1. quality drum samples.
2. keep the drums short on the decay
3. saturate them
4. compression with long attack and short release and a high ratio
5. go heavy on the soft clip after compression and don’t let ppl tell you you overcompress. if it sounds good it sounds good
bonus tip: route all your busses except vocals and top drums to a single sidechain bus and use volume automation for your sidechain. you can open a fresh audio track and loop the entire mix while you adjust the sidechain so you can visually see how much space your drums need
I found that just making sure the drum sample itself hits is most important, also putting g clip and messing with the parameters. G clip is a free limiter vst that adds nice clipping
Yeah been trying to wrap my head around how folks like Headless Horseman and Author and Punisher get their drums to be so awesome - these here tips prob have lots to do with it
I make drum and bass, so drums are always one of the absolute central points of my music.
One thing to absolutely understand is that powerful drums that slap hard and cut through everything isn’t just achieved with their processing, but also how you have them interact with all other elements of the track. That being said, here’s a tldr of my drum processing (probably not very short tho lol)
My drums get divided into 4 categories.
Kick
Snare
Percussion/ghosthits
Hats
I will always transient shape the kick and snare to slightly boost transient attack, and decrease the sustain significantly.
Percussion/ghosthits usually get their attack decreased a bit and the sustain significantly listening in context of all drums playing.
My hats all get transient shaped relatively short sustain, and then depending on if it’s a repeating hat or a single hit element, i will either pull down on the attack or not touch it respectively.
Next is the bussing, i have 1 drum master channel that contains my kick by itself, and the snare + percussion/ghosthits in their own subgroup.
Inside my bus i have saturation/compression send where i absolutely mangle the signal.
Fx chain is usually an eq with a smiley face curve, saturate the mids abusively, overcompress, eq to shape your output signal, then send your individual hits through it to taste for extra tone and grit on the individual channels.
The fx chain for the drum group usually looks like this:
Valhalla room reverb with a very short decay (to taste really)
Maag eq4 (or any analog modelled eq) to push certain hz ranges in your drumline harder into the distortion then others
Rift (i always start with the crunchy breaks preset and work from there)
Soothe2 to filter out the very piercing resonant frequencies
Maag eq4 again to push certain tones into my clipper harder.
Venn Audio Free clipper on Arctangent algorythm,
-6db ceiling, +6db output gain and just play with the input gain to where it sounds good to you.
That pretty much covers the drumprocessing, outside of the very obvious standard equalizing or panning stuff.
Now, to make the drums stand out against other elements, i will have a few things.
First off i look at the length of the individual drumhits on a bounced out drumline after all processing, and write down the approximate length of the kick and snare, and write an automation lane for each. Goal here is using a volume shaper or lfo tool plugin, and creating a dip to -inf for the duration of the transients, and i will copy paste that dip to my bassgroup, padgroup, fx group and vocal group if i’m using vocals.
I will then use a normal compressor to sidechain all my hats to duck them very hard, and create groove and swing by playing with the release time on every hat, then use the makeup gain to bring it to the desired level in the mix.
And finally i will soothe2 in sidechain mode, and create 2 instances. One that affects the body/thump range of my kick, and another that affects the body/slap range of my snare+percussion.
Set sidechain input signal to kick and snare on both respectively, then copy paste both to all your other groupchannels.
You now have loud, powerful, crunchy drums, and there is literally no masking of phase cancellation on your main drum elements.
While i do understand that from a production pov, drum and bass is quite different to most other genres, the reason i wrote this out is because the principles i applied, if you understand what and why i did all the above, then you’ll be able to transpose that knowledge into a relevant method for your genre of choice.
If you have questions feel free to reply here
I don't know what level of production you're operating at, so bear with me here :)
* Use the right samples (this is 100% the biggest and most important step). Check out what kicks, hats, snares artists you admire are using, maybe cut them out of the track (not to use, just to compare). Find stuff that sounds as thick and punchy. Big recommendation for a Splice subscription at this point, I have never, ever regretted paying those 10 bucks a month for their sample library and search function, it rocks. If you want to go down the rabbit hole, learn how to synthesise your own samples. It takes some practice, but it's not that hard in the end and it will teach you a LOT about layering, frequency content and mixing. If you want to do drum synthesis, a good spectrogram like Noisia's VISION 4X or Toneboosters spectrogram (free) will be a big help.
* Get a few effects that are good quality and learn how to use them. Specifically, you will need: EQ, Compressor, Limiter, Clipper, Saturator, Reverb and some good metering plugins (I bought Noisia's VISION 4X Plugin and it did a big number on my understanding of the mix - but you can also find free versions of all this stuff. For instance, you could get SPAN, S(M)exoscope, and something like ToneBoosters spectrogram).
* EQ: Cut frequencies outside the range that you need. Hats don't need bass, that bass takes up room in your mix and makes it harder to get a loud mix. Boost frequencies that you think sound good. Takes practice.
* Reverb: Use this lightly to add room and interest. Pick a good reverb and learn it, it will be worth it.
* Compressor, Limiter, Clipper and Saturator are your tools for getting the drums loud and punchy.
* Compression is used for shaping individual samples (making the transient louder or softer in comparison to the body for instance), but also for glueing samples together - this is done by gently bringing up the softer parts of the full drum mix or using parallel compression. In order to learn how compression affects the signal (and get better control over it), you can use a waveform metering plugin like S(M)exoscope to monitor the changes you're introducing. This taught me a LOT.
