you’ve got groups for that
you’re not gonna have groups in many other situations
unless you program them yourselves
so funk new metal
rock know how the groups work
it’s like everything else you know you come down here
you click
click the play button cause we just click the square
something’s gonna happen come down here
hit the play button
and they obviously click the stop button to stop it
but here you have two rows of hi hats
two rows of rides
and then a row of mix so hi hat and ride intros
endings and fills
it’s pretty cool that instead of showing everything
you know and trying to put it in a timeline
you just got to use your ear
so if you press play and you’re like
cool I like that
that’s awesome then all you need to do is you can just
let me show you real quick
but jump out of here
just grab this little thing here
and drag it to your mini track
and boom there it is
and shows exactly how it was programmed
so if you’re having struggle
programming with this particular library
it’ll show you the velocities hearing how it worked
cool up here we have the preset library now um
they have different packs
so a blue a regular white pack
a blue pack as you can see here
alternative rock British pop
classic metal power metal
progressive rock
and these are all four different sounds
we’ll go through those a little bit later
alternative rock jank
funk pop
stoner and then I spend all my time in the white pack
cause I do metal or rock or rock metal right
and then um here you have the audio tab
this is where you do all of your routing
this is the MIDI so
you can change the articulation of
what note is playing what
so you can re map everything
they have a hertz default
if you click here for example
if you use any one of these
it’s already been pre arranged for you
so you don’t have to do it yourself
awesome I love it when
drum plugins do that because
it is kind of a pain in the ass sometimes
if you have different drum maps
and you’re trying to AB
or listen to different drum sounds
and you always are constantly like
oh Jesus I don’t have a drum mat for this
this is taken care of
these are the settings audio libraries
many libraries and then where they are located okay
now when we come up here to the mixer in the library
for example
we always have this right side shown okay
again let me show actually the this one okay
so the di which is the the actual close source
the sub
the effects if there are any and then overheads
ruining reverb
we have basically the same functionality over here
and the right side navigation bar
so if we click snare we are showing d I sub effects
these are where it’s routed
and then we can change how much of it that we want
if we want no overhead
like we want to just nuke the snare in the overheads
for some reason you can just turn it down
and the tool tip comes up and tells you overhead
microphone volume
takes a while for the tool tips to show
maybe that could be a little bit faster um
but you know it’s self explanatory here
now
the other thing to ambiance for every piece of the kit
you can see you can change how much reverb
or room that you want in it
sometimes in some libraries
the other super dry just like
oh my God bone dry
and you’re sitting there running in the dog
trying to pass through a bunch of
you know like
a room sound or reverb of some kind
to make the drums not so dry
here you can adjust that if I for example
hit the symbol
I change the directionality of it
and also the bigness of it
so the application of this could be
if you want to simulate a smaller drum room
for example
you’re like a really tight three piece of something
you can bring the drums in
which would be great
so you can keep that real intimate feel
so you have all of that here at your fingertips
which you can do I don’t remember apple pie
apple pie so let’s go back to
I guess it doesn’t matter
I have a preset here and then we have velocity settings
we can tell the instrument yep
we don’t want to play anything below 60
for example
also we don’t wanna play anything above 100 okay
generally I
I don’t touch these in general because I just
I only write MIDI at 1:15 velocity anyway
I will almost never do 1:20 or 1:27
if you guys are my metal drum programming course
you know all that already um
there you go
the dynamic knob here is exactly what it says
it sets the dynamic curve
so if you crank this to 1:27
you have no dynamics
there will be no soft touches or anything like that
I would recommend just to keep this at zero
keep and then don’t worry about
I wouldn’t touch this one at all okay
now the next thing here is reverse
it is exactly what it sounds like
it’s gonna reverse the sample
you might be thinking
why would you want to do that on drums
drums are transients how can you reverse a Tom pit
wrong wrong
how many times you’ve been programming drums
and you’re like man
will be really cool if I get like a little swell here
and then you know
went into the symbol correct okay
if you if you click so for example
let’s here’s the symbol right
now if I hit reverse and then
there we go
we can reverse the sample there
and use that for our swell okay
you can change the length
I can make a really long for example
okay and that helps make songs feel way more realistic
because sometimes if you’re programming these swells
like okay uh
you have to experiment like
do I need to do 60 fourth notes here
can I do 30 second triplets
how do I do the you know and sometimes
you start getting into the aspect of the symbol
and it sounds ridiculous so
it’s really neat that there’s a reverse function here
that you can use if you want to reverse a symbol
hit something like that not to be outdone
of course Hertz Drums as far as I can tell
it’s all about control of your jumps all right
we even have the ASDR curve
so attack so attack like a release
sustain and decay now these are this particular
module will be great for shipping your symbols
for example um again
we have the symbol here
this is off okay
for example the release is off
that means that the symbol is just
gonna go until the sample ends
so however it was sampled is however it will play
