Distortion on Drums

S

SpecialGuest

New Member
Joined
Feb 7, 2014
Hi there,

So if been listening hard to some of my favourite DnB tracks with my new Beyer Dynamic 770 pro headphones which seem to reveal my songs in such new glorious detail I can pick up on a new thing or two. I have noticed that a lot of the drums sound like they have some really subtle distortion on them. I know its standard recording technique to whack some compression on your drum track so guess its not so outrageous to use some clean distortion to crush the drums.

So I was just wondering if any of you guys use distortion on your drum tracks. Maybe you bounce down your break, put some distortion on the bounce and layer that underneath your drum track? If so, could anyone recommend me some fairly clean distortion plug ins to beef up my drums?

Thanks!

SpecialGuest
 
I like just a small bit of overdrive either with logic's stock overdrive or decapitator. I find it really increases the perceived loudness and punch.
 
I usually create a separate channel and run every individual drum hit through some kind of skream distortion in reason.
 
IV4 said:
I usually create a separate channel and run every individual drum hit through some kind of skream distortion in reason.
Click to expand...

Are you saying that its possible to create a new channel, then output each individual drum element through to that one channel so you can add effects to all the drums even though they originally start on different layers? Is it possible to do this on logic? That would save me bouncing down the drums everytime a make a change to them!
 
I normally send all my drum channels to bus 1 add some overall EQ on the whole signal, next i add a slight touch of distortion followed by a touch of overdrive sometimes a multi-band presser can come in handy after that just to boost the tops getting that nice sizzling shimmer to the tops finally i use the Waves tape Kramer for some tape saturation and always as a rule of thumb stick a Camel Phat on the end of the drum bus and use the reset to default patch which puts a zero ceiling on the signal (some further distortion can be used in the camel phat at this stage too).

Then of course send all individual drum channels to another bus (Bus 2 in my case) for some parallel compression (This guy pretty much covers parallel compression http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRW3SGK79dM) Mix the two signals together and boom some killer punchy drums!
 
I usually put a camel phat on my drum bus channel and put 2% of tube and 2% of exciter on it.It just sticks everything together nicely.
 
SpecialGuest said:
Are you saying that its possible to create a new channel, then output each individual drum element through to that one channel so you can add effects to all the drums even though they originally start on different layers? Is it possible to do this on logic? That would save me bouncing down the drums everytime a make a change to them!
Click to expand...
Yes, thats the basics of bussing, and is possible on every DAW, and is something you should probably know about already so have a squiz in the manual to see how to do it properly in logic.
Theres no need to bounce all your drums at all, unless you want to do some break mangling. You only need to manage each drum channels own plugin chain to get the sound you want, and route them all to the same bus for mixing purposes. Bouncing is impractical for just adding FX.
 
You are all legends amongst men (and possibly women, I don't know yet!) Gonna have a crack at all your tips and will be posting my efforts very soon. Technically, I'm a noob. But I think I have a damn good ear for a beat so you guys won't be disappointed :P

Peace
 
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