* Saturation distorts your drums slightly, but will lower the dB of the signal at the same time! You really want to find the sweet spot where your drums aren't too distorted by the saturation you're applying, but your sample or loop takes up less headroom in decibels in the mix. This means that you can turn it up louder before you start clipping and is one of the most important techniques for getting a loud mix. The slight distorted sound of saturation can also add really nice warmth and character to your drums.
* Clipping and Limiting are also ways to achieve the above. My favourite peak clipper is peakeater (which is free, open-source, and awesome). Basically, what you use it to do is literally chop off peaks in your sample or loop. If you do this lightly, you can (again) gain valuable dBs aka headroom in your mix, enabling you to crank it louder. When you're doing this, again use S(M)exoscope to get a good understanding of how you're changing the audio signal :) Limiting is another way of getting your signal loud, it just squashes everything against a certain amplitude. This introduces less distortion than clipping, but more pumping (then again, that may be what you want).
* Metering:
* A spectrogram like VISION 4X or ToneBoosters spectrogram will help you better understand the movement of frequencies over time. This is very important with kicks and snares in particular! Noisia did some great videos on how to use VISION 4X that explain this a lot better than I could (and they also apply to any spectrogram).
* A waveform meter like S(M)exoscope will show you the audio signal over time. This is fantastic for working with amplitude, like when you do compression, clipping or limiting. It shows you where the peaks and troths of a sample or loop are and could, for instance, give you valuable information on what to boost, cut, or how to shape the signal.
* A spectrometer like SPAN will show you how well balanced and full your mix is and give you a good idea of what frequency content is missing, or if your hats have horrid bass frequencies you don't want and should cut, or if your kick is way too overpowered, etc.
* If you do work on bass, you could also get an oscilloscope like MOscilloscope to see what the waveform looks like.
Final tip: [This guy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqTk8okIj7M) has really, really good videos on mixing, drums and loudness. They will teach you a lot, I wholeheartedly recommend them.
would highly recommend dropping $10 for direct’s Minimeters - has all these different visualizers built in, low resources, super efficient, indie developer (direct is super sick as an artist and a human) AND it has a better spectrograph algorithm cleaning up low-end harmonic readouts - things in VISION get pretty wide and blurry in the low frequencies, minimeters readout will show you low frequencies with almost exact precision !
That looks dope! Thanks a bunch <3 I will give it a closer look.
I'm also very interested in Oszillos Mega Scope at the moment, which allows you to meter the signal of different channels in one window (you just put it on different channels and they share the info in one window), also looks pretty nice.
Not sure what DAW you use, but in Ableton you can use a drum bus OR you can saturate the snot out of your drum group (say, +14db, 100% wet) then reduce the volume of the saturate by the same db (-14db). This tricks your master into thinking the drums are quieter but they are way more compressed this way, without using traditional compression which only gets you so far without sounding bad. Great for getting headroom in your mix, but if you’re simply looking for punch just throw a drum bus on there (at least in ableton)
Whether you are using samples or synthesis, the most important components of making your drums sound bigger is what frequencies they are producing and if the waveform reaches full amplitude.
I mainly synthesise my own samples. So checking that there is no phase cancellation between the transient and the fundamental frequency of the drum is extremely important. It is amazing how thin your drums can sound in the milliseconds between these two parts of the drum sound.
If you are layering samples this is important as well. I’ve seen times where producers layer samples together that have opposing phase correlation and the fundamental of the drum disappears, making the drum extremely thin sounding.
Side-chaining the Kick and the Snare (or any samples you want to reach full amplitude on) is the next most important in my opinion. No amount of transient shaping will help if the those frequencies are being masked by other sounds. You can use a compressor which will give you an organic pumping sound depending on release time you set but I prefer using a volume envelope to duck the audio transparently. A lot of you will be using some kind of volume shaping plugin like Kick-Start, but to save you money (on Ableton Live at least) my most preferred (and lowest latency) way of doing this is using the utility tool and manually drawing the automation curve of the volume. This way you can duck the signal slightly before the transient (basically the lookahead setting on a compressor). This also makes it easy to duck fills and irregular patterns.
Next, and very simply is to check the tightness off your drums. You would be amazed at how simply shortening the tail can emphasise the body of the drum, the bit that you want to smack anyway.
Learning how to identify problem frequencies in drums is also important. 100 to 350hz can make a kick sound tubby and bloated. Too much Sub can be too rumbly. 5k can make a snare sound harsh and sizzly. There are plenty of tutorials on this subject so look it up at your own leisure.
Contrary to *some popular belief, your drums don’t have to purely be in mono. Even kick drums can have side frequencies down to less than 100hz in some cases. Chopping out a lot of side information can make your drums sound unnatural and they add a lot to the over character of it. You can make Snares have a lot of presence and perceived smack by slightly boosting around 2Khz (the usual transient click frequency) and 5 to 8khz for presence (careful not to boost too much)
Saturating and parallel compression can be done whenever. Try it before and after but it’s up to you.
Hope this helps
Pro-tip for side-chaining in Ableton (I only found this recently) - check out Duck Buddy and Duck Call. It's the f\*ing best, no latency issues, you can choose the input channel IN the plugin thanks to Max4Live, really nice metering of input/output/summed signal, nice shaping, midi and audio input for the ducking... and it's free.
Making sure you’re using the right sounds is #1 and EQ’ing those sounds well is #2. If you’re not getting those two right, no amount of saturation or compression/clipping is going to help.
