How to mix drums so they "gel", and fill the spectrum?

Does anyone have any mixing/mastering tips for making drums "gel" and sound "fat"? Pete Rocks beats for example, the track sounds "full" because the beats sit so nice. Other artists are the same, I only mentioned Pete because I have his album playing.

Mine tend to sound flat, as someone else said on here they sound like they're taken straight from the sample pack even though I do processes them, and many are from my own personal library of samples I've dug over the years.

Some of my beats are here: https://soundcloud.com/base2music

As you can hear there missing the "umph".

Any advice? I feel like I should know the answer this, and I probably do, but I've been in Ableton solid for a week and my head is just a jumble of sound atm lol

I tried layering my drum sounds and panning them. For example, Ill take the same kick, lay it in the same spots, Pan one kick hard r, one hard l, and one center. For me this made a world of difference. Also try to record you bass in mono instead of steareo. I found this opens up frequencies for more instruments to "Shine" through. The low parts will bump, and the highs will sound right. At least for me this helped. I guess the best way is to ask around, get different opinions, then make your own formula for it. Sometimes I will also use resonance filters to make the sample and drums sound like they were just one sample. This gets things bumping too. Although mixing is my weak point, I find new things out all the time. Even if you feel you should know it, asking and finding out is better than guessing. Peace!

well maybe you could try if possible to try and do some sound design on the drums.. try to picture a room that you have all these drums in... try messing with a tad of reverb on the snare and hats.. cymbals etc.. maybe not the kick.

then i like to run all of the drum sounds through the same effect (not multiple instances of an effect, the actual same pluggin) that way it glues it all and it will give a common characteristic to all the drums. try some compressors or things like that.

mr_debauch wrote:well maybe you could try if possible to try and do some sound design on the drums.. try to picture a room that you have all these drums in... try messing with a tad of reverb on the snare and hats.. cymbals etc.. maybe not the kick.

then i like to run all of the drum sounds through the same effect (not multiple instances of an effect, the actual same pluggin) that way it glues it all and it will give a common characteristic to all the drums. try some compressors or things like that.

Yas Doc00Cosel, and mr_debauch spot on advice as always!

Just had a listen to some of your tracks now mate, there's nothing wrong with those drums at all, especially on "Mr Brown".

I think the key really is variation with the various hits, that's what really helps drums roll along, and by layering up in that way you'll fill out the spectrum more anyway.

So for example say you've got your main snare which is fairly close to the overall sound you want, I'd then have more samples, maybe up to four layered under the snare differently each time, i.e

Snare Snare Snare Snare
Sn A Sn B Sn C Sn D

Each time the main snare hits through but each one has variation because of the second sample underneath.

In terms of getting things to gel I'm an FX chain abuser. I tend to have every drum sound on a seperate channel with chains to make it sound how I want. Then I'll group all of those in Ableton and have another load on the group channel.

I'd say for overall gelling and making things sound like they came from the same sound source my go-to FX are:

Erosion- used subtly I find it works well on my snares for crunchiness

Saturator- (the bit at the bottom, with colour, depth etc...) also if you set it at 50% it gets nice and loud

Compressor- for a group it's more about gain reduction so I go soft knee, on individual hits more snappy.

Limiter- tend to use this mega subtly again.

EQ 8- and more specifically if you click on Mode, and change it to M/S. I think it stands for Mono/Stereo and it's basically black magic. But I tend to roll off the low end so that stays in Mono, and then boost bits elsewhere so they're a bit more stereo. That's probably one of my favourites to use. In fact I use it on every group channel, and the master.

Auto filter- again this is an odd one, but if you add it onto a track and simply change the cut off frequency to as high as it will go(19.9khz) it'll give a little boost to the top end. It's a lazy mans way of giving an impression of stuff sounding a little "clearer". But again going back to variation I find that if you use this with a fairly high cut off (low pass filter) on hi hats and then play with the envelope you will again get a little bit more variation on each hit. Add a tiny bit of subtle LFO with panning and you're good to go. I sometimes use a little chorus too.

Hope some of this helps mate.

Yeah, the drums on your tunes are fine James. Don't stress over them.

It's the same ol' cock about for anyone working ITB... getting the right punch on certain sounds, getting others to sit or gel in the mix, creating the right space around others, then working on timbre and transients. It's constant trial and error.

Pete Rock may have his own mix engineer who's sole focus is getting those sounds to pop, coupled with a pro mastering guy, so there's the missing 10 or 20% that none of us will ever achieve unless we pay for it unfortunately.

Composition is a LOT more important.

Thank you Coz and Scooby. Long time no speak to you both too

I start with a DBX 160 on the kicks - not so much on the snares. Helps to cut them through. Used a DBX 160 on just about every song on my recent project. Depends on the sound you're going for of course.

From there it's all about EQ and compression. And make sure it's not conflicting with the bass guitar if you have one in the track. Since they vie for the same frequencies, poor kick drum and bass placement can ruin a song. I usually start the mixing process with the drums and the bass guitar, and bring in everything else after that.

Tongue in cheek answer:

Get an SP1200 or MPC60.
I have rarely layered drums with those two machines. Find a good drumloop on a record, chop into single hits, boom, they cut through the mix, (almost) always.

Beside that, compression, parallel compression, transient designer, EQ, find better drum samples, etc.

jibber wrote:Tongue in cheek answer:

Get an SP1200 or MPC60.
I have rarely layered drums with those two machines. Find a good drumloop on a record, chop into single hits, boom, they cut through the mix, (almost) always.

Beside that, compression, parallel compression, transient designer, EQ, find better drum samples, etc.

I Second This...

I have processed all my drums via an SP1200 over the years for kits! from there sample them into whatever MPC i had at the time. After that, It really doesn't require much in the tweaking department. SP1200 is pretty quick when it comes to truncating to your sound. Other machines with that punch are: Akai S950 & S1000, EMU Emax (same company as SP1200), Ensoniq EPS series and ASR10.> Check out some of the Jake ONE vids:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9fmv-eAVG0

Not much layering going on! Actually No Layering!

I just finished building the GSSL Bus Compressor... Oh man, this thing gels drums together like butter.
Sure you should allways start with good samples but this thing can also make mediocre drums sound fat.
This coupled with the SPL Charisma and you have fat drums gallore.