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Tech Sessions #7

Banging Drums…
Real quick before I get too deep into this … a big up to everybody who has reached out and even said something as simple as hello. With that, let’s get back into the technical.  This week… drums, drums and more drums.

Everybody has their little tricks when it comes to them and I for damn sure am not about to divulge ours but I can potentially nudge some of you who are still looking for an edge towards developing your own tricks.

In urban music and especially hip-hop, drums will make or break your track. If your drums aren’t banging, forget it, lights out, go get a job and get prepared to spend the rest of your life saying damn 'I could have been contender.’

So what do you need to do to elevate your drum sound from simply ‘eh’ to ‘damn!?’ For one thing, make sure the drums you are using are coming into your sequencer/drum machine “hot“ to begin with. It sounds really simple, but if your drums are lacking presence/power (i.e. are light in the ass), the issue could very well be they are getting off on the wrong foot.

If you are sampling or pulling from a sound module make sure your signal is as strong as you can get it with out clipping (you know going into the red zone). If you are considering buying a sound library that comes with pre-recorded sounds check them shits out first.

Most companies have an mp3 demo of some sort on their web-site and if that sounds good to you then check out what hip hop users have to say around the net. So many of these libraries are flat-out garbage when it comes to urban music so make sure you are paying for what you need and not for something that you’re going to fight with to make it sound “ right.” The bottom-line is that more than half of these companies make these situations for the different slants on dance/electronica; although that is getting better with time.

Personally, I try to avoid the commercial libraries unless I hear something really, really cool because we’re always on the hunt for what will make us sound more like us instead of every other situation out there. But that’s more of a taste opinion than one that’s going to help you get a fat drum sound so let’s keep it moving.

After loading up whatever sounds you have chosen to work with listen carefully to the pattern that you have created. A lot of joints use a few different kick sounds on the same track. Sit with those sounds and use your egqs to bring out the best features of each one. If one of them is punchy then eq it to bring out the “snap.” If you got a boomy 808 style kick or a sub then eq that to where its literally rolling on the floor of the track’s frequency range.  You get the idea.  Take the same philosophies and apply them to snares, claps, toms, rims, high hats and whatever else you’re using to keep the beat moving. Every sound you will use has it’s own timbre/characteristics, as much as possible, try to early mix towards those differences.

If you’ve gotten this far, you should already have a pretty heavy drum sound because it came in hot and each piece was roughly colored to make the best of itself.  After this experiment with plug-ins, compression, doubling, panning and any other device or technique that you have access to, to make your drums represent the rest of your track in the best light possible. This week may be a bit vague but that really is to stress two major points: patience and experimentation.

Working in a project studio when you’re trying to get on can be a nightmare if you let it. Everybody wants their joints to bang like the next cat on the radio but get a bit frustrated because they don’t have that fat SSL console to work off of or an engineer in a million dollar room to tweak their shit.

So forget trying to make your shit sound like (insert baller producer’s name here).  If you freak a nice foundation with both patience and experimentation then sooner than you think, people will be saying to you ‘yo the track is nice. How in the hell did you get those drums to sound like that?'

Glover is one half of the Atlanta, GA based production squad The Audio Assassins which are founding members of The Elements. You can find them both at Audioassassins.com and theelementsinc.com

Message Glover with your take on music theory and it's impact on your production!

Glover

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