It's not what effect you add that makes any aspect of a track sound good. It's how you choose the sound(s) in the first place, how you use EQ, compression and levels, your monitoring setup and your experience.

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Fortunately for you this is easy to fix.

All you need is:

-Multiband Compressor
-Fruity EQ 2.

With the compressor you gain more volume, be careful because too much compression makes clipping sounds. Play with the knobs to get a good level of compression without too much saturation.

And with the EQ what you've to do to gain pressence it's enhance the frequencies around 50-100Hz , this is the low end that gives the kick pressence specially in big sound systems. You can change other frequencies to give the kick the desired sound too.

There are other methods like having 2 kicks layered one with a stereorizer (is this the name?) but this is the basics, play with it.

Run the drums through bittersweet. Add a tad of blood overdrive, strap on a limiter and lower the cieling than pump the gain as high as you can go. =] (this will obviously crush transients but sometimes a little boost in gain will bring up the hi passed delays if you are delaying any of your hats)

You can also play around with an exciter which will help it break through more. But realize its easy to overdue any one of these fx. They can also make hats sound abrasive if you don't equal properly.

Thats just for presence, for an actual tight drum sound it all depends on where you start and how well you know how to combine different sounds from experience.

Picking good quality samples is the start. Choosing sounds that stand out from each other, and eq as necessary. Add a few loops to the mix and work at cutting them up and meshing them to create new interesting sounds.. A bit of distortion on background hats and percussion is always good

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quote:

Originally posted by DJ Robby Rox Run the drums through bittersweet. Add a tad of blood overdrive, strap on a limiter and lower the cieling than pump the gain as high as you can go. =] (this will obviously crush transients but sometimes a little boost in gain will bring up the hi passed delays if you are delaying any of your hats) You can also play around with an exciter which will help it break through more. But realize its easy to overdue any one of these fx. They can also make hats sound abrasive if you don't equal properly. That's just for presence, for an actual tight drum sound it all depends on where you start and how well you know how to combine different sounds from experience.

Why blood overdrive? Just layer, compress and EQ. That what I usually do, I'm just very picky with my samples.

For high hats, get a highpass on the fruity EQ 2, and cut off from around 1200 and add a stereo field(layer and pan left/right if you have to or put in fruity stereo shaper and make a small delay with the left/right channels)

Make sure to always put some kind of send reverb on all your percussion, just started doing this lately and it gives so much energy. just listen to this

First 4 bars have reverb on, next 4 have reverb off.

http://soundcloud.com/sako487/reverb

And loops really help too, I used to hate them at first but now I use them a lot. They really do a good job of filling in spaces in your mix that would normally take you hours to complete just by selecting individual samples.

Also if your clap has a little too much decay you can also compress it and make the attack like 60 ms to give it some punch.

This is probably the longest I've ever written here, so I hope this helps!!!

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No amount of EQ or FX will fix bad samples.

Picking the right sounds is the key, if you do it right you will need very little work done additionally.

I hardly ever do anything to my hats except FL EQ it for a bit of a boost, and then panning.

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Like the others said, you will need to pick the right samples that sound great together. I tend to not use EQ much personally because I choose the right samples, I only EQ to cut the hot frequencies.

I even reeverb my hi-hats after eq'ing, to add a little atmosphere in them. Not much though. For snares I usually layer one snare and one clap, with the clap having more lower frequencies present than the snare. And a LITTLE predelay on the reeverb on them both is a thing that I really like

For kicks I always try to make it as complex as possible; i.e. layering three kicks, and only using those frequencies of each kick, that the whole layered kick needs. And then I EQ a peak on say 66 hz on the kick that has those freqs present. I've found out this brings some pretty neat results.

And if the more intense parts of the track are really INTENSE, I turn the reeverb at hi-hats off at those parts, so they won't clutter the mix at those parts, where more stuff is playing at the same time. I'd think sometimes even automating your EQ on hi-hats etc. to only use the higher frequencies on i.e. the highlight is good?

