Am i trying to hard to make the loudest sickest drums?

mistasfx

mistasfx

MISTA SFX
VIP Junglist
Joined
Oct 29, 2007
Location
Near the Lake District
I find myself gettin frustrated when doing drums coz i always try and get the hardest snare and kick punching through.

Could this be hindering my progress? Are powerful drums needed or do they just need to roll nice in the mix?

I listen to other tunes and some drums are so minimal but yet sound sick which makes me think my drums dont sound that good coz the snare n kick are too powerful.

Thoughts?
 
depends on the track, see if it fits with what uv got to have one just punching through the mix! aslong as u the snare isnt ducking out, and its coming through the mix then anything past this is down to the type of tune you're making imo
 
I dont set out to make a type of tune, i just make some drums n go from there but i always try n make the nastiest snare within my ability but then i often find i cant get hats or cymbals to work good with them
 
^^^

been like that for a long time. only in the recent projects i discovered that its hindering my ability a lot.

just lay out some drums, dont process tooo much and then go on with the tune. then if youre done or like halfway through you could always alter the drumsounds to fit better within the track without losing a lot of otherwise better spend time.

and as you said, sometimes you just dont need the puchiest snare - also it depends greatly on the context, whether a snare sounds punchy or dull..

so just try a different workflow and see if it fits to the tunes youre making imo. if youre doing audio/spor style neuro obviously the way youre working could work well, but if youre doing spectrasouly/bop'y tunes you should really first get some flow within the bass and melodies before perfecting the drums..
 
Focus on overall good balance in your mix down and choose samples appropriate for the vibe of the track. Source sample selection is the most important phase of getting a track with the right vibe. Of course punchy drums are not going to do any harm if you have a dark agro track and i doubt it would be a problem in a liquid track either although you have to consider the whole and what your desired end result is to be. Ultimately when you listen to well produced tracks with a similar style to your own you will simply know if they make the grade.

cheers

SafeandSound Mastering
Online mastering studio
 
^yeah

i just got http://www.stevenslatedrums.com/ an hour ago and have been messing about with the 70s funk snares. they sound great after a bit of eq and some boosted low end with the vintage warmer on them... small bit of dampened reverb with a built in eq to just get the highs. then slight compression on the main drum bus, still have a long way to go to get a proper mix though... its definitely the hardest part of production, personally
 
Last edited:
depends on what sound you're trying to achieve. General thing is to make snare and kick stick out of the mix - be a bit louder than rest. You can do this by compresing basic sound to make it click, call it snap if you like. Now you take another sound to make a tail - cut the beginning, leave the tail. It's not the end though, you got yourself pretty rought sound atm. So next step is layering more samples to achieve the sound you like, no compression or anything on them, just bit eq and volume balancing. Now you got ie a snare consist of several layers, you can boost it with some distortion and saturation to blend and power the sound. The outcome doesn't have to be chubby. You can simple the method and the sound to make whatever you want.

the thing that makes simple sound sound big is often saturation and limitation (combined are maximisation) with same sounding layers (even same sound cut to layers).
 
I get the same problem, not with the punch, but with speed of my drums. I always want to have them sound as fast as possible. Sort of logistics kinda style.
Now and then i go like, Okay i'll make a different track now. But i always end up speeding up my drums :p.
I guess that's just how you want your track to sound.
 
It all boils down to genres, some require huge mega drums and some don't. The days of HUGE walls of sound and HUGE drums are old news..
 
i am a slave to this too... i always want punchy drums :cry:
the trick is to get them sounding good before compression, nyc and all the processing involved wit drums. there are days when i just sit in studio layering hit equing and bouncing. long
 
Eternaloptimist said:
i am a slave to this too... i always want punchy drums :cry:
the trick is to get them sounding good before compression, nyc and all the processing involved wit drums. there are days when i just sit in studio layering hit equing and bouncing. long
Click to expand...

Oh yes, i want my drums to punch no doubt. And EQing and getting them as close as possible before compression, is an absolute must.. If you don't EQ properly first, your only going to bring out all the unwanted shit when compressing..
 
Back
Top Bottom