I have been trying to get my drums down again, just ignore the basses in this but what do you guys think I can do to make this sound better. https://clyp.it/jgdvt0bq
Is it too compressed? Is the bass group too loud? I am gonna mess around with it a bit more until I really like it but there is something off about the drums and I don’t know what.
I kinda like this one better, I am thinking about using this and putting in the hi hats and crowd from the other one
ohh sorry man I thought this thread was about drum processing I just wanted some feedback on what I could do to make it sound better. The reason why I didn’t export it as a drum loop is because I wanted it to be heard in context. I have a few back ground elements that are playing with the growl that sometimes interfere with the sustain in my kick.
Why do you attack me? I am just trying to make some good music man that’s all I want. What have I done to hurt you man? I’m sorry
Yeah, @CreamLord’s mostly right, though I wouldn’t call it an attack. But the reason I went for you specifically is because you asked for feedback on your drums and cluttered them with yubs and yahs which don’t make it any easier for any drum feedback. I think most people on here can tell more or less what vibe you’re going for based on the drumloop alone, so your clip had superfluous content.
its all about doing it manually so every sound hits the way you intended it. takes a while to get used to, but it does become second nature where you know what shape of fade brings what result. ‘Roughly’ …anyway.
98% sample selection 1% gain stage 1% saturation/compression at mixdown
Make sure you gain stage your kick and snare properly in comparisson to other elements and they will pop out of the mix and seem huge. Its really easy.
If you are making dubstep (the popular kind), you probably want your kick at 0db (-6db since you should build to -6db to leave enough headroom for a mix/master) and your snare probably 2 to 4 db under that.
Popstep is very snare driven, but i dont think theres a right answer for all situations. This would be case by case most of the time imo.
While the kick is the loudest thing in your mix, unless you have lots of really in-ur-face elements clashing together, working with audio/envelopes and EQ you prob dont need to side-chain. I’ve seen great tunes with no side-chaining at all. If you have a kick that gets lost in your mid-bass or vice versa that’s just poor sample selection and EQ’ing because both are meant to occupy very different parts of the spectrum/mix.
Try to think of side chaining as more a rhythmic/dynamic tool than something you do to your bass for no reason always no matter what. You do it to get a pumping feel that follows your kick in long notes for example. Dont worry about side-chaining until you make something worth you wanting to sit down with a mix engineer, you’d be surprised how easy it is to complicate the process watching 14 y/o youtubestep producers give opinions online.
People use side-chaining all the time in DNB. Drum & Bass has so much going on and its very common to use a long drawn out low-passed reese for the bass, which is a great example of when it can sound good and improve the movement between the 2. But again, its usually possible to find a sweetspot between your sub, your kick, and you bass layers where they dont overlap each other and just naturally sit well together, especially if they are of a similar timbre or tuned to each other. In this case, they might even work well together with a bit of overlap and create really nice harmonics that make them sound much more interesting together.
To answer your question tho, sorry im pretty baked rn, you can make DNB by working with audio (bouncing everything down) and making sure there’s no stray effect tails muddying up your mix or other important elements overall.
Ex: snare tails not going over next kick or at least ending at a part that creates a nice emphasis in the rhythm, which is kind of what people try to achieve by ducking things out of the way of each other with a compressor.
I read all the comments and tried to make some drums with every tip that you guys said.
This is what I got:
I made these with lfo tool instead of sidechain compression.
First 8 bars are just durms and the next 8 bars have a sub-bass playing some random bassline.
don’t worry about it he attacks everyone