I just recently saw a movie of Depeche Mode working in a studio, getting strange drum sounds with a speaker attached to the drum sticks placed onto a floor tom with just about every nickel and dime on the drum head as well. Nice job, reminds me of my youth and the years being an adventurous engineer. It was quite common back then to plug a cable into 808’s snare or kick output and do similar tricks with speakers placed onto drumheads, and then remiking them.

It can be done without a terrible mess, just with Logic Pro and several samples – if you ever need to. Just put your kick and snare, for example, on different tracks. Demo: loop, then place Channel EQ in the first insert, put a Space Designer in the second – do this for both snare and kick. Then open the Space Designer and click on the right side of the IR Sample text. A menu pops up. On the “snare” track, load your favorite snare sample as an IR, then repeat the procedure on the kick track’s Space Designer. You’ll probably have to adjust the EQ of the raw sounds before getting appropriate effect on the convolution, but once in place, you’ll be able to do quite fancy tricks with just replacing the IRs used in the Space Designers. And who says they have to be track inserts? You could use rhythmic loops in the sends with some heavier processing as well. Demo: just_kick_thru_loop. This could be done in the MainStage as well, if you’re adventurous enough and willing to risk your credibility playing “live loops”, with a metronome clicking at a deafening volume.

With some noodling, your dry loop can be turned into something else with automation. Demo: loop_fx “Oh wow”, I hear you say. 😀

Seriously, you’re probably disappointed by now, but isn’t it wonderful to have a convolution fx processor in your computer? It’s anxiously waiting for abusing and mistreating. If Apple manages to create a polyphonic convolution player with dynamic tracking, we’d have a baby Neuron inside Logic. Now think about THAT.