Drum layering issue

Hello fellow mpc-headz. This community has been proven to be very insightful and helpful so far so props for that.Before posting i did a little thread digging yet found no answer to my problem.So here it goes. When i try to stack my drums(didn't try to stack my samples yet so don't know if it occurs there as well) at the same pitch (should probably clarify that im stacking the same sound on top of itself) this weird sound comes into play.Its kinda like a phaser effect or something like that can't really verbalize it. Anything like that happened to you cats ?And if so how can i work my way around it ?Thanks in advance for your input.Peace.

Ali_Beatz wrote:Its kinda like a phase effect

Thats exactly what it is my friend, because the frequencies are fighting each other and the brain can't interpret it so it sounds like noise. What I suggest you do is filter, Filter out the second sample (up to taste) and play it back and it will sound better.


EX. Sometimes when I come across a kick that has a nice top end, but very little bottom end. I put that same kick on another pad Filter it to like 2 or 5, add a resonance of 10 and that brings out the bottom end. Mess around with the attack and decay time and get it sounding to taste. Try it out, its a pretty neat technique.

Straight staking the same sound on top of itself is always going to phase. If you must stack the same sound, try tuning one of them differently, or filtering one of them quite a lot - eq freq=20. You can also hard pan in opposite directions for a wide stereo effect.

I cover this quite a lot in my Beat Making on the MPC2000XL book.

What exactly were you trying to achieve by stacking the same sample on top of itself?

clint246clint wrote:What exactly were you trying to achieve by stacking the same sample on top of itself?

Make it bang harder and louder i guess.

Ali_Beatz wrote:

clint246clint wrote:What exactly were you trying to achieve by stacking the same sample on top of itself?

Make it bang harder and louder i guess.

in theory - adding the same sound on top of itself is just the same as turning the volume up - exactly the same.
however on an mpc, it phases because the mpc is not 'sample accurate'...meaning the two sounds dont play at EXACTLY the same time. this can have the effect of making the drums weak.

so my suggestion is to either turn your other sounds down - so your 'loud' sound sits higher up than them. then you can just turn the whole thing up.

that or layer two different sounds - should have less issues with phasing.

tapedeck wrote:however on an mpc, it phases because the mpc is not 'sample accurate'.

Yeah if your going double up, do it in a DAW like Pro Tools

Doubling the same sound at the same pitch is a weird method and bring either issues (phasing) or is useless when done inside a sampleaccurate system like a DAW because its like tapedeck said the same as turning up the volume of the sample. Even wh you filter one its the same as raising the volume in a specific frequency range AKA equalizing so in order to use a (lopass) filtered sample on top of a normal sample you can simply use an equalizer on the original sample and raise the gain in the bass frequencies.
Layering is handy when you use different samples with different tunings or the same sample with different tunings. tune one to -2 or -3 or -5 or -12 semitones. You still can filter out the high frequencies but probably don't need to to get a nice kickdrum. You need to find a good balance of volume tho.

peace

Layer the sound you want and lower the freq AND pitch.
Be sure to mess around with the decay on the lowered pitched sound so you don't get a really long unwanted rumble. boom.

peterpiper wrote:is useless when done inside a sampleaccurate system like a DAW

I wouldn't say useless, I use this technique when I have a mono signal and want to give it a stereo type of effect by panning and adding delays on the other channel

Tha_Skywalker wrote:

peterpiper wrote:is useless when done inside a sampleaccurate system like a DAW

I wouldn't say useless, I use this technique when I have a mono signal and want to give it a stereo type of effect by panning and adding delays on the other channel

Yeah that's different, your trying to make the sounds out of sync (via the Haas effect). He meant its useless to layer the same sound for amplitude/frequency changes alone, or it won't even work to begin with if your not in a sample accurate workspace.