Creating awesome percussion

[Ov3rdos3]

Hi guys, me again back to bother you with some noobish questions about music production. (we all have to start somewhere)

 

Is there any VST's or techniques used to produce really crisp professional sounding and driving percussion?

 

What effects do you use on your snares, claps and hats to make them sound better?

 

Also what are the sequence of putting these in to give them a nice driving sound?

 

I would again, really appreciate any help here

 

Thanks guys.

 

E

[supergroover]

Hi guys, me again back to bother you with some noobish questions about music production. (we all have to start somewhere)

 

Is there any VST's or techniques used to produce really crisp professional sounding and driving percussion?

 

What effects do you use on your snares, claps and hats to make them sound better?

 

Also what are the sequence of putting these in to give them a nice driving sound?

 

I would again, really appreciate any help here

 

Thanks guys.

 

E

hi od,

this is music promotion part.. not music production.

any vst can make drumsounds. eqing here is important. Eq all those freqs out that you dont hear or that you dont need from that sound. hipass hihats f e around 1000 or maybe even 1500. Listening to the sound in combination with the others is important.

maybe some distortion on the snare. Or even layer some snares on top of each other to make the sound you want. And give em some small reverb.

[natural_organism]

Hi there!

 

I create a FX channel track and use Ohmboyz Delay on selected perc´s. I think it sounds quite cool, the delay make the perc´s sound really spaced out!

 

Just fiddle around with stuff like that, and dont forget to create wicked automations on the effects!

 

...

 

/ Niklas

[qa2pir]

Sequence is as important as samples. If you know what syncopation is, play around with that. If not, read some about it and try to implement it in your tracks.

 

At a basic level, syncopation is the practice of not putting notes in straight 8ths or 16ths for example, but rather complex patterns that play around each other.

I would make an example using some neat ascii but I don't know how to format it to make it comprehensible.

[needle ninja]

Get BFG or Battery

[Aeros]

A word of comfort OD, you will only get better and better and the whole process becomes funner and funner...so long as you just keep making music.

 

Percussions: this is where a lot of creativity can come out of an artist through cunning use of samples and FX arrays. The key idea is to give each sound a certain frequency range, and even stereo image (...and even fx...). EQing and filters are vital for a lot of really fresh production. Start by first of all having a good sample library of different percussion hits to go through - simple google searches are your friend, there is a huge amount availible for free - start here if you don't believe me http://www.samplefusion.com/. A really good tribal vibe with the percussions is really successful, but it really all depends on your style, you can go glitchy, trippy, name an adjective, you have to make your percussions have some sort of characteristic. Then use EQ and FX to give them width - with the EQ you want to boost frequencies the sound is dominant in, or at the very least, cut off frequencies the sound doesn't need. For example I will wrap down all frequencies under 300-600hz on any sound I have, furthered by this concept: You have a hi-hat and a snare, and an open hat, and some djembe stuff...each of these sounds can't occupy the frequency range of the others for it to sound cleanest and have maximal clarity. So the djembes use alot of 500-1600hz, boost the low end on them and they change their sound dramatically, so since they are deep, you would cut away a little the sound comming from it at >6,000 hz. Now look at your hi-hat, its mostly in the 6-8khz range. By lowering that range out of the other sounds, you give this sound more dynamic room to be in - so it sounds louder and cleaner. Thats the essential concept to anything with good production as opposed to muddy, flat, or dry tracks.

 

= how to create awesome percussion, hope that helps any interested

[Colin OOOD]

The insert chain I use for my perc always has the same plugins at the beginning and end. At the beginning I have Antares Tube, really a magic bullet for fattening up drums. Can do anything from subtle tube compression to fat tube overdrive, all with one slider and one toggle button. At the end of the chain I always have EQ and a HPF, as the Tube adds a bit of rubbish in the low frequencies. My current favourite for this is the Sony Oxford EQ, as the high-pass is very good (if limited to 200Hz max) and the rest of the EQ is superb for sound-shaping. If I need a HPF higher than 200Hz I use Waves Q4 with every band set to the same frequency - if you store a preset with all the frequencies and gains set to the same point you can very easily drag all the bands up or down together in the EQ graph. With percussion as with anything else, when EQing I tend to cut much more than boost, removing (HPF) or reducing the parts of each sound that contribute little to its essential character. The human ear is more sensitive to EQ boosting than cutting so if I need to boost I do it gently using broad curves, but be quite ruthless with surgical notches and dipping out areas I don't want.

 

As far as FX goes, I like having an early reflection reverb set up on an aux, and send a little bit of a few percussion elements to it. Closed hats really benefit from a subtle bit of this - I tend to use only enough to really be noticed when you A/B it with/without, but also having just one sound which totally canes the ER can sound really interesting in exposed sections of a track. Snares often like a short bit of dense reverb on them - try a small room program on the Sony Oxford Reverb if you have it, or good old Waves Trueverb. Use the reverb's in-built EQ if available to HP the effect, and perhaps a broad gentle cut in the mids around 1500Hz to increase clarity. Adding RVox or Sony Oxford Inflator with between 2dB and 4dB compression to the reverb return brings the reverb out, and grouping the whole lot - reverb returns and all - through a vintage modeled compressor like the URS 1975 (start with one of the Fairchild presets!) will chunk it up properly. Sometimes I'll use the Q4 HPF last in the group insert chain to deal with any compression artifacts that have crept in.

