Drum Processing and Mixing: How do you get that big, full and deadly drum sound that Skrillex/Zomboy/Virtual Riot/etc. achieve?

Man, I just saw Zomboy last weekend on a festival level Funktion 1 with PK subs. Jesus. His snares are just unreal, it sounds as if they’re coming from an entirely separate speaker. Not the subs, mids or tweeters, just the invisible wooden ass brostep snare speaker

I swear the companies that make these speakers have some guy come in an craft a set of ridiculous snares and send them out to all the pros…

Listening to any recent Zomboy tune, I’m at an utter loss as to how to get a snare sound like he has.

Boost at 200hz, layer, compress, limit, blah blah blah. Man, we’re missing something here, and I feel like its just the damn sample source.

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Also, if you listen to some zomboy tunes, especially the 140 ones (Immunity and Ressurected come to mind), he pitches the snare up during sections where the drums are coming in fully but isn’t the drop.

This gives it that woody Laxx snare kinda sound, and then when the drop comes he throws it back down to that 200hz smack, pretty good idea for a lot of reasons.

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This can help in the mastering stage. Use mid/side EQ, and in the mid portion, boost your kick and snare. Use a narrow good amount of resonance to pinpoint those frequencies. This can’t really help the kick all that much because it’s in that lower part of the frequency spectrum. But this should improve your snare a good amount. :smile_cat:

I’m also looking for ways to get those awesome and hard hitting dubstep drums. Something else I was told was to do volume automation rather than sidechain compression to avoid dynamics squashing.

AND let your drums hog that space in the center of the stereo field (mono your drums). Chances are that you want your midbasses to be loud and bright and to stand out in the drop. Having your midbasses mono doesn’t sound loud and bright at all. So give your mids stereo room out on the left and right and that center space can be left for your drums to punch through. This’ll help since they won’t be competing for that center space.

How do you do volume automation as opposed to just sidechain compressing from the kick and snare? Certainly there is a way aside from just drawing and/or copy/pasting all over the damn place. How is this done? I’ve actually been curious about this for a while, I’m glad this came up here.

using plug-ins like LFOtool or Volume Shaper. both are volume automation plugins

I like my snare crack and body right down the middle in mono. then the reverb/whoosh of the snare tail spread out in stereo

Yeah I do that too. I process the snare samples to be thick and loud but never add stereo crap to them. I layer either a clap or a noise tail on my beefy snare and give the tail some dimension fx to widen it. It is kind of ear trickery…makes the entire snare seem wide and huge but most of the body is right in the mid.

It’s a really interesting concept…layering in something completely unrelated to something else can make it all sound like it comes from one source.

I normally put a reverberated snare behind my main snare and compress them both so they drag on heavily. Make sure the reverbed snare has quite a bit of bass in it and cut it around 150hz boosting it at 200-300hz. Also make sure the reverb is nice and deep and cuts out at the right time. Basically just muck around with reverb compression. I’d say there are absolutely no rules just make sure you have a decent muck around with the end result in mind.

What do you guys think about these drums? The first part is the original and the second part is sidechained with my drums.

First one sounds better imo. The drums sound too loud in the second version, in particular the hats. They were at a good level originally I think. First one sounds suuppeerr dope tho.

ahh I don’t know I like both for sure but I kinda like louder ride cymbals :frowning:

I thought both were sick man. Ive heard both styles and they seem to have their place depending on the style of song. Could you elaborate on how you make your snares? Do you mix samples you find or do you synthesize your own?

Its actually just a VR drum and a BHK drum and then I put izotope ozone 6 on it and compress like crazyyyy

damn, yeah that first bit sounds amazing. so both drums are just a single sample with ozone on em? is BHK the kick?

Yeah xD The first part wasn’t made by me it is from EH!DE. But maybe because you guys all like the original drums I will have to start working on something like that.

Biggest problem i see these days that people are approaching it as drums only. The complete package is what counts - if you have 50 billion sounds over the same frequency it wont sound good. Tweak your drums accordingly to the rest of the tune. CHANGE SOUNDS IF NEEDED.

Thanks man :smiley: I will keep working on some different drums here and there and see what fits.Loved the drums in Savage Nature btw :smiley:

No problem, you can feel free to send over if you need help with anything to my public email…

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