What do y’all do when designing drums?

How to make that sound...
Post Reply New Topic
RELATED
PRODUCTS

Post

Hey y’all

I’ve been going down on a journey for a while now learning about sound design and how to make music. I’ve been doing it a long time, and I still struggle with drums. Not with finding patterns. Not with finding grooves. But with finding DOPE sounds. Such a subjective measurement right!? When I say dope, I mean “different” and “interesting” but still smashes through the speaker. What’s the secret? I know there isn’t one true secret but a million combined, but I’ve been struggling with it! I’d find it hard to believe skrillex used something like splice!! Yet everybody wanted his sound. What the f**k did he do? And even then I wouldn’t want to copy it exactly, but at least the process. I want to design my own percussion. Something to give me a unique flavor. I know all the principles of sound design and I could make a kick, a snare, and a hi hat all on Sylenth, or fm8, or any synth you throw at me, I can make the “standard” percussion elements. But it’s not INTERESTING. I need some secret sauce!!

Post

What don't I do? With drums you can go really extreme.
Some general tips: saturation. First thing I think about when you mention flavor. Experiment with anything that'll rough up the signal, from vintage compressors, tape to clipping and waveshaping. This all adds texture and body.
Next, think space: reverb + gate, or even better: reverb -> sample it, cut the tails off, bring back to mono.
If at any point it stops sounding like a drum: transient shaper.
Find a reliable way to add bass, with some kind of enhancer or analog eq.. passive eq's are usually good for this. I use a combination of those and LTL Chop Shop and bx_subfilter (free) to add and focus bass. Just throwing a huge bump on 60hz isn't going to sound great in a mix. Those last effects are low cut filters with some resonance.. so that's also something to experiment with if you want to add more tone to your drums.

Post

<3 LOVE your response I’m going to experiment with every single thing you mentioned. That should be a great start to get me out of the box I’m in!

Post

Interesting questions. Did you try recording live impact sounds on different surfaces and process it in your daw? Or do you prefer using synth only?
(edit: spelling)

Post

Well, if you want to make Dope, and from scratch, you have to have expertise and practice. If you want cool acoustic drums, look for good acoustic sources which you can process later. If you want cool electronic drums, probably try to synthesize them. If you want just to sound like "those guys", you can find drum library centered at some style, there are so many out there. There's situations when you might want to sound like somebody, but if you don't want to, don't copy others, you need to record/process by yourself. And of course, simply combining layers is much more effective than many effects for "still smash through the speaker!".

Post

Distortion and/or bit crushing will make your drums more interesting. Helps them cut through also.

Post

Don’t compress the crap out of everything. Nothing is guaranteed to make drums sound flat and lifeless as quickly as this.

Post

comb filters or fast delays on snares ocassionally.
loose dirty delay on hats.
double your kick with a low as feck bass note, the kind you feel but dont hear.

Post

thagreatbelow wrote: Thu Nov 21, 2019 4:50 am I need some secret sauce!!
TAL Sampler :D

Seriously, feed it with any drum and it sounds better, all but lifeless. (I bought it a few days ago, made 2 tracks since and am deeply in love with it, feeling that my drums never sounded as good before using it - had to share what looks to me like the ultimate secret sauce!)
Soundcloud - Synthwave & More https://soundcloud.com/canapelee

Post

Colyder wrote: Sat Nov 30, 2019 3:18 pm Interesting questions. Did you try recording live impact sounds on different surfaces and process it in your daw? Or do you prefer using synth only?
(edit: spelling)
I prefer synthetic sounds to real, though I’m not opposed to real sounding drums as long as they dont try and emulate a real drummer

Post

EdSfer wrote: Mon Dec 02, 2019 12:58 pm
thagreatbelow wrote: Thu Nov 21, 2019 4:50 am I need some secret sauce!!
TAL Sampler :D

Seriously, feed it with any drum and it sounds better, all but lifeless. (I bought it a few days ago, made 2 tracks since and am deeply in love with it, feeling that my drums never sounded as good before using it - had to share what looks to me like the ultimate secret sauce!)
I almost picked it up for Black Friday but as I was going over the features I have a few things that can accomplish what TAL does already, like Falcon. Thank you though! What is it that you feel makes TAL sampler change the sound?

Post

I think TAL Sampler is not so much about features, but sound, and sound only. Feature wise I too think I'm pretty well covered with ableton sampler or kontakt. So i guess there's no much overlap with falcon (that i have never used).

My feeling is that any drum loaded in TAL Sampler sounds better than before: more impact, punchier, crunchier (does that mean anything?), a more pleasant sound overall (more analog, warmer, call it as you like). But, most importantly, the drum cuts better through the mix. You know, you often find an FX pleasant on your soloed track but lose all the benefit when played with the mix. Here I don't feel like this, it sounds much better through the mix. Now, as i told you, i've had it for a few days and made two songs with it. It can be that I suddenly became a mixing genius and TAL Sampler has nothing to do with it... But I'm not sure about it :wink:

I guess it won't work in every genre or context, don't know if skrillex-type drums would benefit from it, but you should definitely try the demo to feel it. For me it was immediately gratifying, you won't need hours to hear what it does to your sound. This is not the subtle type of effect where you're not sure if it's only in your head or not (that would be U-He Satin, that i use a lot, but without really knowing why). Try it and you will hear it, and know if you like it or not.
Soundcloud - Synthwave & More https://soundcloud.com/canapelee

Post Reply

Return to “Sound Design”