I've just recently started to pay more attention on my drums, so these really aren't any professional tips, but I hope you'll find something worth a try.

Last edited by JEO on Jun-11-2010 at 09:15

quote:

Originally posted by DJ Robby Rox Run the drums through bittersweet. Add a tad of blood overdrive, strap on a limiter and lower the cieling than pump the gain as high as you can go. =] (this will obviously crush transients but sometimes a little boost in gain will bring up the hi passed delays if you are delaying any of your hats) You can also play around with an exciter which will help it break through more. But realize its easy to overdue any one of these fx. They can also make hats sound abrasive if you don't equal properly. Thats just for presence, for an actual tight drum sound it all depends on where you start and how well you know how to combine different sounds from experience.

quote:

Originally posted by Rodri Santos Fortunately for you this is easy to fix. All you need is: -Multiband Compressor -Fruity EQ 2. With the compressor you gain more volume, be careful because too much compression makes clipping sounds. Play with the knobs to get a good level of compression without too much saturation. And with the EQ what you've to do to gain pressence it's enhance the frequencies around 50-100Hz , this is the low end that gives the kick pressence specially in big sound systems. You can change other frequencies to give the kick the desired sound too. There are other methods like having 2 kicks layered one with a stereorizer (is this the name?) but this is the basics, play with it.

Bad advice ftl. Theres so much shit advice in this thread, it makes me sad.

Heres some good advice: getting your drums to sound good takes years of work. There is no magic button or effect. Transient designers and compressors can help you shape the sounds, as can EQ. But 90% of good drum sounds is about picking the right samples and getting the levels on them right. You might occasionally enhance the attack of a kick wiht a transient designer, shape a snare with an EQ, or highpass a hat. But generally good sample selection and arrangement is far more important.

As far as effects, stay well away from limiters and compressors unless you have a clear idea what you're doing. Apply some subtle room verb to make hats and other percs gel together. Maybe do some buss compression if you know what effect it will give you and when too much is too much. But that's not going to make that much difference. Perhaps before asking how to sound like a pro , you should narrow down and tell us exactly what your sounds are missing, and then we might be able to actually tell you how to get what you want.

And why don't you use the search button to find the other 10 threads on here with advice about percussion. There was a great one a few weeks ago. Find it.

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Yes, I have to agree with kit, some advice on here is terrible. Someone new to production asks how to get his drums to sound more pro and people tell him to throw all kinds of FX on them. Apart from this, in many cases, being completely unecessary, it would more than likely scare him off production completely.

Get yourself a good pack of drum samples - that is the simplest and most effective way to drastically improve your sound. Then its a case of knowing which ones to choose so as to compliment each other and arrange properly to create whatever drive/groove you are striving for. This comes with experience and practice.

Using FX on drums can be useful, but to begin with you need to get the basics right.

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Great Advice kit

You couldn't be more vague if you said "90% of drums is picking the magic sounds and levels".

Seriously wtf. Tell him to ask the tooth fairy for pro drum tips. Don't discredit someones advice as "bad" when what you're essentially saying yourself is completely ambigous shit.

What you said isn't a degree more applicable than what I told him. Give the man advice on HOW (operative word = how) to pick the "right sounds" OR HOW to pick the "right levels" if its 90% of good drums like you say. Otherwise don't sit there and be condescending to other people when you CAN'T EXPLAIN your own fucking advice.

Like someone asking "how can I tell if my grass is healthy" and you tell them "it should be green". No fucking shit sherlock.

"No DJ BOBBY ROXX you are WRONG!! What bad advice!! instead I will tell the OP he can make the best sounds in the world by just picking the RIGHT SOUNDS". Go find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow dipshit. What kind of self centered egotistical horseshit is that?

The OP is eligible to start sampling through 10 thousand hi hats everytime he produces because he thinks he should be looking for some special nonexistent sound. Explain wtf you mean beyond "the right sounds" and if its that difficult to do, maybe you should really reconsider judging other peoples posts.