Processing Drums - Tips and Tricks

[marra]

- Pitch up and down the same sample. For example take sample one and pitch it down, then take the same sample in another channel and pitch it up. Try this with already layered samples, by exporting your multi layered samples then reimporting.
- Create Stereo Width - Simply pan the different samples across the sound stage. This gives a real feeling of width with minimal effort. Another route is to duplicate a sound and pan the two new versions hard left and right. Any difference in treatment to these sounds will now create a widened stereo image. A really simply way to create this widening effect without colouring the sound is to introduce a small amount of delay to one side. Even a few milliseconds can make a difference here.
- EQing is a big key.Know where each sample is mainly taking up in frequencies and layer sounds that use up different frequency ranges and eq them together.

Awesome!!!

[leighbeynon]

i could do with a good new sample pack for drums, i get sick of all those heavy kicks that are just taken from loops, you can still hear the hi hats or some other clicks that cant be removed without loosing the main feel of the kick,

i do group my drums, but worry about compression, and verb mine tend to sound worse, but on their own they dont groove together, mainly hats dont sound crisp and clean, maybe i need to do more eq work?

[friend_kami]

parallel compression (aka NY style compression).

make a rack with two chains and put a compressor on one and leave the other one dry. adjust to taste.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_compression

[mongrelbeats]

Parallel compression is a great tool for drums and can really add some extra crunch and snap to their feel.

One thing I like to do with my hats is to sometimes put a gate on the track that's controlling the hats specifically and get it so that it cuts off the tails a little bit or suppresses parts of the signal that are a little sloppy. This can give it a pretty cool uk garage feel. To get them having even more shuffle sidechain your hats to your kick and snare signals just slightly and sometimes it can get your kit bouncing together nicely.

Another tip on the topic of hats is to get a filter delay and place it on the hats chain.. then turn off the center delaying signal and widen the filter for the panning on the left and ride side. After that make sure all outputs are at zero and you should have a balanced and slightly widened hat sound.

For kick and snares different combos of eq/comp/saturation are usually a good place to start. If you want to bring out a certain freq in your hits then try subtracting some freqs around that specific one with an eq... this will also help to free up some headroom.

Turn your grid off sometimes too and get real up close to the hits just to move them a little bit earlier/later.

[friend_kami]

+1 on skipping the grid.
as a drummer myself i can say that skipping the grid and not having a perfectly placed out beat makes it feel more human. it's virtually impossible to keep a perfect beat as a drummer, and it's even more impossible to have the same stroke hit with the same velocity twice, so that's one thing to think about when making drums. not processing per se, but it makes a world of difference.

as for processing, frequency specific reverbs (especially with a gate in front) can make wonders as well, especially when coupled with ny style compression.

[simonlb]

I've found the following things very useful in making my drums sound better:

- Parallel compression (doesn't always work but a lot of the time it really makes a difference)
- Reverb. Big reverbs can be good for that heavy spacy sound or sometimes you want something small and tight, depends on the vibe you're going for.
- Subtle modulation of velocities and also LFOs changing volume, filters, etc.
- A little bit of saturation or overdrive on the main drum group/channel can spice things up.

Layering and going off-the-grid can be good sometimes but I don't place as much importance on them as most people seem to in "drum tips" threads. Still good to have in your arsenal though. Totally depends on the type of music you make, I do a lot of techno so going too far off the grid doesn't tend to do the beat many favours.

All of these things of course depend on having the basics (good samples/synths and programming) down.

Now I consider myself quite good at drums, there's always other aspects of my production that need more work though, still not as good as I want to be at synthesis/sound design

[Leejohnson222]

this is a great topic, does anyone have a before and after example of parallel compression?
ive never used this tech before, might prove useful for my drums,

i would love to have tight hard hitting beats, kind of drums you hear on defected tracks

[marra]

this is a great topic, does anyone have a before and after example of parallel compression?
ive never used this tech before, might prove useful for my drums,

i would love to have tight hard hitting beats, kind of drums you hear on defected tracks

Would be cool if more people could show some examples. Words mean little up in here.

With parallel
Without parallel

[Leejohnson222]

strong crisp beats

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5jKhwwoy3g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBHha2pe ... re=related
http://www.youtube.com/user/DefectedMusic?ob=0

[abletony84]

strong crisp beats

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5jKhwwoy3g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBHha2pe ... re=related
http://www.youtube.com/user/DefectedMusic?ob=0

Sounds like overly compressed 808 kicks run through tape.

[marra]

I meant for the people in here giving advice. It'd be cool if they could include some sample renderings of what they're on about.

[Vios]

This tutorial showed me some things I could do with drum racks that I didn't know yet. Some of it I already knew, but Live's ability to have return tracks within drum racks is something I didn't know about, and now use on all of my tracks.

Drum Racks Explained