how do u get THICK drums...?

easy
ive noticed my drums have been sounding pissy recently.... has n e one got any tips to thicken them up and giv them that crunch / snap ...
i presume eq has got a role in it...
i tried layering and reverb but that didnt quite do it....

n e help appreciated

thanks

layering will just give a boost to the perceived volume (eg 3dB of gain everytime its "doubled")


the best advice for "thick" drums or "big" drums or whatever adjective you want to use, ie this.... choose THICK or BIG samples

if you start with a good source sound you END with a good sound.


EQ doesnt come into it. like i said in another thread, part of my job is fixing up other peoples audio mistakes, and 9 times out of 10 its the terrible way people use EQ.

leave the EQ alone, and actually LEARN the theory behind comrpession. your beats will love you for it. theres no shortcut to good compression (outside of boing presets). compression will single-handedly phatten up your drums moreso then anything else if used correctly.

but theres a million other things you know.... we all have our nuances in drum mastering.... but as far as general things go, a good compressor and good skills with it will put you in front of the thousands of others with shitty drums every day.

Feed your drums more skills and they will get phat..

D_Samp wrote:layering will just give a boost to the perceived volume (eg 3dB of gain everytime its "doubled")


the best advice for "thick" drums or "big" drums or whatever adjective you want to use, ie this.... choose THICK or BIG samples

if you start with a good source sound you END with a good sound.


EQ doesnt come into it. like i said in another thread, part of my job is fixing up other peoples audio mistakes, and 9 times out of 10 its the terrible way people use EQ.

leave the EQ alone, and actually LEARN the theory behind comrpession. your beats will love you for it. theres no shortcut to good compression (outside of boing presets). compression will single-handedly phatten up your drums moreso then anything else if used correctly.

but theres a million other things you know.... we all have our nuances in drum mastering.... but as far as general things go, a good compressor and good skills with it will put you in front of the thousands of others with **** drums every day.

Good point. But for cats who really don't understand, or use compression right, which is most of us, use the 1st thing dude said. Just make sure you're using good thick sounds to begin with. It's hard to turn an apple into an orange. But, not to combat what dude said, if you do a little experimenting with layering your kicks you can get a thick sound. For example, take your original kick, filter, compress and eq the shi% out of it. Basically make the attack and all that different from the original, maybe just leave in the low end or something. Then layer it with the original. Just don't put the same kick on top of the same kick. Then maybe, you'll get a kick as thick as Myas back side... Well, maybe not that thick.

Lampdog wrote:Feed your drums more skills and they will get phat..

LOL

jus to be a little more helpful on the knowledge tip...

one of the tricks i picked up early on was how good the MPC is for attack and decay settings. check this out... get a pretty funk/jazz style kick thats a bit rough, maybe with a little hats noise in it or something.

now get an 808 kick


adjust the delay/sustain of the jazz kick to leave the attack.

now do the reverse on the 808 kick... shave off that tacky attack.

now layer the two. if you follo wmy drift you can quite quickly craft a nice sound kick that not only gives a rough organic dynamic to your track but has some 'balls' so to speak with the 808 behind it.

as you develop your ears for singular drum hits you can shelve and align things spacially to make some pretty wicked sounds.

in nu-skool breaks remixes ive done i was sweating a bass and kick sound the original track had, till i saw the source files and saw how it was a culmination of many one shots crafted together then run through a bus with a comrpessor over it (for a uniformity).

ps, Average, i play devils advocate a bit. im in the "most help for those who help themselves" mentality more often then not. its cool to know that you and (usually not just funny) lampdog offset that and everyones happy.


haha god damn... feed em skills. pan based or thin and crispy?

yeah safe for the replies
i used that 808 trick a few times its nice ....
for compression would u say theres no substitute for a going down the hardware route or can u get some results with software...

peace

D_Samp wrote:jus to be a little more helpful on the knowledge tip...