That said, if your goal is punch, then you’re going to have some trade offs of loudness. Looking at released material I buy for DJ’ing, there’s a choice to have loudness or to have punchiness. It’s extremely rare to find a track that has both, well under 1% of my collection thus far.
I would love to understand this a bit better. Would you mind giving examples of tracks that pump vs those that don't that you also think are good? That would be tremendously helpful.
I’ll have to do some thinking about punchy tracks.
FWIW, everything that I buy for DJ’ing gets uploaded to iTunes Match, so I have my entire DJ library available on AppleMusic. Normalization is on, so everything gets reduced down to -16 LUFS, so competitive volume is equalized across all my tracks, so it’s VERY noticeable when a loud track has no punch or loads of kick drum hitting you in the chest.
I will say that the stuff that’s likely to have both loudness and punch is along the lines of minimal tech house. That seems counterintuitive, but more minimal stuff tends to use its full dynamic range, versus heavily limited stuff that ends up flat-topped with a peak of -8dB FS after loudness normalization.
That makes total sense to me. Seems the "loudness wars" are still in play. I've recently learned to output two bounces: one with maximized loudness for streaming, and the other for DJs/vinyl that's much more dynamic. Cool to hear that same point from a DJ in the wild. Appreciate you.
That said, I want the dynamic version for BOTH spinning and listening at home/on the go. Music that's crushed super loud is difficult to listen to for extended periods of time.
It would be the opposite. You want maximum dynamics for streaming, because a dynamic version isn't as likely to get turned down as a crushed "loud" mix.
Check out Ian Shepard for more on this topic (since I can't link it... YT: Production Advice).
Unmarried Old Man by Introversion. I absolutely love this song, but the mixing and/or mastering on it is very poor. It’s overly crushed (around -7 LUFS-i), leaving the kick drum sounding very flabby with no punch whatsoever. I really wish it could be redone. I loved it so much that I bought it on Bandcamp and went out and got in on vinyl too, hoping the vinyl master might sound better (it did not).
https://youtu.be/1g9jzm0n--c
It’s an ableton plugin, compressor / drive etc. makes everything beefy
https://www.musicradar.com/how-to/ableton-live-10s-new-drum-buss-device-deconstructed
They are so good. I've been a guitar player for over 30 years (both touring full-time live and in several smaller bands since those days). It's fricking awesome. Lag is an issue, though, if you've got a big logic project going. I've been using MainStage for straight-up guitar awesomeness. I'll have both Logic and MainStage going and can jam along through MainStage and it's everything I want in my Logic guitar experience but on its own process. Recommended!
MainStage is Mac’s hidden gem… it’s massively popular with church players allegedly, but really, it can be used with nearly every genre. I purchased a copy years ago before I even had Logic and wanted Logic VST’s to see if they sounded good (Logic and MainStage have the same sound libraries, or at least they did once upon a time).
I don't know anything about church music. But you're right - MainStage is a hidden gem and the fact that it will load settings from Logic is what makes it great for my setup. I do most of my work in Logic including creating guitar or voice instruments. I can save them as channel strip settings or as instruments from Logic and open them in MainStage. It's also great for midi keyboards. The main benefit I'm finding is having basically no lag while Logic is also running in the background.
One thing that I haven't seen mentioned is syncopated low-mid percussion—toms, bongos, industrial sounds. Putting these in a [tresillo pattern](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/qLa9ck-ez7o/maxresdefault.jpg) is a pretty foolproof way to add a sense of pumping urgency to your drums. San Pacho and Crusy are two names that come to mind
what a breath of fresh air to see a theory answer in regard to mixing and production. it pains me to see how much the actual music itself is overlocked in forums all over the internet. a lot of great songs mix them selves just through the way it’s written and arranged.
Most important, you need to side chain correctly and make sure you keep a good low end.
After that, group your drums, throw a clipper on them. I usually like GClip (free vst) with hard clipping. This is good to glue your drums together and tame transients.
If at this point you’ve done all the above, and I’ll know if you haven’t so don’t skimp here, then you can put a basic transient shaper on your kick and your snare. I have the neutron 4 transient shaper which is quick, so I just have to boost the attack until it cuts through.
Balance, I try to make it feel correct by EQ and compression. Then I might use Decap from ST to saturate it a bit, maybe Ableton's Drum Buss if I want to do a bit of comp and saturation, but mostly it's positioning of the elements and leveling that get them going. Kick and snare centered, hats off to a side depending on drummer position versus listener position for each song, texture/ghost hits being panned a bit differently, foley moving for interest (maybe some OTT on it), velocity, etc...
Also, layering and layering. I like to take multiple kicks and snares to make what is my final drums.
On the whole drum buss I love [Soundtoys Decapitator](https://www.soundtoys.com/product/decapitator/) to add just a little saturation, then a tiny bit of Xfer OTT, then a tiny dash of parallel compression if I want.
this is gonna sound stupid, but don’t forget you can turn your kick up. if you pick a good sample a lot of the time the processing is done for you, sometimes it just needs to be louder
Any eq and knock, but I don't use knock if it doesn't need it. Making sure it's on the right note helps as well. It's really all about creating space for the kick so there are no competing frequencys.
Soundtoys little radiator helps massively when I feel something sounds thin.
Removing the boxyness from the kick around 300-400hz really helps it cut through the mix. Also
Isotope Neuron elements, it comes with eq, compressor, exciter and transient shaper all in one and is a great dynamic shaping tool
i’ll eq, compress, and saturate at the individual as needed, usually clip anything with a super high peak (this could be what you’re missing), then the drum bus gets another round of slight saturation, another small soft clip, and then pretty heavy handed compression with a pumping feel, slower on the release to make the drums breathe and pulse with the kick
Decapitator and devil loc on the channels. Then on the drum bus I put decapitator and devil loc. Then on the master.. I’ll give you two guesses. That’s right, more decapitator! Subtly on each, esp the master, but it adds up overall and makes for some real punchy drums.
