Ableton Forum

im having trouble making my drums stand out they sound ok to me but other people are commenting on them
any help apreciated

Are they commenting on your timing or the sound ?

Frequency cut the tracks which are muddying up the drum hits and layer your samples up to get a fatter sound.

It also helps to move the hits slightly off the beat so that not everything is hitting at the same time.

Hi thanks for replying could you explain how the layer and frequency cut please?

Im new to this too and having the same bother but basically, best advice, do some google/youtube searches - lots online to help with this sort of stuff and really handy for sort of walking you through side by side with your own stuff.

Keep in mind Im a complete novice and everyone correct me or point me in the right direction if wrong here but for sorting out frequencies I basically stick EQ8 over each drum part (Im using Live 9 beta so this is much easier with the graphics under the EQ curve) and trim off the frequencies not required. Kicks dont need those higher frequencies for example. It all frees up room for each drum part.

I havent really tried layering yet but would imagine, for example, layering 4 kicks - perhaps even very slightly swung either side of the "core" beat and tuned ever so slightly differently - would beef up the sound somewhat and give it a little more "oomph".

i tend to just use the envelopes in battery 3 for shaping and then parallel compress. i never get good results with layering.

Thanks guys I've tried the layering and it sounds stronger already, big improvement.

There's a "rule" in sound production: If the drums sound bad the track sounds bad. There are a ton of small tweaks that improve the sound of them. Here are some tutorials to get you moving forward:

Drum Tutorials

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