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SlayingCondors

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Apr 18, 2008
Hey. I'm glad I discovered this forum because it should be of great help.

I'm just starting up a music project as a little hobby while my band (I play guitar) are all at different universities in term time. It's not strictly dnb but the drums will be heavily dnb-based. I'm using Cubase SX3 at the moment because that's what I'm used to.

Basically my question is how do most people achieve decent dnb drum sounds? I've been using some free drum VST instruments but they never seem to sound chunky enough. So I've been experimenting with samples from freesound.com etc and I think it sounds better, but it's so time consuming!

Is there any way I can set up MIDI triggers to play the samples I find? For example I would program a kick rhythm as a MIDI and then assign a decent kick sample to that.

Are there any decent tutorials for how to make drums sound good?

Sorry for all the questions. My excuse is in the thread title.
 
try layering your drums..use compression but only if u really have to i wouldnt advise it though..i reverb sounds pretty good in some cases too
 
sam the dnb man said:
try layering your drums..use compression but only if u really have to i wouldnt advise it though..i reverb sounds pretty good in some cases too
Click to expand...

DONT COMPRESS DRUMS!!! You need dynamics in drums..... why would you turn you nice dynamic wave's into a huge long sausage of shitty sound!!!?????

Biggest mistake made by up and coming dnb producers these days!

The quicker you learn not to compress the fuck out of everything the better!
 
SlayingCondors said:
Hey. I'm glad I discovered this forum because it should be of great help.

I'm just starting up a music project as a little hobby while my band (I play guitar) are all at different universities in term time. It's not strictly dnb but the drums will be heavily dnb-based. I'm using Cubase SX3 at the moment because that's what I'm used to.

Basically my question is how do most people achieve decent dnb drum sounds? I've been using some free drum VST instruments but they never seem to sound chunky enough. So I've been experimenting with samples from freesound.com etc and I think it sounds better, but it's so time consuming!

Is there any way I can set up MIDI triggers to play the samples I find? For example I would program a kick rhythm as a MIDI and then assign a decent kick sample to that.

Are there any decent tutorials for how to make drums sound good?

Sorry for all the questions. My excuse is in the thread title.
Click to expand...

use EQ to beef your drums up and layer more drums aswell.... thats how you get beefy drums!! not compression!
 
try layering your drums..use compression but only if u really have to i wouldnt advise it though..i reverb sounds pretty good in some cases too
 
layer a lot of hihats. use EQ each drum.
And ofcorse don't compress drums.
Also I wouldn't use reverb. It will sound messy. Maybe a little reverb for some hihats, but not too much.
 
You could use any generic sampler for that midi trigger purpose, Native Intstruments Battery is nice and quite easy to get the hang of. You can program the sequence and change the samples and layer quite how you feel like, even layer different sounds on top each other.
 
Thanks for the tips everyone. I will definately consider getting Battery again (I accidentally deleted it a few months back) and I will try layering too.

rocksteadyuk said:
use EQ to beef your drums up and layer more drums aswell.... thats how you get beefy drums!! not compression!
Click to expand...

OK then what do I use for EQ? I think there are some EQ plug-ins on Cubase but should I download anything that does a good job?
 
rocksteadyuk said:
DONT COMPRESS DRUMS!!! You need dynamics in drums..... why would you turn you nice dynamic wave's into a huge long sausage of shitty sound!!!?????

Biggest mistake made by up and coming dnb producers these days!

The quicker you learn not to compress the fuck out of everything the better!
Click to expand...

lol i never compress cos im too lazy!:miss_rep:
 
SlayingCondors said:
Thanks for the tips everyone. I will definately consider getting Battery again (I accidentally deleted it a few months back) and I will try layering too.



OK then what do I use for EQ? I think there are some EQ plug-ins on Cubase but should I download anything that does a good job?
Click to expand...


That basic eq is just fine. Experiment with it, boost highs in kick to get snap into it, more bass to the snare will make it bigger etc.
 
Thanks people that was all really useful. My drums sound much beefier now.

Basically my next question is how do I mix it down to an mp3 format so I can upload it etc.? Is there a nice tutorial anywhere because I have no idea about levels?
 
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