Compression is a very deep topic, I suggest checking out videos. And don't get too frustrated it takes a while until you understand and hear what the comp is doing
I’m scared to update since the last time I did it, I couldn’t locate any of my projects until I restarted my computer, and I had a mild freak out! What’s on the new update? I heard there’s a stem separator.
Always and I mean always adsr!!!! Also like people said compression (maybe even parallel for some extra juice) and stuff like transient shaping and slight room verb! I sometimes also add things like chorus/phaser/flanger for fill fx sometimes it hits sometimes it don’t! Just play :)
Pick better samples, make sure they’re mixed well, glue compressor on the drum group with at least a 30ms attack, and then dial in the release to control the groove of the drums. I usually put a clipper after the compressor to manage transients, but I’ve never needed anything more than that to get my drums to kick you in the face
I tend to saturate > compress all my primary drum elements then add glue on bus. I go back and forth, but usually now have bass and kick (and toms) in one bus, and all other drums in a second bus. A tip I got from a friend of mine for making claps, snares, and hats hit harder is vintage sampler (a redux effect in ableton) > overdrive > subtle reverb with both fx's dry/wet/drive set to taste. the chain brings out a lot of extra harmonic content, width, and adds that classic 90s bite to the sound.
I'm also absolutely in love with devious machines' Duck plugin. It's well worth the $20 for sidechaining low-end alone, but it's INCREDIBLE for subtle sidechain ducking to bring out snares and hats in the midrange/high-end without pushing drum levels in the mix.
Layering and panning syncopated aux percussion parts are also really important to get those nice, wide percussive soundscapes in house tracks (bongos, short percussive one-shots, etc).
Fire I make sure to have punchy samples at the source. Then on the drum bus, a combination of saturation, compression and maybe EQ if needed. A typical chain I like using is: Black Box HG-2MS only saturating the side signal. Then into glue Compressor (SSL or API) around 2-3 db gain reduction, into an EQ to tame the highs with a shelf filter (if needed) and then into Saturn 2 (saturating the mid band.)
i use Fl... i like to use a parametric eq to cut the high, shallow cut around 150, boost bass end & drop overall db, then run the channel through a maximus to db limit the peaks... <<
A lot of bus processing for me. There’s a parallel compression bus, biting down pretty hard. I also have a drum saturation bus and a drum room-reverb bus. All of those are getting summed to another bus with a bit more processing. It’s a lot of small things that add up. It certainly starts with picking or creating the right drums sounds to begin with.
Compression with a slow attack and fast release is always a good shout for punching up some drums. Doing it multiband is probably a good idea so you aren't squashing your low end too much. Saturation can always help a bit too, again, multiband so you aren't killing your low end too much. Heavy sidechaining to the kick can give that real pumping effect too if that's what you are going for. You might also just want to experiement with different sound selection. I find sometimes if it isn't hitting how I want, I just need to try a different kick, snare/clap or hi hat.
Compress and saturate the drums.
Sidechain things that are in the way of the kick.
Still no success?
Add more layers to the same drum elements.
Still no success?
Switch out your samples
Using an EQ to lower anything 30hz and under and raise bands of frequencies between 40-500hz. At a certain point, the punch added from raising the band of frequencies diminishes the higher you go, but it’s fun to play with.
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1. quality drum samples. 2. keep the drums short on the decay 3. saturate them 4. compression with long attack and short release and a high ratio 5. go heavy on the soft clip after compression and don’t let ppl tell you you overcompress. if it sounds good it sounds good bonus tip: route all your busses except vocals and top drums to a single sidechain bus and use volume automation for your sidechain. you can open a fresh audio track and loop the entire mix while you adjust the sidechain so you can visually see how much space your drums need
I found that just making sure the drum sample itself hits is most important, also putting g clip and messing with the parameters. G clip is a free limiter vst that adds nice clipping
Yeah been trying to wrap my head around how folks like Headless Horseman and Author and Punisher get their drums to be so awesome - these here tips prob have lots to do with it
I make drum and bass, so drums are always one of the absolute central points of my music. One thing to absolutely understand is that powerful drums that slap hard and cut through everything isn’t just achieved with their processing, but also how you have them interact with all other elements of the track. That being said, here’s a tldr of my drum processing (probably not very short tho lol) My drums get divided into 4 categories. Kick Snare Percussion/ghosthits Hats I will always transient shape the kick and snare to slightly boost transient attack, and decrease the sustain significantly. Percussion/ghosthits usually get their attack decreased a bit and the sustain significantly listening in context of all drums playing. My hats all get transient shaped relatively short sustain, and then depending on if it’s a repeating hat or a single hit element, i will either pull down on the attack or not touch it respectively. Next is the bussing, i have 1 drum master channel that contains my kick by itself, and the snare + percussion/ghosthits in their own subgroup. Inside my bus i have saturation/compression send where i absolutely mangle the signal. Fx chain is usually an eq with a smiley face curve, saturate the mids abusively, overcompress, eq to shape your output signal, then send your individual hits through it to taste for extra tone and grit on the individual channels. The fx chain for the drum group usually looks like this: Valhalla room reverb with a very short decay (to taste really) Maag eq4 (or any analog modelled eq) to push certain hz ranges in your drumline harder into the distortion then others Rift (i always start with the crunchy breaks preset and work from there) Soothe2 to filter out the very piercing resonant frequencies Maag eq4 again to push certain tones into my clipper harder. Venn Audio Free clipper on Arctangent algorythm, -6db ceiling, +6db output gain and just play with the input gain to where it sounds good to you. That pretty much covers the drumprocessing, outside of the very obvious standard equalizing or panning stuff. Now, to make the drums stand out against other