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How do you guys build a drum rack?

What sounds do you like to add?

How many different cymbals and percussive elements do you add?

Do you use 1 kick, 2 kicks?

What tricks do you use to make your drums more interesting (reversing, stretching, pitching ect)

Do you use different velocities? How many different velocities do you use? What do you like to control with velocity?

Where do you add effects, if any?

Do you create your drum kit from scratch, or use a sample pack with complementary sounds?

I have one main drum rack, and then several other drum racks dedicated to certain types of drum sounds (kicks, snares, hi-hats, crashes, claps). I usually start out with my main drum rack in each tune, and then if I want a new snare for instance other than the ones in my default drum rack, I'll open up my snare drum rack and pick one.

I usually only have one kick playing at a time. Sometimes multiple snares. But layering different kicks sounds weird in my opinion (unless you're separating frequency ranges of the same kick). I usually have multiple hi-hat patterns going at once.

I don't do this, but a trick that phaeleh uses is to make the length of some of the notes of the elements really short, so that only a small amount of the sound comes through (watch the masterclass for more on that).

I actually like to keep all the velocities for my drums at 127. It just starts to annoy me usually. Maybe I'm weird like that...

I like to put reverb on snares, and some hi-hats and some kicks. Also EQ when necessary.

Cubase 5-Groove Agent One Sampler.

Between 3-4 kicks, 4-6 snares, 2-4 hi hat, percussion depends. Create a snare and kick group/buss and a master drum buss. Use EQ, Transient Shaper, Compressor, Reverb.

dubunked wrote:I actually like to keep all the velocities for my drums at 127. It just starts to annoy me usually. Maybe I'm weird like that...

I do this aswell

Usually 1 kick, 1 snare, maybe a clap, 3-4 hats, 1 crash, 1 ride, and if I decide to use shakers it's about 3-4 of them. Any toms I use come from drumkit from hell.

Ill usually put Valhallaroom on the cymbals/hats and toss some satson CM where needed. I've started using NI transient shaper more lately and it sounds really good for tieing things together.

And of course, full velocity on everything.

About three redrum instances, divided in low, mid and high.

Usually several samples for every sound, except for the kick. I do a lot of processing on kicks.

My produciton template has 4 drum racks. First is an Amen Break Rack with 30+ amen samples of different types, Second is a Vengeance Based Rack 4 samples of each element tha fit together. Third is another Vengeance based Rack again 4 or 5 samples of each standard element, Fourth is my BRO Rack which is built around some layered snare and kick samples someone here at DSF shared with the community, dont know why but i love them lol easy BRO sounds when i want them.

I try to use velocity when i write my drums in, i try to make a point to do this right away so i dont have to fix it later on when im tweaking everything around. I draw curves usally and let things flow from high to low, velocity trying to think about a real drummer attacking the pattern, how would htey push and pull the hits.

I layer a bunch in my beats, not always compression/resampling things but using layered hits to give me some more character to the drum beat. I like to use different snares to accent my snares on each hit so it doesnt always sound like the same sample is being hit during the drum beat loop.

One Kong, which contains 1 kick, 1 snare, 2 closed hi hat samples, 1 open hi-hat sample (same as closed just shortened a lot less), 2 crash samples, 1 china sample, a bell sample (not cowbell), 1 splash sample, 3 "physical toms", and every once in a while an extra snare for variety and for "steps". I also mess with the velocity on everything. On kick and snare, I tend to vary the velocity by 5 at the most. Everything else, I go haywire on.