My first Drum and Bass attempt. FEEDBACK PLEASE and THANK YOU.

**RATCUB** · 28-07-2012

Bump

**IV4** · 28-07-2012

Hit up artfx send him or me. fletch a message and ask about how to side chain better. Also look up artfx's tutorial tuesdays he teaches how to get a kick sitting better. I wish I could help more but I use reason.

**RATCUB** · 03-10-2012

So my Mac crashed, the logic board failed and I didn't have a comp for almost 2 months. But I got it back and now I have 2 studio moniters and a MIDI keyboard so finally I don't have to use my mouse! Anyway, thanks for the feedback so far and I hope you guys can answer some questions for me.

Originally Posted by IV4

Hit up artfx send him or me. fletch a message and ask about how to side chain better. Also look up artfx's tutorial tuesdays he teaches how to get a kick sitting better. I wish I could help more but I use reason.

**Psychoholic** · 03-10-2012

Originally Posted by subprime

Dunno, but I was disappointed when it didn't drop, so some of it must have worked at the very least.

^ Exactly that haha!

**msmith222** · 03-10-2012

yeah this intro is pretty good! subprime is right, is was disappointed to not hear a drop, so you must be doing something proper...

with kick drums, the meat is usually between 65-120Hz, depending on the kick sample and the tune. try to make a subtle wide boost here, start by making the boost too intense so you can easily hear where the chest thumping part of your sample is. dial it back to taste. Another thing often overlooked is that kicks need high end too! this is the part that will cut through your mix. we usually end up with a boost somewhere between 8k-10k, but only if your sample has the higher end already there. if not, layer up a kick sound that has a cleaner, crisper high end.

we also usually use a little compression, but at a lot of stages. So we bus all kicks to their own aux channel, and add compression there. choose your own settings but usually we end up with about 0.5-1.0db gain reduction here. then send all drums out of their own aux (sending the kick bus, snare bus, breaks bus - everything - to there), and adding light compression here as well (probably 1.0-1.5db gain reduction). further, we will send some signal to a parallel compression bus that has a heavy compressor on it - like, ridiculous heavy. it's up to you where the signal comes from, but we always route at least a portion of the main kicks and snares to this bus, but you could also just route a portion of the "all drums" bus. once you send some signal, turn the fader all the way down, and gradually bring it in until you like the sound. you should start to hear your drums get much punchier/stronger as you bring this fader in. if you haven't done this before, it may take a few tries.

my only suggestion for your bass sidechain - without hearing any audio - is that the goal of sidechaining your bass doesn't always have to be to make it audibly duck. sometimes it works to increase the compression until you hear the bass duck, and then back off just a bit. this will provide a bit of room for the kick without taking a lot of intensity from your bassline.

**alcaponeuk** · 03-10-2012

when the riser finished, u leave that little quarter bar gap, then just drum your main dnb beat with the bass, as long as your bass sound fits with the rest of the record it wont sound harsh or strange, just do it! and be confident in what your doing, it sounds good, excellent for a first attempt, better than most of my stuff