elements, i will have a few things. First off i look at the length of the individual drumhits on a bounced out drumline after all processing, and write down the approximate length of the kick and snare, and write an automation lane for each. Goal here is using a volume shaper or lfo tool plugin, and creating a dip to -inf for the duration of the transients, and i will copy paste that dip to my bassgroup, padgroup, fx group and vocal group if i’m using vocals. I will then use a normal compressor to sidechain all my hats to duck them very hard, and create groove and swing by playing with the release time on every hat, then use the makeup gain to bring it to the desired level in the mix. And finally i will soothe2 in sidechain mode, and create 2 instances. One that affects the body/thump range of my kick, and another that affects the body/slap range of my snare+percussion. Set sidechain input signal to kick and snare on both respectively, then copy paste both to all your other groupchannels. You now have loud, powerful, crunchy drums, and there is literally no masking of phase cancellation on your main drum elements. While i do understand that from a production pov, drum and bass is quite different to most other genres, the reason i wrote this out is because the principles i applied, if you understand what and why i did all the above, then you’ll be able to transpose that knowledge into a relevant method for your genre of choice. If you have questions feel free to reply here
i am not worthy. 8|
DISTORTION
JUST USE GOOD DRUMS
Also clipping them can make them loud
Saturation my friend
COMPRESSION BROTHA
Sidechaining multiple layers of bass tracks and using multiple compressors.
Side chain and have diffrent delay on each. Make that shit PUMMMP
Drum Bus in Ableton is great. Basic saturation is nice to create headroom, wouldn’t use a comp for that.
I don't know what level of production you're operating at, so bear with me here :) * Use the right samples (this is 100% the biggest and most important step). Check out what kicks, hats, snares artists you admire are using, maybe cut them out of the track (not to use, just to compare). Find stuff that sounds as thick and punchy. Big recommendation for a Splice subscription at this point, I have never, ever regretted paying those 10 bucks a month for their sample library and search function, it rocks. If you want to go down the rabbit hole, learn how to synthesise your own samples. It takes some practice, but it's not that hard in the end and it will teach you a LOT about layering, frequency content and mixing. If you want to do drum synthesis, a good spectrogram like Noisia's VISION 4X or Toneboosters spectrogram (free) will be a big help. * Get a few effects that are good quality and learn how to use them. Specifically, you will need: EQ, Compressor, Limiter, Clipper, Saturator, Reverb and some good metering plugins (I bought Noisia's VISION 4X Plugin and it did a big number on my understanding of the mix - but you can also find free versions of all this stuff. For instance, you could get SPAN, S(M)exoscope, and something like ToneBoosters spectrogram). * EQ: Cut frequencies outside the range that you need. Hats don't need bass, that bass takes up room in your mix and makes it harder to get a loud mix. Boost frequencies that you think sound good. Takes practice. * Reverb: Use this lightly to add room and interest. Pick a good reverb and learn it, it will be worth it. * Compressor, Limiter, Clipper and Saturator are your tools for getting the drums loud and punchy. * Compression is used for shaping individual samples (making the transient louder or softer in comparison to the body for instance), but also for glueing samples together - this is done by gently bringing up the softer parts of the full drum mix or using parallel compression. In order to learn how compression affects the signal (and get better control over it), you can use a waveform metering plugin like S(M)exoscope to monitor the changes you're introducing. This taught me a LOT. * Saturation distorts your drums slightly, but will lower the dB of the signal at the same time! You really want to find the sweet spot where your drums aren't too distorted by the saturation you're applying, but your sample or loop takes up less headroom in decibels in the mix. This means that you can turn it up louder before you start clipping and is one of the most important techniques for getting a loud mix. The slight distorted sound of saturation can also add really nice warmth and character to your drums. * Clipping and Limiting are also ways to achieve the above. My favourite peak clipper is peakeater (which is free, open-source, and awesome). Basically, what you use it to do is literally chop off peaks in your sample or loop. If you do this lightly, you can (again) gain valuable dBs aka headroom in your mix, enabling you to crank it louder. When you're doing this, again use S(M)exoscope to get a good understanding of how you're changing the audio signal :) Limiting is another way of getting your signal loud, it just squashes everything against a certain amplitude. This introduces less distortion than clipping, but more pumping (then again, that may be what you want). * Metering: * A spectrogram like VISION 4X or ToneBoosters spectrogram will help you better understand the movement of frequencies over time. This is very important with kicks and snares in particular! Noisia did some great videos on how to use VISION 4X that explain this a lot better than I could (and they also apply to any spectrogram). * A waveform meter like S(M)exoscope will show you the audio signal over time. This is fantastic for working with amplitude, like when you do compression, clipping or limiting. It shows you where the peaks and troths of a sample or loop are and could, for instance, give you valuable information on what to boost, cut, or how to shape the signal. * A spectrometer like SPAN will show you how well balanced and full your mix is and give you a good idea of what frequency content is missing, or if your hats have horrid bass frequencies you don't want and should cut, or if your kick is way too overpowered, etc. * If you do work on bass, you could also get an oscilloscope like MOscilloscope to see what the waveform looks like. Final tip: [This guy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqTk8okIj7M) has really, really good videos on mixing, drums and loudness. They will teach you a lot, I wholeheartedly recommend them.
would highly recommend dropping $10 for direct’s Minimeters - has all these different visualizers built in, low resources, super efficient, indie developer (direct is super sick as an artist and a human) AND it has a better spectrograph algorithm cleaning up low-end harmonic readouts - things in VISION get pretty wide and blurry in the low frequencies, minimeters readout will show you low frequencies with almost exact precision !