 

To make a good driving pattern, find a track you really like that has a good driving percussion section and try and make yours play the same rhythms! You'll get it a bit wrong, and come up with your own style...

[Otto Matta]

OMG.

 

I almost want to make a joke about this being an English-speaking forum, but I'm way too impressed by your uber-production-speak, Colin.

 

My own technique (not that I'm very good with "awesome percussion"), while keeping in mind Aeros' very solid overall advice, is to do what I think the track needs in each particular part, and then not be lazy about making it right. I go by feel first, not being afraid or too tight to experiment (because that's where the interesting stuff happens), and then do my best with the production knowledge I have to refine it to make it fit well in the mix and the overall groove (although too much refinement can take all the spirit away from it). To be lazy with percussion is a killer where electronic dance music is concerned. People, like myself, who get off on electronic dance music usually like to be entertained by detail and nuance, and that often happens in percussion. So dedicate lots of time and attention to it wherever necessary, but don't overdo it. Doing it right and finding that sweet spot, like all matters of music production, seems to me, comes with dedication and effort.

[Getafix]

Great tips Colin, going to try out the Antares Tube. The Oxford Eq does go up to 400Hz so maybe you meant to say 400?

 

Anyway the only thing that i have problems with is getting a good 'running' closed hi hat sound. I've tried out closed hi hats on every 16th & playing around with the velocity to make it seem more natural but it's still not there. So any tips there would be cool!

 

Also what percussions do you guys recommend to make a track sound faster. I've often noticed some of my tracks sounded a little slow on big systems & i think this probably has to do with the percussion.

[Colin OOOD]

Great tips Colin, going to try out the Antares Tube. The Oxford Eq does go up to 400Hz so maybe you meant to say 400?

No, I meant to say 200Hz but that's just cos I'd got it wrong lol. 400Hz it is - enough for many sounds but not eg. hihats, at least the way I do them.

 

Running hi-hat sound - with the right sample it really is just a matter of getting the velocities right. I find it helps to imagine the drummer actually playing it, as imagining eg. a right-handed drummer can help with getting the weights of each hit right. Also see if you can find two hihat samples from the same kit, played wither with different weights or with different left foot positions, and place the heavier or more open hit on the offbeat.

[buzzman]

No, I meant to say 200Hz but that's just cos I'd got it wrong lol. 400Hz it is - enough for many sounds but not eg. hihats, at least the way I do them.

 

Running hi-hat sound - with the right sample it really is just a matter of getting the velocities right. I find it helps to imagine the drummer actually playing it, as imagining eg. a right-handed drummer can help with getting the weights of each hit right. Also see if you can find two hihat samples from the same kit, played wither with different weights or with different left foot positions, and place the heavier or more open hit on the offbeat.

Yeah, find the right sample.. A quick CL hihat in right pitch.. Place one on every count. To make an example, you can do the velocity like this:

 

Count 1(where the kick lies) :75%, count 2:25%, count 3: 50%, count 4: 40%, then count 5(where the kick goes again):repeat or make it different, to create a different rythm.

 

The sonnox EQ i use "the red band" to lower the frequenzys around 2000hz, plus the hpf is set to maximum(allthough the hpf in sonnox doesn't reach much of the frequencys from hihats)

[Aeros]

About the running hi-hats and how to make a track sound faster:

 

Try playing with the sample length of your hi hats, like if you have something that works like a release knob on the sample to slowly fade out the end of it - adjusting the overall length. You end up with bright percusions since you free up more room for sounds to play in by making each sound come in very quickly and shortly. This is all over modern psy production today. Like you don't just load samples, you start adjusting their pitch and decay so they all sound good and clear in unison...you would do this on the kick and the claps too.

 

Play with that, followed by adjusting the volume levels on your percusions to rebalance them and make use of this louder sound you can use now. That'll also make it seem like the track sped up, especially if you start wrapping off all your samples like that. Any sampler or most likely the interface of your DAW will let you finely control the envelopes of the sample to accomplish this.

[cronodevir]

Not to drop shit on what everyone has said, but you could just do something other than the extremely typical hi hat run up sound. Unless for some reason you strictly want 42flor once once, i would suggest come up with break buildups

 

something like this: http://www.tindeck.com/audio/my/rgbb/examplebreakbuildup

 

just an example of how you could use a break as a buildup to something, in this example the break is obviously every 4th bar...

[needle ninja]

One thing I just discovered - shifting the bd forward (to the left) so that it comes slightly before the beat is a great way to add tension. I used the nudge feature in Sonar, but I'm sure Cubase has something similar.

It takes time, but the 'humanize' feature is too random for me, slight timing changes to a rythem increase interest.