Improving my drums?

[OfficialDAPT]

Transient shaper, sausage fattener vst by dada life and a wee bit of distortion should get them sounding phat.

P.S. you need a good sample in the first place.

[drake89]

Hey dude for groove I have a tip: vary your hats, or whatever perc is occupying the high frequency. Going between straight 16ths and 8th triplets gives a lot of 'character' I guess because the 16th notes are slower than the 8th Triplets. Triplets can be confusing initially but it's just dividing the note into three.

[idontreallygiveashit]

Heard the tune in your sig (nice stuff btw) and they sound good - what i like to do when dealing with amens and old funk breaks is to layer really punchy synth kicks under every single break kick, pump up the mid on the sample a bit, and volume it down a bit. Subtle but punchy. Also, a snare on a different note with a bit of disto on it, mid-up and volume lower. Sorry it's not that techy, just something i picked up.

[mitchAUS]

Im using Reason 5 and Logic pro 10 but unfortunately i can only use logic at school

I think we are still a long way off logic 10.

[MoonUnit]

Yeah, I normally sidechain my sub with the kick and snare. I've never really known what parallel compression is though, is it just a maximum ratio and minimum threshold?

Does anyone know any good free transient shapers? Ive wanted one for a while now.

In reply to BudSpencertron I was talking about programming them myself.

Thanks for the help

don't think side-chaining the snare to the sub is particularly useful, all your meat/punch for the snare is around 140 hz somewhere depending on the sample. Just EQ the bottom end of the snare until it starts to become noticeable and then bring it back a hair.

[MaZa1]

I'd say right EQ:ing and parallel compression. Helped me ALOT.
And those samples samples samples.

[IC0N]

Transient Shaper>EQ>Transient Shaper>EQ.........etc. Thats my signal chain
Check out Reso's Masterclass. He shows some good ways to get nice punchy drums.

[Rekah]

Transient shaper, sausage fattener vst by dada life and a wee bit of distortion should get them sounding phat.

P.S. you need a good sample in the first place.

seriously cant agree more, sausage fattener on percs makes them sound huge

[DubMikey]

It's basically just about picking the right samples.

[Fowles]

would someone say how I would go about using parallel compression on my drums in abletons?

[Disco Nutter]

You could do it a couple of ways.

1) You can make a new track, then route it to receive input from your drum group.

2) You can bounce your drum group to a new channel.

3) You can use return tracks.

Setting up your compressors is the same with all of the workarounds.

[TheWallOfSacrifice]

saturation, NY compression, tube, slighy 100hz pumping/HF cutting..

[vries]

would someone say how I would go about using parallel compression on my drums in abletons?

Throw the compressor on the preferred track, hit CTRL+G to group it into an Instrument Rack and then just add another chain.

[MaZa1]

I didnt want to make new topic so i ask here.

How do you make beats more interesting? I mean when listening tracks, many of them have mostly the basic dubstep beat, but still it doesnt sound so boring.
And i dont mean variating hats or other cymbals, just the basic kick and snare. Because when i listen to my own tracks that have the same basic beat, with little variations like extra kick or extra snare, it still sounds kinda boring.

[ekidd91]

I didnt want to make new topic so i ask here.

How do you make beats more interesting? I mean when listening tracks, many of them have mostly the basic dubstep beat, but still it doesnt sound so boring.
And i dont mean variating hats or other cymbals, just the basic kick and snare. Because when i listen to my own tracks that have the same basic beat, with little variations like extra kick or extra snare, it still sounds kinda boring.

Still trying to learn this myself. I think you just have to get out of the way of using the same loop through out. I've been trying adding extra kicks here and there, using a lower velocity than the main hits helps keep it subtle while still making it more interesting. While this thread is based on garage shuffles, the info about ghost notes is worthwhile knowing no matter the genre.

[ehbes]

I didnt want to make new topic so i ask here.

How do you make beats more interesting? I mean when listening tracks, many of them have mostly the basic dubstep beat, but still it doesnt sound so boring.
And i dont mean variating hats or other cymbals, just the basic kick and snare. Because when i listen to my own tracks that have the same basic beat, with little variations like extra kick or extra snare, it still sounds kinda boring.

Triplets, panning and volume automation

[MaZa1]

Triplets? What's that?

[Sintax makes bass]

You pretty much have the right idea. But the thing to remember is this:
DON'T just stack all the above plugins on your drums. Every time you add/tweak/remove/etc. a plugin, A-B it to make sure you're doing something to benefit the sound rather than degrade it. The same principle goes for any other type of sound design or audio editing.

[dublerium]

OP, the things you've mentioned in your original post are all obviously a part of getting your drums the way you want them, you should do your research on all of them thoroughly as well as layering as someone else mentioned. There's many other factors to take into consideration though, i.e your entire mix will effect how your percussion sounds, so really thinking about where your percussion sits frequency wise as well as your other elements will pay off. I would recommend you go and pick up a copy of the computer music magazine with the komonazmuk tutorial, it's 2.5 hours focusing on the mix-down of his percussion, highly relevant to what your asking and imo one of the best/thorough video tutorials on this subject that I've come across. Talking of that video, there's two main things (alongside others specific to the application) I feel help my percussion get is 1. Tape saturation & 2. Very slight compression across buses... I don't go mad on compression, (unless there's a specific creative purpose) but having certain elements that I feel should be grouped together possibly passing through one bus, and then through a main percussion bus, with the compressor just touching the elements slightly can give a desirable effect, especially if your using the right sort of compressor, but I'll leave that choice up to you, pick one you think sounds good! using other fx on the bus such as reverb could be implemented, if that's what you need. Also a decent EQ plugin on buses gives you just that extra bit of control over your sounds. On tape saturation, I use this effect pretty much across my whole mix, knowing when and how to use it will just come through practise like most things! I won't tell you what plugin to use as pick what you think is good, but I will highly recommend the PSP vintage warmer, I can't rate it highly enough I use it a lot of elements in my tracks and really rate it, nice on buses too.

Bit of an essay and there's so much more to talk about but hope this helps!

[Sintax makes bass]

After spending so much time trying to perfect my drum techniques and make big drum sounds, I realized that it was a fruitless effort. When so much effort is put into the drums, they drown out everything else and the whole track just becomes a mess. A much bigger overall effect would be to create percussive sounds that hit well where it matters and little else IMO.