my hats sound too tinny

J

jakeshiftzw

Shiftz
Joined
Sep 23, 2011
Location
Cambridge
http://soundcloud.com/jakeshiftz/deep-end-shiftz-work-in

Heres a new liquid tune ive been working on lately. I take alot influence from the likes of Lenzman and Alix Perez with things like this. But i feel like my percussion is lacking something alongside theirs. My hats sound far to tinny, and i always eq, compress, distort etc but there is still something missing. I layer alot aswell, but there doesnt feel like there is much depth. I normally hi pass my hats anywhere in between 600hz - 1000hz that goes for rides and shakers etc aswell. Rides are another thing that sound far to tinny!
 
your drums sound a lot like mine used to.

make sure you're using decent drum hit samples to begin with. if you have good samples you won't need to layer a lot. also, be careful layering kick drums because it can cause phase issues (two or more hits cancelling eachother out sonically)

and ive read before that you should expect to make 100 breaks before they start to sound good, and thats kind of true. after about 30-50 attempts you'll be getting the hang of it.

dont feel you NEED to add FX (be it compression, distortion whatever). once you understand how certain plugins will affect the sound you will be able to discern when its a good time to use them, but they are by no means essential to making a decent sounding break
 
Hm, the hats in that tune imo are too fast and too many. Sometimes its better to leave empty spaces between the hits for a looser and more funky feel(especially in liquid). Also playing with the velocity of the hits plays a major role when talking about percussion. U should always make sure that the hats aren't all at the same volume, because they'd sound too programmed and lifeless. Other thing is the usage of breaks. Most of the times u'll find that it sounds better if u use hats and shuffles from breaks, because each break has its own character.
 
I've got to look into stereo filed mixing stuff.. But with hat patterns I find manipulating the velocity is crucial to gt a good groove going. Make a bunch of different patterns, put them in different places, chop them up, rearrange them, mix them together... Make sure that each element in your track has some kind of conscious decision behind it.
 
push the volume of your bright hat into the foreground of your mix and if you layer it, put the volume of your crunchy, lower frequency hat in the background of the mix. make sure you're using a spectrum analyzer and boosting the upper frequencies on each individual hit. best.
 
IMO the hats are too fast paced for the feel of the tune.. and maybe a little too high in the mix. A dip in volume and some breathing room for the hats and the tinniness wouldn't be as much of a slap in the face. But I think it might be the quality of your original samples which are making them sound too harsh and tinny.
 
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