Need help with processing drums.

[r4dm4n]

Hi I am new to this website and this will be my first post. I've been a avid listener with electronic music and have somewhat influenced myself into creating tracks for a hobby; not to mention going to school to learn production for a year.

I have used Cubase, Reason ,and Ableton but for a couple of months now I have been using Ableton as my main DAW for its amazing convenience.

Unfortunately, when making tracks, I can never get my dynamics correct. I mean my Master Channel is like peeking at at the 0db but you can tell its really quiet; from when I hear other peoples tracks, I'ts like crystal clear.

My Drums (kicks, snares, hats, etc) are shit. EQ and or Compressing to "frequency standards" does not cut out for me. I need help mainly with dynamics. If I could get some advice I would much appreciate it.

[JonDose]

izotope ozone is a good way to get your drums to pop hard with little effort.

but it sounds like you need some mastering.

[r4dm4n]

Hey Jon, thanks for the reply. I've looked into this Ozone software and its pretty darn good for what I'm looking for. As for mastering; I undoubtedly require some attention. Just wanted to make sure I was on the right track and I'll be checking the mastering forum for more advice.

[maks]

Originally Posted by r4dm4n

My Drums (kicks, snares, hats, etc) are shit.

Invest time with a better source/sound library before you start and be sure your reactions/playing will provide better dynamics, overall results. Most electronic music sounds dont need much compression, its more effective to use midi velocity or your samplers env's. Compression is a multiplicative process, if you compress a kick at a ratio of 4. then in a drum buss you compress with a ratio of 3 and then at the master by 2? your kick ends up with a ratio of 24 effectively squashing all the little harmonics that give the sound life. The more you compress, the smaller your sound becomes. By the time it reaches the ear, even more compression has been added due to the nature of electronic circuits, speakers, air. Im not knocking compression, its very useful in many cases, but its best used on acoustic stuff where midi velocity, ability to change envelopes is not as easy to come by. But then again there are no rules

[r4dm4n]

Originally Posted by maks

Most electronic music sounds dont need much compression, its more effective to use midi velocity or your samplers env's.

By midi velocity do you mean LFO? I'm thinking something like the plugin, Massive and creating your own kick.

[MichaelGutierrez]

Originally Posted by r4dm4n

By midi velocity do you mean LFO? I'm thinking something like the plugin, Massive and creating your own kick.

Midi Velocity is the strength at which the note hits. Its like hitting a piano key soft, then hitting the same key hard. Those 2 hits have a different velocity. LFO is you low frequency oscillator. Completely different topic haha

[djugel]

LFO = vibrato

[KRE8A]

Hi r4dm4n,

Practical playing around with the daw processors and connecting to different sounds, is a way to gain experience levels at what you are doing. It's a slow learning process and it's not an easy task to get right practically, but fiddling around with compressors / equalizers and limiters as much as you can, will give you gain in diagnosing the routes, to keep the red indicator out of the peak zone and to get your tracks sounding smooth.

B.t.w. I have troubles with peaks and also distortion levels as well at times. I just keep trouble shooting for different methods, until I get it right.
Anyway, hope you go well and succeed with :]

[r4dm4n]

Hey guys, thanks for all your help. I'm in the process of making a track and your advices are a boost confidence and a sense of relief. I feel that I will have more questions as time continues but I'm sure theres a place to go for that

[golden beers]

perhaps you should ask your tutor this question?

i mean that would be best right, someone there to show you hands on?
why not do that.

without reading most of this thread i'm going to assume that you are making house like music? with the kick hitting every 4th in the bar and the snare every other 4th?

in which case what you do is you have the kick as the loudest signal. and you mix everything else to that.

set up a side chain compression on every other bass element (eg bass line) in your track that may occupy the same frequency as the kick and duck that out of the way when the kick hits.

If you dont want the 'pumping effect' you will need to be sure to carefully separate the bass elements with eq so that the side chan compression does not also affect the mids and highs of the bass line.

then when you mix you should be aware of equal loudness or Fletcher-Munson curves
Fletcher
Equal-loudness contour - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

your tutor should have already told you about this. if not. ask him about it.

the basic idea is that we can hear high frequencies easier than low ones. so mixing everything to the kick (or bass) of your track should give you an automatic way to conform to this idea. of course you probably do not want everything to be perceived to be at the same loudness. you want foreground and background elements (as well as a stereo panorama).

but your basic 'problem' as you see it is dynamic range. you are in fact asking how to squash all your sounds so they can be as loud as possible.

well you should study mastering for this. but getting the mix right goes a very long way to help.

the accepted convention and wisdom on ITB mixing is not to have your mix hit 0 db. each individual channel should be hitting between -10 and -20 peak and the master should be hitting anywhere between around -20 and -6 peak, depending on how you set your mix up. this is just a very rough guide. i tend to have my individual channels hit around -10 peak and the master -6. you would then bring it up to -0.1db with a mastering chain.

another technique is to do the same but then use a processing chain on the master bus to bring that up to -0.1 db as you go. so youre mixing into heavy compression and limiting from the start, this is a good technique for those who master themselves and want to hear what it will sound like after mastering.

other than that the big thing is just being able to listen and judge the levels of your different element in the mix, ride the faders to find the correct level and dont try to get everything up front.

and of course you need good signals.

for drums check out wave alchemy, they have loads of really nice drum samples as free downloads on their site.
Sample CDs | Wav Samples for Music Production | Wave Alchemy

good luck

[r4dm4n]

golden_beers! Thank you so much for this insight. I really do appreciate taking the time in helping me figure some stuff out. I do have a few tracks if your interested in listening to any. Just so you know what I'm talking about :P

Nonetheless this has been an abundance of help compared to my school haha


r4dm4n's sounds on SoundCloud - Create, record and share your sounds for free

Thx again

[golden beers]

ok well if we take your track here as an example

http://soundcloud.com/r4dm4n/radman-spazs1

you can see just on the graphic how your kick is much louder than anything else.

for my tastes it's actually too loud.

i can see why you did that, you want to have it punch.
well you don't need it that loud actually. with careful use of side chain compression you can get that kick punching though the mix just as much but at a lower volume level. so you can then turn the whole thing up for a higher RMS level (google that).

in fact the answer to your first question is: goolge RMS level. that will bing up some useful GS threads.

also btw i think this track here could also use some nice bus compression for glue. that beat is crying out to be glued.. guess you should google that too. glue drum compression - Google Search=

ps if you get more out of this forum then your school its time to ask the school why that is.


oh pps you should also search for parallel compression / new york compression

[r4dm4n]

Hey golden beers. Thanks again for these awesome advices. The program I went to was specifically a one year Electronic Music production. Where I got to familiarize myself with the DAW programs and some routing. However recording techniques (ie.mastering) was not mentioned in the program. It was like everything combined and crunched up into a year. Business, Synthetic, Music theory and songwriting. I guess I wasn't too fond of asking questions when I was in class but I'm passed that now and would like to continue on and learn from this forum because I know I will improve sooo much with your guys help.
BTW, RMS and glue compression was never spoken of in class which would probably be the best tool tip I needed.

[BarbieDoll]

There is a good article by Craig Anderton on drum processing...

Extreme Drum Processing - Audiofanzine