Lo-Fi Drums

LabratsProd wrote:I know Madib probably doesn't use this tip, but here's another way to take your drums off of vinyl and give them some grime. If the drums play regularly at 33 RPMs....sample them at 45 RPMs and pitch them back down to 33 or whatever pitch you need. This is an oldschool tip, but it work great.

That is a great tip.... I've done that on more than a few tracks...

Recycle treats the slices as individual samples and applies an envelope
to the individual slices when compressing (still following? ) This means
that you don't get true compressor action but really a logarithmic envelope
applied to the slices....that's why you can push it so hard! And indeed it
works great...especially with a release setting of about 60...

I'm not a fan of Recycle...

Just not my thing...

I used it at one point, but I never even touch it now...

Most people like it... It's just not my thing...

MattMatiks PG wrote:

LabratsProd wrote:I know Madib probably doesn't use this tip, but here's another way to take your drums off of vinyl and give them some grime. If the drums play regularly at 33 RPMs....sample them at 45 RPMs and pitch them back down to 33 or whatever pitch you need. This is an oldschool tip, but it work great.

That is a great tip.... I've done that on more than a few tracks...

you can also do this with drum loops. make a loop of your own drums, speed up the bpm and sample it at like 105 bpm, then detune it, till its like 95 bpm.

there are a lot of good tips up here, but there is one component of compression that is extremely important that no one has talked about yet...attack. if you want your drums to really hit you gotta give em a little room to breath (experiment for yourself, but i usually use between 10 and 25 ms on the attack). a lot of cats think you wanna lay that compression on thick, and fast to get those drums poppin, but giving them a slower attack alows for the character of the drum to come through.
also, if you are mixing on a computer, it is always better to lay a couple compressors at lower levels rather than squashing the sound by jacking the levels on one compressor.

a freind of mine who makes dope tracks once told me that to get kicks to really thump, you gotta sidechain (again this can only be done on a computer) the volume of your bassline to have an inverse relationship with the output of your kick channel....that way, every time your kick hits it dips the volume of the bassline so that ish can thump. i never figured this out personally because he was talking about using pluggo and i have a mac, but think it can be done with vst's.

nah you can do that with any decent compressor...both my alesis and my dbx had side chaining functions...my first proper tune made extensive use of this ducking...

greg

misterv wrote:thanks for your help

if I understand well, the "phasing effect" is the name of the "phenomenon" caused by invert sound waves that cancel each other ?

destructive superposition

you mean that the "phasing effect" & "destructive superposition" are two expressions for the same phenomenon ?

i suppose...although i think destructive superposition is the proper technical term for it

MattMatiks PG wrote:Iight... Here's the Deal... I've been workin pretty hard at gettin a certain type of sounds from my drums... While I'm satisfied that I've gotten this far with it, I was wondering if anyone could lend some tips in this area...

Basically, I'd like to have my drums come off sort of like Madlib's... If any of you have heard the Madvillain Remix of MF Doom's "One Beer" then you'd see sort of what I'm goin for... I just can't grasp how he gets his drums so lo-fi but they still come thru clear and with a lot of punch to them...

Everytime I create lo-fi drums they sound lo-fi... Which is to say that they sounded sh*tty... But when he does it it still comes thru pretty full sounding, just gimey... Any tips would be greatly appreciated...

Before I hear anyone sayin, "Why you tryin to jack someone elses style?", Take into account that the best way to learn is to try and emulate others styles and learn from those experiences...

Thanks in advance for any tips... Much love...

Try resampling your drum sounds on your MPC or your favort sound editor like Sound Forge.....etc. On your MPC just resample the sound to a lower quality....ex. say you have a snare or kick that has sample rate like 16bit, resample to 12 maybe 8bit On your MPC or your Sound Editor. Apply a tiny bit on reverb, and you now have some crunchy ish.

No more posts about re-sampling... I'm not an idiot... I know how to get a 12 Bit sound... I'm tired of hearing it...

There is a lot more to it than that.... Freedom already mentioned the 1776ln Limiter... I'm gonna get that...

I've been using compression... However, 8Bit has given me a great tip...

I'm still getting down compression (it's hard to get down well) and I must admit I thought that to get your drums to thump and hit hard you had to compress with a super fast attack... Figuring this would crunch my drums and give them a harder thumping sound...

I'm gonna try this attack that you described 8Bit and I have some nice compressors with sidechains... I'll have to work on my cfompression some more, but thank you for your help...

Stop with the re-sampling suggestions.... That just doesn't cut it... There is a hell of a lot more that goes into getting the sound I'm talking about... Sorry if I sound pissed or something, but it's getting annoying now...

8bit wrote:a freind of mine who makes dope tracks once told me that to get kicks to really thump, you gotta sidechain (again this can only be done on a computer) the volume of your bassline to have an inverse relationship with the output of your kick channel....that way, every time your kick hits it dips the volume of the bassline so that ish can thump. i never figured this out personally because he was talking about using pluggo and i have a mac, but think it can be done with vst's.

Oldest trick in the book....The process is called 'Ducking' used in the old days for 'Voice Overs' And it's been done since the invention of the compressor so obviously it's done in the analog domain preferably

Sorry about the double post...didn't read all posts...

How would you recommend using the sidechain... I have a dbx 266XL... It has the ability to sidechain... I believe this works where I would hook up an Equalizer and it would sidechain based on those frequencies... Not exactly sure how this works... I also have the Waves plug-ins... The C-1 Compressor has a sidechain option as well...

How would you guys recommend using the sidechain... I mean what frequencies would I cut at or boost at... Or do I have this completely wrong... Like I said I'm still learning compression and have yet to dabble into sidechain compression...

vank wrote:

8bit wrote:a freind of mine who makes dope tracks once told me that to get kicks to really thump, you gotta sidechain (again this can only be done on a computer) the volume of your bassline to have an inverse relationship with the output of your kick channel....that way, every time your kick hits it dips the volume of the bassline so that ish can thump. i never figured this out personally because he was talking about using pluggo and i have a mac, but think it can be done with vst's.

Oldest trick in the book....The process is called 'Ducking' used in the old days for 'Voice Overs' And it's been done since the invention of the compressor so obviously it's done in the analog domain preferably

Sorry about the double post...didn't read all posts...

Can this plugin be used in ProTools, does it cost alot? Where can I get it?
Or even better, could we do some plugin trading?

MattMatiks PG wrote:No more posts about re-sampling... I'm not an idiot... I know how to get a 12 Bit sound... I'm tired of hearing it...

There is a lot more to it than that.... Freedom already mentioned the 1776ln Limiter... I'm gonna get that...

I've been using compression... However, 8Bit has given me a great tip...

I'm still getting down compression (it's hard to get down well) and I must admit I thought that to get your drums to thump and hit hard you had to compress with a super fast attack... Figuring this would crunch my drums and give them a harder thumping sound...

I'm gonna try this attack that you described 8Bit and I have some nice compressors with sidechains... I'll have to work on my cfompression some more, but thank you for your help...

Stop with the re-sampling suggestions.... That just doesn't cut it... There is a hell of a lot more that goes into getting the sound I'm talking about... Sorry if I sound pissed or something, but it's getting annoying now...

its called mastering.

i dont have this problem anyway, rocking the mpc3000, thats how shit sounds, dirty but clear, my fav mpc.