but if we wanna turn this on
you know we start delegating milliseconds to it
you know we’re telling the sample okay
you need to stop playing after
you know 12 milliseconds
why would this be important
so if you’re noticing for example
like man my symbols are just going on forever
I don’t want them to go on forever
they’re mudding up the mixer
they’re getting in the way of the vocals
you can come in here
and you can basically tell the program
you know chill out
just cut off the symbols after X amount of time okay
and that way
you can clean up that part of the frequency spectrum
for your vocals
or whatever it is that you’re doing up there
and it’s just more control of the program itself um
if you don’t have this in the drum program
um programming
there’s no way to control the actual samples
and the length of it you just kind of shit out of luck
you know it’s really annoying
and it’s one of those things where
I didn’t realize how cool this was
until I was looking at Hertz Drums and playing with
and going oh okay
wow would have been cool if I was using that
the other day on this other mixer
I was having
the exact same problem that I just described
so it’s just options
lots of cool things that you can do
with the sounds of the drums
to control and help keep your drum sound tight
or expansive
or to get out of the way of other elements of
of the song okay
so once you look up the UI
you understand it super simple
it’s not difficult at all
it’s everything that you would expect to see
in any library no routing
things like that okay and they sound great
they’re really great they have a really unique sound
I really like using these for fast tempo music now
so that solo demo that I did this demo
obviously anything that I know
that’s gonna have a lot of double bass
or a lot of blast beats
and I want that transit to poke through
without the snare being hey
how you doing you like in your face all the time
I’m using this all right now
the one thing probably that I could say about this
that is a little bit annoying right now is
that
there is no way to automatically do a multiple output
routing into your thought when
when this loads you know
I have the outputs right now everything’s just one
and if you want to change the outputs
you have to go one at a time
and literally click through this
um I already told the guys like that you can’t this is
you know and they that’s already being worked on
they’re already developing right now
it will be in a future update
so whenever you’re watching this video
if you can do multiple output
riding at the click of the button
just ignore what I just said
but as it is right now it’s really annoying
so what I would highly suggest is do it once
and then save a preset like I’ve done here
cause the multiple output
routing will be saved in the preset
and that way you don’t have to do it again
so and then all you would have to do is you know
come in the Q base
and just make sure your outputs are all um
good to go and then you don’t have to sit here in the
in the UI anymore um
a small nitpick could be that uh
the U UI is not recizable
you know I’m on a 5K 27 inch monitor right now
and if I didn’t have my glasses on
I wouldn’t be able to make heads or tails of this
interface now if I’m on a 1080 p monitor
obviously this interface will be gigantic
and it would be totally fine
but as we’re moving on
for larger and larger resolutions
I think it would behoove the guys
that hurts to eventually make the UI resusable
so that due to our ginormous
you know 4K you know 37 inch monitors
this thing is gonna be this big
so to make it a little bit larger
I think it would be a good idea okay
other than that I really appreciate that it’s uh
it’s it’s it’s own stand alone thing you know
like I have no problem with contact personally
I literally don’t care
but it is cool that I don’t have to load contact
and then load the library
you know and like go through like a rapper
it’s just here’s the plug in its stand alone Bam
good to go um
I personally think that’s pretty cool so uh
the other things really is that if you click here um
you can literally get help from the internet
and the videos are very good
like if you have a question about any of these modules
that I glanced over and maybe you’re like huh
you can click that button you’ll get a detailed
detailed detailed like 2 to 3 minute video
they’re very good very good um
fantastic at explaining how the
how the technical side of everything works
so working with the drums awesome
they’re really fun to program because there’s so
much control okay
and the other thing too about the velocities
let me see if I can find this really quick
I will cut to it yeah here it is
so
all of you that have taken my Metal Drum Programming
Mastery course I showed you guys step by step
how to find the velocities in every sample
regardless of the drum library you’re looking at
here they have just the groups
here are the six dynamic groups
and here’s the velocity range
and they even spent time to suggest
which velocity range would help
for the type of notes that you’re doing
or type of beats that you’re doing
I think this is absolutely
something that every library needs to be doing
right now um
I wanna see dynamic range
PDF files of every library now
cause I’m tired of wasting my time
trying to figure out wow
is this the correct velocity layer for blah blah
blah blah blah I just wanna go oh
so I wanna do ghost notes so let’s see
we’re looking at 44 to 22
sweet let’s have a look that sounds pretty good oh
I can even go to 1 to 21 for super
super weak light ghost notes awesome
let’s try that
and they also talking about 16th and 32nd notes
IE for example the song is at 1:30 or 2:60 if you wish
and we are doing some really fast notes
I typically don’t go that low to 65 to 45
but it’s good to know
and understand where in the velocity range
I should be working so
big UPS to her strums for creating that table for me
and sending it to me and go here
by the way here are the dynamic groups
here’s the velocity range
don’t have to guess all right
let’s have a look