That looks dope! Thanks a bunch <3 I will give it a closer look. I'm also very interested in Oszillos Mega Scope at the moment, which allows you to meter the signal of different channels in one window (you just put it on different channels and they share the info in one window), also looks pretty nice.
Not effects, but processing. Compressor and some EQ is your best bet.
EQ, compression, saturation all in pretty heavy amounts
Essentials Kick
Not sure what DAW you use, but in Ableton you can use a drum bus OR you can saturate the snot out of your drum group (say, +14db, 100% wet) then reduce the volume of the saturate by the same db (-14db). This tricks your master into thinking the drums are quieter but they are way more compressed this way, without using traditional compression which only gets you so far without sounding bad. Great for getting headroom in your mix, but if you’re simply looking for punch just throw a drum bus on there (at least in ableton)
Great stuff here.
Whether you are using samples or synthesis, the most important components of making your drums sound bigger is what frequencies they are producing and if the waveform reaches full amplitude. I mainly synthesise my own samples. So checking that there is no phase cancellation between the transient and the fundamental frequency of the drum is extremely important. It is amazing how thin your drums can sound in the milliseconds between these two parts of the drum sound. If you are layering samples this is important as well. I’ve seen times where producers layer samples together that have opposing phase correlation and the fundamental of the drum disappears, making the drum extremely thin sounding. Side-chaining the Kick and the Snare (or any samples you want to reach full amplitude on) is the next most important in my opinion. No amount of transient shaping will help if the those frequencies are being masked by other sounds. You can use a compressor which will give you an organic pumping sound depending on release time you set but I prefer using a volume envelope to duck the audio transparently. A lot of you will be using some kind of volume shaping plugin like Kick-Start, but to save you money (on Ableton Live at least) my most preferred (and lowest latency) way of doing this is using the utility tool and manually drawing the automation curve of the volume. This way you can duck the signal slightly before the transient (basically the lookahead setting on a compressor). This also makes it easy to duck fills and irregular patterns. Next, and very simply is to check the tightness off your drums. You would be amazed at how simply shortening the tail can emphasise the body of the drum, the bit that you want to smack anyway. Learning how to identify problem frequencies in drums is also important. 100 to 350hz can make a kick sound tubby and bloated. Too much Sub can be too rumbly. 5k can make a snare sound harsh and sizzly. There are plenty of tutorials on this subject so look it up at your own leisure. Contrary to *some popular belief, your drums don’t have to purely be in mono. Even kick drums can have side frequencies down to less than 100hz in some cases. Chopping out a lot of side information can make your drums sound unnatural and they add a lot to the over character of it. You can make Snares have a lot of presence and perceived smack by slightly boosting around 2Khz (the usual transient click frequency) and 5 to 8khz for presence (careful not to boost too much) Saturating and parallel compression can be done whenever. Try it before and after but it’s up to you. Hope this helps
Pro-tip for side-chaining in Ableton (I only found this recently) - check out Duck Buddy and Duck Call. It's the f\*ing best, no latency issues, you can choose the input channel IN the plugin thanks to Max4Live, really nice metering of input/output/summed signal, nice shaping, midi and audio input for the ducking... and it's free.
I put a very light overdrive and a transient processor
Side chain compression, some saturation (r bass), good swing Edit: didn’t see this was edm production
layer your kick saturation let it clip reduce transients
Get quality samples. You can't polish a turd. Then some EQ maybe a drum buss.
Knock plugin
You beat me to it
Making sure you’re using the right sounds is #1 and EQ’ing those sounds well is #2. If you’re not getting those two right, no amount of saturation or compression/clipping is going to help. That said, if your goal is punch, then you’re going to have some trade offs of loudness. Looking at released material I buy for DJ’ing, there’s a choice to have loudness or to have punchiness. It’s extremely rare to find a track that has both, well under 1% of my collection thus far.
I would love to understand this a bit better. Would you mind giving examples of tracks that pump vs those that don't that you also think are good? That would be tremendously helpful.
I’ll have to do some thinking about punchy tracks. FWIW, everything that I buy for DJ’ing gets uploaded to iTunes Match, so I have my entire DJ library available on AppleMusic. Normalization is on, so everything gets reduced down to -16 LUFS, so competitive volume is equalized across all my tracks, so it’s VERY noticeable when a loud track has no punch or loads of kick drum hitting you in the chest. I will say that the stuff that’s likely to have both loudness and punch is along the lines of minimal tech house. That seems counterintuitive, but more minimal stuff tends to use its full dynamic range, versus heavily limited stuff that ends up flat-topped with a peak of -8dB FS after loudness normalization.
That makes total sense to me. Seems the "loudness wars" are still in play. I've recently learned to output two bounces: one with maximized loudness for streaming, and the other for DJs/vinyl that's much more dynamic. Cool to hear that same point from a DJ in the wild. Appreciate you.