one of the tricks i picked up early on was how good the MPC is for attack and decay settings. check this out... get a pretty funk/jazz style kick thats a bit rough, maybe with a little hats noise in it or something.

now get an 808 kick


adjust the delay/sustain of the jazz kick to leave the attack.

now do the reverse on the 808 kick... shave off that tacky attack.

now layer the two. if you follo wmy drift you can quite quickly craft a nice sound kick that not only gives a rough organic dynamic to your track but has some 'balls' so to speak with the 808 behind it.

as you develop your ears for singular drum hits you can shelve and align things spacially to make some pretty wicked sounds.

in nu-skool breaks remixes ive done i was sweating a bass and kick sound the original track had, till i saw the source files and saw how it was a culmination of many one shots crafted together then run through a bus with a comrpessor over it (for a uniformity).

ps, Average, i play devils advocate a bit. im in the "most help for those who help themselves" mentality more often then not. its cool to know that you and (usually not just funny) lampdog offset that and everyones happy.


haha god damn... feed em skills. pan based or thin and crispy?

All good! Yo, it'd be cool if you posted some random mix techniques. I pretty much been going off what I've figured out myself. But on the real, I've been butchering some mixes lately, specially when it comes to compression, and eq on vocals. I try to get that smooth vocal texture with eq, but just end up getting some wack a** high end stuff instead of getting that warm, crisp rounded off sound. What the FU#K am I doing wrong???

If you haven't tried an EQ, I definately start there. Besides that, a 12bit sampler s900/s950/emax se/hd will do the trick. Gates, compressors and all that other stuff isn't necessarry if your doing Hip-hop. Actually, you may find that if you sample your drums from wax, you don't need anything but a burner to listen to your perfect beats in the ride. If your new to Hip-hop production, you will find that the simple cheap studio's make the best music, and sampling from wax doesn't cost a thing... plus, you can get drums that were processed on $100,000+ equipment.

. ..roxstar. ..

average wrote:

D_Samp wrote:jus to be a little more helpful on the knowledge tip...

one of the tricks i picked up early on was how good the MPC is for attack and decay settings. check this out... get a pretty funk/jazz style kick thats a bit rough, maybe with a little hats noise in it or something.

now get an 808 kick


adjust the delay/sustain of the jazz kick to leave the attack.

now do the reverse on the 808 kick... shave off that tacky attack.

now layer the two. if you follo wmy drift you can quite quickly craft a nice sound kick that not only gives a rough organic dynamic to your track but has some 'balls' so to speak with the 808 behind it.

as you develop your ears for singular drum hits you can shelve and align things spacially to make some pretty wicked sounds.

in nu-skool breaks remixes ive done i was sweating a bass and kick sound the original track had, till i saw the source files and saw how it was a culmination of many one shots crafted together then run through a bus with a comrpessor over it (for a uniformity).

ps, Average, i play devils advocate a bit. im in the "most help for those who help themselves" mentality more often then not. its cool to know that you and (usually not just funny) lampdog offset that and everyones happy.


haha god damn... feed em skills. pan based or thin and crispy?

All good! Yo, it'd be cool if you posted some random mix techniques. I pretty much been going off what I've figured out myself. But on the real, I've been butchering some mixes lately, specially when it comes to compression, and eq on vocals. I try to get that smooth vocal texture with eq, but just end up getting some wack a** high end stuff instead of getting that warm, crisp rounded off sound. What the FU#K am I doing wrong???

Hey, Cram81, Average, if you got sound forge u should check out the microphone impulses that you can download.. They imposes different subtle to hardcore effects and eq's on your vocals to make them sound like other expensive warmer microphones. I use them ALOT.. cause I don't have the best mic in the world ya dig...

roxstar wrote:Gates, compressors and all that other stuff isn't necessarry if your doing Hip-hop.

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

Eddie Satan wrote:

roxstar wrote:Gates, compressors and all that other stuff isn't necessarry if your doing Hip-hop.

