how do u get THICK drums...?

lots of good tips in here for everyone looking to beef up their drums.

be careful not to over-compress and over eq. that will make your drums sound lifeless.

your best start is your sample source. pretty tough to make shit shine.

yeah but the thread is about thick-sounding drums not beat making...

greg

werent in response to you sensewondah but sketchman....

greg

word, i was just confused haha, holla.

i should try quoting the post i was replying to really....

would make sense.....

how you doin' sensewondah?

greg

Feed 'em red beans and rice!

Sketchman wrote:

Eddie Satan wrote:What?! To me, compressing is an important part of making a beat.

Compression has nothing to do with making a beat.Compression comes in play when you actually mix your song/instrumental wich always comes when the beat is done 100%.

Thats absolute BS (IMO).

How can you say that compression only comes in when you mix down?

Course it is an important part of making a beat. To make beat - you need to make it sound as good as poss - and to do this you need compression.

-------

An example I have used for time:

Drums: Perhaps the most important element in a hip-hop track. DJ Premier, Pete Rock, Alchemist, Havoc, RZA, Marley Marl, Jay Dee, and Timbaland. What do all these producers have in common? Their thumping drums. Now imagine if all those beatmakers had used weak drums. Premier's "Come Clean" probably wouldn't be considered a classic, nor would Pete Rock's "T.R.O.Y". Compression is very much needed on drums, especially in the hip-hop world. What exactly does compression do to help? Fatten, thicken, louden, and sharpen. Deep, rumbly kick drums and sharp, snappy snares. Ah, the wonders of compression.

Threshold: -10db to -15db
Ratio: 6:1 to 8:1
Attack: 3ms
Release: 10ms
Knee: Hard
Gain: +5db to +7db


Michael-

IMO - Compression is the single most important technique to know when you produce. Once you understand - you'll never make a comment like the above^^^.

this is what i do to get big and thick drums. Find 64 of your best kicks I happen to have about 175 of them. Load your best 64 into your mpc pads. Now go to the part that lets you layer tell the mpc to trigger this sound when i hit this pad. mix and match all them 64 drums(this takes about 4 days, a day for each bank cause your ears lose a lil bit after a while). Before you know your gona have 64 new drums because you just mix and match everything until you found a good combo.... From there feed all them drums into your computer and eq them and add compression if needed. add all these drums to a new fold called tweak drums or what ever. Note i use the mpc editor to find my best drums fast then i make a pgm and then load it into the mpc.

dubmunkey wrote:i should try quoting the post i was replying to really....

would make sense.....

how you doin' sensewondah?

greg

im good homie, how you doin?

yeah im cool.....

greg

i agree with michael, although i do primarily house and techno compression is key to my beats...i relie on the way my bass drums squash my snares, push my hihats out of the way....relax and breath with my percussive elements....

it is a final stage of the beat as i have to get the mix right first but once im at that stage if i turn my compressor off the whole thing goes to sh*t....as im accustomed to that compressed sound.....

compression is as important in hip hop and rnb (just look at the size of dr dres bass drums!) a good compressor set up right can stay that way for ever.....

greg

Thats absolute BS (IMO).

How can you say that compression only comes in when you mix down?

Course it is an important part of making a beat. To make beat - you need to make it sound as good as poss - and to do this you need compression.

Making a recording sound as good as possible is what a engineer does.

A producer/musician makes the music and the engineer is doing the "sound as good as possible" stuff.

IMO - Compression is the single most important technique to know when you produce. Once you understand - you'll never make a comment like the above^^^.

Again.
A engineer is behind the compressor.A producer engineering his music is something different.Thats engineering too.

Ask engineers of how much time they usually spend on correcting EQ/compression errors of "producers" that use mixing equip.

If you got heavy cash to invest only in makin your drums slam, peep this:


SPL Transient Designer

The Transient Designer from German manufacturer SPL Electronics is the latest addition to the company's advanced line of analog processors. Perhaps best known for its Vitalizer dynamically adaptive equalizer, SPL has a history of producing equipment that accomplishes complex and unique sound processing with intuitive controls. The new Transient Designer furthers this mandate.

Unlike a compressor, which "globally" alters the dynamic range of an entire audio signal according to a set of time constants (attack, decay, ratio and release), the Transient Designer uses a level-independent process called Differential Envelope Technology® to maintain identical envelope processing, regardless of input signal level. So the idea of setting a level threshold for the onset of operation, as you would with any compressor, is meaningless. This implies that low-level signals are not altered and that the process is constant and instantaneous.


I tried the Transient Designer in as many situations as possible and, as I expected, the unit excelled in processing percussive sounds. The four channels are great for drum kits, or drum machines when you want to separately "redesign" the transients of a snare drum sample or an already recorded real snare drum, kick drum or tom-tom. I was able to make any drum sound or loop take on enormous amounts of attack by just turning up the Attack knob. At +6 dB on the control, mushy-sounding snare drums suddenly started to "smack," but not in the way they often do when a compressor is applied--only the attack was raised, and not the rest of the envelope, which sometimes includes noise or leakage. There is no change in the sound or level except for the hit.

Trust me, if you use it once, you'll want to keep it.You can do the almost same with with a "normal" compressor but with that thing you get A+ results by just changing two settings.
Theres a VST plugin version outthere too(some other company made that), but i have no idea if its an good(in comparsion with the hardware).

sketchman is on point- this is secret weapon stuff....really amazing results if used correctly...which is often sparingly....

recycle has a similar function-

greg