Hi, Afernee! Your question is quite answerable, but we need a little more information in order to help you out. What size of drum kit do you have? What kind and how many mic's do you have? Has your room been treated acoustically? What style of music do you play? Most importantly, when you listen to the drums without a mic do they sound just like you want them to on the recording? Or close at least?

If you can fill in some of the balnks for us I think we can help you out.

Steve.

Hi Steve,

I don't have a drum kit !!!! I'm using a combination of Software (Battery) and Hardware (Zoom RT-323) for my drum sounds.

The kinda' music I'm into is dance music, typicially the "Masters At Work" sound.

And no don't want to the kinda drums sounds I'm getting now on my tracks, they sound flat and boring.

Thanks for replying your help would be appreciated.

A

Have you considered purchasing pre recorded samples?

Yeah I have a couple but they still do not have that certain uumphh to them. I was told that the "phat" sound is created by using compression, How true is that ?

Thanks

A

Anfernee, the right drums will negate the need for compression, eq and other effects, so start there.

Compression will basically make drums sound fuller by evening out the levels throughout the body of the sound.

In this case, a drum has a sharp attack when the stick hits the head. Then, the sound decays very quickly. What a compressor will do (way-oversimplified) is basically turn down the volume of the loudest part of the drum. This will give the effect of an overall increase in loudness, without really increasing the volume.

Having said that, you can never have too many drum samples, so go out and get some. The most frustrating thing for me is to not be able to find the "right" drums for a particular song. So, I have thousands of them, culled from hundreds of sources over years.

Also you can try eq, to add some body to a dull snare, and remove unwanted freq's from the bass, etc. And the tube emulator should help. And maybe a tape emulator.

king mitz

If you're not getting the drum sound you want, then look into new drum sounds. There's so many synth modules out there with drum sounds that you can spend your whole life auditioning them all. It shouldn't be too tough to get one you like...

Good luck

Mitzelplik and Kase,

Thanks for the info. Last night I was listening to some music when I heard the exact drum sound i was after !!!!! Maybe I should use my collection of vinyl a bit more ;-)

Thanks again.

A

Glad I could help Anfernee.

Also, it just dawned on me, something I struggled with a lot when I was learning the ropes, or should I say resistors?

There are times when drums sound fantastic alone, but terrible in the context of the song. And vise versa. Check the content of the rest of your song, there may be times when you twist a knob on a synth line in your song, and the cymbals just smack you in the face they sound so good. Or you might one day EQ and compress those guitars and the snare will jump out and say "Here I am!"

just an esoteric and hard to apply piece of advice from the twisted mind of the villain from the fifth dimension.

I AM NOT kilpleztim

Originally posted by mitzelplik:
Anfernee, the right drums will negate the need for compression, eq and other effects, so start there.
king mitz

Do eet!! put de compressor on de drums!! Do eet now!!

Really....samples do make a huge difference, but for instant gratification, slap a compressor and maybe some overdrive, if it suits it.

the key to the compression effect you seem to be after is to set the compressor for a very fast release time. that'll increase the apparent sustain of each drum hit, and make them feel thicker. but play with all the settings and see what you like. i guess it depends on the drum sound you're tweaking. good luck!

If you want prerecorded, extra phat beats then check out http:// Amazing quality and pretty cheap too for what you get.