see at this really fast blast beat over here
um it’s one thing to hear in the mix
let’s just go ahead and hear it right now
so this particular blast beat that I’m simulating
is one that I used to play all the time um
it’s not even my ideas I started doing it because
when I was playing Henry on the nails
by uh
by the remains or dechristionize yes
I used to be a good drummer uh
I would do this particular blast beat or out
accent the first beat take a little bit of a break
and then blast through the rest
accent the first beat
I just basically sounding like this
okay and the reason I would do that is
because the band that I was singing at the time
just love blast beats
and that’s all the guy wanted to do
and instead of just using the symbol all the time
with the ride with the bell or whatever
I would just start doing it with the hands but
and so I was like let’s do the same thing here
so we’re really accentuating the 6
8 feel of the song when we do this
so sounds very musical
even though we’re just blasting away on the snare
so the snare velocity is quite low
we’re in the 90s to the 80s a little bit accentuate
accentuating accentuating oh my God
accenting English
um the main downbeat of every measure here
and then of course the hi hats are doing the same thing
cause this is simulating a right handed glass
and then just doing
the notes on the high hat
and all around the symbols and stuff
so yep nothing out of the ordinary here
um yeah
I really have nothing else to say about the drums
they uh they are affordable
you can buy the just the the drums itself
I think it’s like 60 bucks
um they have the different packs
they’re all add on packs
but you can just get the entire thing
uh actually just pull up the website here
yeah exactly
so the entire pack the horse jumps bundles 200 euro
however
you can choose between different versions of it
so the the software
the Hearst drums itself Hertz Drums light
all the different packs for example
if you only wanna do metal you only care about metal
you could do y’all
get the Hearst drums and then the white pack okay
so it’s still gonna be less than other companies were
you get just a sampler
and then you need to get the other packs right
which are a bit more expensive okay
then they have many groups many groups
this particular one specifically
not 4 4
so every type of group that’s not 4 4
and I know they’re coming out with more
and we might actually be working together on
something like that for a different pack
but yeah so Hertz Drums
you know
it’s it’s cool to see where the hell is the button
here it is it’s cool to see studios
you know that have been in the business for decades
and it worked with amazing bands and amazing drummers
who are putting their knowledge to use
in programs like this so that we can use them
you know if we don’t want a huge bombastic drum sound
we want something tight we could try this
now it’s very natural sounding the Toms are
very natural sounding the kicks are great snare has a
it’s a nice crack woody type of snare um and ah
the one thing I didn’t show you guys
let’s before we move along here
same thing with choosing the grooves okay
you can choose different different Mikes okay
and it’s basically different captures of the Tom
so Mike B for for this Tom
I can select different ones
so this is Tom 1 time 2 time 3 time 4 time 5
so the selection will be between Mike a B or C
so I can have Mike a or B or Mike a or Mike C
it’s very my new different
there are very my new differences
but are they are there
and again I think this is also based on the pack
let me so if I
so I’m clicking with the left mouse button to to um
audition it and if I wanted it
then I would click with the right mouse button
and then it’s selected now
and you can see it’s been loading
these are the whites now we move over here
this is the red pack
and then this would be the blue pack
it’s a good idea that
they made the colors a bit different here
and it’s exactly the same
so I’m auditioning this and like yeah
I don’t really know about that let’s try the red pack
what about the Blue pack
so
you can very quickly audition the different uh uh
samples which is awesome
because
some of the libraries out there are moving away from
some of the click clicking
where you could easily audition every sample
and it’s really annoying
tap to go to a drop down memory menu
every time to try a different snare drum
I can just click snare drum and go
just click click click click
find the one that I like and we’re done
so very great
that’s that’s I like it it’s great so there we go
that’s pretty much it guys
there’s really nothing else to discuss that it
it looks complicated but the UI is very distinct
it’s very easy to understand
everything is right where you need it
there’s nothing nothing more nothing less
and the main thing is that they sound great
so definitely would recommend them yes
Hertz Drums this is a pig review
Hertz Drums had pay me to make this video however
as I told them and as you guys know the videos
you don’t see our videos
where I didn’t like the product
and I think the product was cool
so I’ve used it already
I told you already in the beginning of the video
I’ve already snuck this into two different demo tracks
that you guys have heard on the channel already
I just didn’t tell you all right
so they’re good I like them
I’ve been using them and there
I will continue to use them okay
so link down below to check out the drums
and if you guys like I said
I’ve talked about programming these things and how
if you guys are struggling with programming
metal drums
don’t forget I have metal drum programming mastery
that’s also down below
a to Z on how to think like a drummer in program drums
cause I am a drummer um
and I know how to program drums
been doing it for 20 years
so if if you wanna get this
and then learn how to program and use this thing
you can you know
that’s a that’s a great great idea okay
so hearts drums check them out
give them a spin
and let me know what you think about them
alright so thank you guys for watching the video
I will see you guys in the next one