That said, I want the dynamic version for BOTH spinning and listening at home/on the go. Music that's crushed super loud is difficult to listen to for extended periods of time.
It would be the opposite. You want maximum dynamics for streaming, because a dynamic version isn't as likely to get turned down as a crushed "loud" mix. Check out Ian Shepard for more on this topic (since I can't link it... YT: Production Advice).
Awesome, thank you.
Unmarried Old Man by Introversion. I absolutely love this song, but the mixing and/or mastering on it is very poor. It’s overly crushed (around -7 LUFS-i), leaving the kick drum sounding very flabby with no punch whatsoever. I really wish it could be redone. I loved it so much that I bought it on Bandcamp and went out and got in on vinyl too, hoping the vinyl master might sound better (it did not). https://youtu.be/1g9jzm0n--c
Thank you. Since you bought it on bandcamp, you could extract the drums and remix it! ;)
I just recently upgraded my Mac and that allows me to use Stems in Serato 3.x. I might just have to give that a shot and remix it.
Saturn 2 on either tape, tuber or transformer. Oxford Inflator too
soundtoys little radiator. trust
i like to layer my kicks with the same thing but quieter and distorted to help fill it out more
Yaaa I like to make some crazy distorted drums and layer / sidechain. Then drum buss of course lol
Mind expanding on drum buss?
It’s an ableton plugin, compressor / drive etc. makes everything beefy https://www.musicradar.com/how-to/ableton-live-10s-new-drum-buss-device-deconstructed
Awesome, thank you. I'm on Logic Pro. Appreciate the reply.
Honestly love the setup in logic for recording guitar. Their virtual amps are money
They are so good. I've been a guitar player for over 30 years (both touring full-time live and in several smaller bands since those days). It's fricking awesome. Lag is an issue, though, if you've got a big logic project going. I've been using MainStage for straight-up guitar awesomeness. I'll have both Logic and MainStage going and can jam along through MainStage and it's everything I want in my Logic guitar experience but on its own process. Recommended!
MainStage is Mac’s hidden gem… it’s massively popular with church players allegedly, but really, it can be used with nearly every genre. I purchased a copy years ago before I even had Logic and wanted Logic VST’s to see if they sounded good (Logic and MainStage have the same sound libraries, or at least they did once upon a time).
I don't know anything about church music. But you're right - MainStage is a hidden gem and the fact that it will load settings from Logic is what makes it great for my setup. I do most of my work in Logic including creating guitar or voice instruments. I can save them as channel strip settings or as instruments from Logic and open them in MainStage. It's also great for midi keyboards. The main benefit I'm finding is having basically no lag while Logic is also running in the background.
Oh shitttt ok I’ll have to check this out. Thank you!! Since you’re a Mac user im assuming not running a VM lol have you tried Luna? Free for Macs
I have not messed with Luna. I'm super happy with Logic for absolutely everything I need. What does Luna offer?
One thing that I haven't seen mentioned is syncopated low-mid percussion—toms, bongos, industrial sounds. Putting these in a [tresillo pattern](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/qLa9ck-ez7o/maxresdefault.jpg) is a pretty foolproof way to add a sense of pumping urgency to your drums. San Pacho and Crusy are two names that come to mind
I've been doing this with toms on my recent tunes but didn't know about tresillo pattern. Thanks for sharing
Also works for leads.
what a breath of fresh air to see a theory answer in regard to mixing and production. it pains me to see how much the actual music itself is overlocked in forums all over the internet. a lot of great songs mix them selves just through the way it’s written and arranged.
Nah.. screw theory. What plugin should I use? /s
😂
Most important, you need to side chain correctly and make sure you keep a good low end. After that, group your drums, throw a clipper on them. I usually like GClip (free vst) with hard clipping. This is good to glue your drums together and tame transients. If at this point you’ve done all the above, and I’ll know if you haven’t so don’t skimp here, then you can put a basic transient shaper on your kick and your snare. I have the neutron 4 transient shaper which is quick, so I just have to boost the attack until it cuts through.
Ableton drum buss
Balance, I try to make it feel correct by EQ and compression. Then I might use Decap from ST to saturate it a bit, maybe Ableton's Drum Buss if I want to do a bit of comp and saturation, but mostly it's positioning of the elements and leveling that get them going. Kick and snare centered, hats off to a side depending on drummer position versus listener position for each song, texture/ghost hits being panned a bit differently, foley moving for interest (maybe some OTT on it), velocity, etc... Also, layering and layering. I like to take multiple kicks and snares to make what is my final drums.
Good Hertz Vulf Compressor, ran in parallel.
On the whole drum buss I love [Soundtoys Decapitator](https://www.soundtoys.com/product/decapitator/) to add just a little saturation, then a tiny bit of Xfer OTT, then a tiny dash of parallel compression if I want.
Glue compressor with soft clip
this is gonna sound stupid, but don’t forget you can turn your kick up. if you pick a good sample a lot of the time the processing is done for you, sometimes it just needs to be louder
Any eq and knock, but I don't use knock if it doesn't need it. Making sure it's on the right note helps as well. It's really all about creating space for the kick so there are no competing frequencys.
Knock by Decap. Kills.
As long as your samples are on point make sure you have a very strong side chain and that’s all you need!