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

To each his own, I use compression sometimes but not all the time. Mostly on vocals though..

what is a good program on windows that i can layer a drum sound ?

heya guys.

i hope you like this, its a free compressor plug-in that is actually pretty impressive. although i use a bunch of hardware compressors (more on that in a second) and the industry standard Wave plugins (C1, C4 etc) i still use this free compressor a lot!

its very "blatant" in its results and as such great for hiphop.

http://www.digitalfishphones.com/main.php?item=2&subItem=3



as for hardware, well ive got your typical mid-range semi-pro rig, and i dont plan to upgrade any time soon. heres the units i use and why:

Focusrite PENTA: its a 2RU hardware compressor and pretty sturdy. i bought one after hearing how good it was in a previous band i was in. its interesting because it has a row of presets on the top right and that are actually quite good! i record instruments and all sorts of stuff for my job so this is useful, though of course you cant rely on presets all the time. sounds great.

RNC compressor: i cant believe this thing. its a tiny half rack compressor with an analog signal path, but digital control of such. im always at a loss when someone asks me why i like it because i cant work it out. its not very "blantant" with its sound but it just works.

and ive got some behringer composer crap that i never use because it sounds horrible. its good to take out live if i dont trust the venues compressor setting or if there will be a live instrument or mic... because everything on stage goes through my mixer before the in-house limiters i have to keep the transients from the mics from f**king up my mix.


anyway, thats some pretty common gear on my level. i dont even have any good pre-amps yet, though some friends have real C1's and other neve type stuff so its nice to hire that. in the end its not ESSENTIAL.

i was just listening to Aesop Rock, El-P, Ugly Duckling.... to be honest i like hiphop and breaks because they dont dissapear up their own asses like say, trance and house music does you know? you can still have great creative stuff without being a total production wanker...

ps, i agree on the call about sampling records for dope beats already treated by massive studios etc. i have a friend who is a top selling hard house producer and nearly ALL his drums and hoovers are sampled off other records... cracks me up.

Lampdog wrote:

average wrote:

D_Samp wrote:jus to be a little more helpful on the knowledge tip...

one of the tricks i picked up early on was how good the MPC is for attack and decay settings. check this out... get a pretty funk/jazz style kick thats a bit rough, maybe with a little hats noise in it or something.

now get an 808 kick


adjust the delay/sustain of the jazz kick to leave the attack.

now do the reverse on the 808 kick... shave off that tacky attack.

now layer the two. if you follo wmy drift you can quite quickly craft a nice sound kick that not only gives a rough organic dynamic to your track but has some 'balls' so to speak with the 808 behind it.

as you develop your ears for singular drum hits you can shelve and align things spacially to make some pretty wicked sounds.

in nu-skool breaks remixes ive done i was sweating a bass and kick sound the original track had, till i saw the source files and saw how it was a culmination of many one shots crafted together then run through a bus with a comrpessor over it (for a uniformity).

ps, Average, i play devils advocate a bit. im in the "most help for those who help themselves" mentality more often then not. its cool to know that you and (usually not just funny) lampdog offset that and everyones happy.


haha god damn... feed em skills. pan based or thin and crispy?

All good! Yo, it'd be cool if you posted some random mix techniques. I pretty much been going off what I've figured out myself. But on the real, I've been butchering some mixes lately, specially when it comes to compression, and eq on vocals. I try to get that smooth vocal texture with eq, but just end up getting some wack a** high end stuff instead of getting that warm, crisp rounded off sound. What the FU#K am I doing wrong???

Hey, Cram81, Average, if you got sound forge u should check out the microphone impulses that you can download.. They imposes different subtle to hardcore effects and eq's on your vocals to make them sound like other expensive warmer microphones. I use them ALOT.. cause I don't have the best mic in the world ya dig...

Good lookin'. What's crazy though is that I have a bad a$$ mic and preamp. I'm a victim of having a lot of sh#t and not knowing how to use it right. I'm learning though. If you got some protools plug in tips, I'll gladly accept them too.