Drums compression.

C

Committed_Sin

Committed Sin DNB
Joined
Nov 9, 2010
Location
Tilbury
Okay I've been producing for about 4-5 years now, started on fl 7. Then got reason 4. And upgraded to a mac with reason 5 & logic 9. Didn't like logic (couldn't get my head around it) so stuck with reason as I find it a lot easier to use and have found it the best program regardless of how limited it is! I have now just bought reason 6 about two weeks ago. And want my production to greatly improve now.

I Struggle quite a bit with Mixdowns and making the drums sound tight and making them stand out. I always add all the necessary eq to my drums, but the one thing I lack knowledge in is compression, il post my latest track up so you can get an idea of what my music sounds like.

But is there a general rule of what ratio threshold attack and release goes into compression for each element, kick snare ectt do you put it on each one or on all of them. For example I have my kicks in one mix channel my snares in another then they are both routed into a drum group mixer before they're put into the main mixer. So do I put the compression on the drum group or on the kick and the snare ectt..

Thanks for any help in advanced, here's a link to my latest track

http://soundcloud.com/committed-kronical-sin/commited-sin-killa


Thanks
Lee
 
I have found if I EQ my drums individually, bus them all together then add compression works wonders instead of compressing just the kicks/snares etc as you only want to bring out the body of the drums slightly. The attack and release is really down to your individual drum track however with drums it'll tend to be quick attack and release values. You'll have to use your ears as its very subtle. Easiest way is crank all the dails up so it sound obviously different then one by one turn them down, you'll soon get an idea of how it works. Once you get an ear for it try parrelell compression or (new york compression) this is where you send your drums to 2 separate busses, compress the grannie out of one, leaving the other dry then bus them together. This will help bring out the quieter characters of the drums and provide more beef to them. Hope that helped as I've not long got my head round it!

Happy twiddling.
 
New York compression
Compress kicks and snare and then send to a buss and compress with rest of drums to gel em
Use reverb and some distortion on there
Mess with compression before eq and vice versa
All this assuming your drums are in key with ya tune otherwise pointless
U can use spectrum analyzers if u can't do it by ear
Also Donno if you are layering or not.spoke to many producers and most seem not to layer kicks
One guy even told me he samples his kicks from old techno record

There are no rules blah blah but this works for me
 
I generally EQ all my drum elements seperately, adding slight saturation to snares, maybe some subtle reverb to one of my many hi hat patterns, and sometimes some overdrive on the kick, depending on what style or sound I want to achieve. I then route all of these to one channel and add compression, but only slight compression, if you over do it, it can destroy the drums completely. I usually have a quick release, attack set to just under halfway, a ratio of around 1:30 - 1:80 and turn the threshold down just slightly.
 
But would you like buss all the different drums together, kicks, snares, hats, breaks an'all and compress them all together?
 
Everyone has there own favorite way of compressing percssion, personally I do it all together, after all the processing on the drums in one group/bus, the settings i use depend on the sound, sometimes hard upto 1:5 ratio, sometimes more gentle 1.2/1.6, sometimes with parallel limiting or compression, not the answer you are looking for, but essentially you just have to play with the settings and see what works, subtle is often more than enough to get things pumping. watch out for distortion on the low end, and careful not to flatten your mid/high end by over doing things.
 
Eternaloptimist said:
New York compression
Compress kicks and snare and then send to a buss and compress with rest of drums to gel em
Use reverb and some distortion on there
Mess with compression before eq and vice versa
All this assuming your drums are in key with ya tune otherwise pointless
U can use spectrum analyzers if u can't do it by ear
Also Donno if you are layering or not.spoke to many producers and most seem not to layer kicks
One guy even told me he samples his kicks from old techno record

There are no rules blah blah but this works for me
Click to expand...

+1 from me
 
miszt said:
Everyone has there own favorite way of compressing percssion, personally I do it all together, after all the processing on the drums in one group/bus, the settings i use depend on the sound, sometimes hard upto 1:5 ratio, sometimes more gentle 1.2/1.6, sometimes with parallel limiting or compression, not the answer you are looking for, but essentially you just have to play with the settings and see what works, subtle is often more than enough to get things pumping. watch out for distortion on the low end, and careful not to flatten your mid/high end by over doing things.
Click to expand...

/\ This. It's really the type of thing that you can only assess on a track by track basis in that your drum kit will surely differ from one track to the next. Therefore, you have to apply different compression/EQ combinations depending upon the hits used.

Less is definitely more. Don't go crazy trying to get your drums huge, rather, try to achieve an "even" mix of the kit as a whole. Let the mastering house take care of adding the extra body to the track.
 
miszt said:
..not the answer you are looking for...
Click to expand...

On the contrary, mate, that's excellent!

Will be looking into NY Compression, but it's strange; when I'm on the road I'll be messing with compressors and limiters and shit I know little to nothing about all day, I get home and I'm back to just sticking to slapping distortion and overdrive allover my drums..
 
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