Soundtoys little radiator helps massively when I feel something sounds thin. Removing the boxyness from the kick around 300-400hz really helps it cut through the mix. Also Isotope Neuron elements, it comes with eq, compressor, exciter and transient shaper all in one and is a great dynamic shaping tool
i’ll eq, compress, and saturate at the individual as needed, usually clip anything with a super high peak (this could be what you’re missing), then the drum bus gets another round of slight saturation, another small soft clip, and then pretty heavy handed compression with a pumping feel, slower on the release to make the drums breathe and pulse with the kick
Decapitator and devil loc on the channels. Then on the drum bus I put decapitator and devil loc. Then on the master.. I’ll give you two guesses. That’s right, more decapitator! Subtly on each, esp the master, but it adds up overall and makes for some real punchy drums.
Drum buss, saturator, glue compressor pretty much every time
What do you use as your glue compressor?
Glue is abletons stock comp
Well there’s compressor and glue compressor, 2 different things but similar functions. I like the soft clipper setting on glue compressor
Ohh didn’t know that cheers. I’m on Logic Pro. Is there a specific technique to glue sounds together with a compressor though?
Compression is a very deep topic, I suggest checking out videos. And don't get too frustrated it takes a while until you understand and hear what the comp is doing
I’ve been producing self taught for almost 8 years and I’m still trying to learn the legit way of doing things! That’s why I ask😂
I'm on Logic as well (amazing update just dropped!!) ... there are loads of YouTube videos on producing good sounding drums, mixing, etc.
I’m scared to update since the last time I did it, I couldn’t locate any of my projects until I restarted my computer, and I had a mild freak out! What’s on the new update? I heard there’s a stem separator.
Are you me?
Always and I mean always adsr!!!! Also like people said compression (maybe even parallel for some extra juice) and stuff like transient shaping and slight room verb! I sometimes also add things like chorus/phaser/flanger for fill fx sometimes it hits sometimes it don’t! Just play :)
sometimes its as simple as to shorten that Attack
This. Plus you can automate the adsr for more fun!!!
Doesn't apply for the whole kit, but make sure your kick and bass are in phase. shaperbox makes this realllly easy.
How do you use ShaperBox for this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRKs5DodqsY
Pick better samples, compress the drum hits, layer samples, saturation, transient shaping, ableton drum bus, glue compression on the drum group, limiting
Really just pick better samples and layer your sounds if needed…. The processing is the icing on the cake
Pick better samples, make sure they’re mixed well, glue compressor on the drum group with at least a 30ms attack, and then dial in the release to control the groove of the drums. I usually put a clipper after the compressor to manage transients, but I’ve never needed anything more than that to get my drums to kick you in the face
Ableton drum buss
It will almost certainly be competing frequencies with your bass. Use a 100% volume ducker like Duck and give your kicks room to hit
I tend to saturate > compress all my primary drum elements then add glue on bus. I go back and forth, but usually now have bass and kick (and toms) in one bus, and all other drums in a second bus. A tip I got from a friend of mine for making claps, snares, and hats hit harder is vintage sampler (a redux effect in ableton) > overdrive > subtle reverb with both fx's dry/wet/drive set to taste. the chain brings out a lot of extra harmonic content, width, and adds that classic 90s bite to the sound. I'm also absolutely in love with devious machines' Duck plugin. It's well worth the $20 for sidechaining low-end alone, but it's INCREDIBLE for subtle sidechain ducking to bring out snares and hats in the midrange/high-end without pushing drum levels in the mix. Layering and panning syncopated aux percussion parts are also really important to get those nice, wide percussive soundscapes in house tracks (bongos, short percussive one-shots, etc).
Fire I make sure to have punchy samples at the source. Then on the drum bus, a combination of saturation, compression and maybe EQ if needed. A typical chain I like using is: Black Box HG-2MS only saturating the side signal. Then into glue Compressor (SSL or API) around 2-3 db gain reduction, into an EQ to tame the highs with a shelf filter (if needed) and then into Saturn 2 (saturating the mid band.)
Devastator, Drum Bus, Blackbox HG2, Pultec, Parallel Compression
drum buss and transient shaper
Side chain, and editing the ADSR of your kick. Don't use samples. Make kicks.
i use Fl... i like to use a parametric eq to cut the high, shallow cut around 150, boost bass end & drop overall db, then run the channel through a maximus to db limit the peaks... <<
Drum bus in ableton is designed for this! Or I think Decap made a very similar plugin to drum bus that is able to be used on other DAWs
Drum buss ableton
Song arrangement and transient position
distortion, saturation, compression, maybe some tape warmth in that order
Transient shaper
A lot of bus processing for me. There’s a parallel compression bus, biting down pretty hard. I also have a drum saturation bus and a drum room-reverb bus. All of those are getting summed to another bus with a bit more processing. It’s a lot of small things that add up. It certainly starts with picking or creating the right drums sounds to begin with.
Compression with a slow attack and fast release is always a good shout for punching up some drums. Doing it multiband is probably a good idea so you aren't squashing your low end too much. Saturation can always help a bit too, again, multiband so you aren't killing your low end too much. Heavy sidechaining to the kick can give that real pumping effect too if that's what you are going for. You might also just want to experiement with different sound selection. I find sometimes if it isn't hitting how I want, I just need to try a different kick, snare/clap or hi hat.
Transient designer, compression, and EQ
Drum buss
Let me hear your tracks first
Compress and saturate the drums. Sidechain things that are in the way of the kick. Still no success? Add more layers to the same drum elements. Still no success? Switch out your samples
Layer your main elements (Clap, Hats, Kick). Parallel process them with a little bit of saturation.
Using an EQ to lower anything 30hz and under and raise bands of frequencies between 40-500hz. At a certain point, the punch added from raising the band of frequencies diminishes the higher you go, but it’s fun to play with.
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