How to Beef Up my Drum Tracks?

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Guitardude324

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So, I use EZDrummer, and I actually really love it, but lately I've gotten comments that the drums need to beef up a little and sound a little thin sometimes...so, here's a clip, could you give me suggestions on how to improve the drums?

Would it help if I exported a mix of just the drums? Do you want to know what compression and reverbs and EQ i have on each drum so far?

http://www.reverbnation.com/tunepak/7984

Thank you!
 
I thought that it sounded decent. The streaming bitrate raped your high frequencies, but that's nothing new. You need to automate the drums to bring them up in the mix when the heavy guitars hit. I find that drum samples are always recorded very clean and it helps to add some tube or tape saturation to fatten them up a bit. You could also try a double snare track and where it sounds a bit thin just bring up the double track with a dark EQ on it.

Just a few ideas. The compression that you asked sounded about, sounded fine.
 
The EZ drummer hits will need some eqing. If you want bigness, don't be afraid to add some low shelf to fatten the bottom up. Also, compressing the whole drum buss a tiny bit can add some more character.
 
YellowMatter said:
Also, compressing the whole drum buss a tiny bit can add some more character.
Click to expand...
Why just a tiny bit? compress the fuck out of it buoy! Yeah! :p :D
 
noisewreck said:
Why just a tiny bit? compress the fuck out of it buoy! Yeah! :p :D
Click to expand...


yeah compressing the shite out of drums can make them slam. I do a lot of that on my drum tracks.
 
Guitardude324 said:
So, I use EZDrummer, and I actually really love it, but lately I've gotten comments that the drums need to beef up a little and sound a little thin sometimes...so, here's a clip, could you give me suggestions on how to improve the drums?

Would it help if I exported a mix of just the drums? Do you want to know what compression and reverbs and EQ i have on each drum so far?

http://www.reverbnation.com/tunepak/7984

Thank you!
Click to expand...

I run reaper, so I do not know if you can do this on your system... Here is what I do sometimes. (often called NY compression)

I set up a send for the overheads, kick and snare (and usually the bass guitar) to a buss. I solo that buss and get a real even sound. Not like a perfect mix, but a mix to that bus where everything is nice and even. Then I put a compressor on it and absolutely crush it. FAST attack and 1:20 or 1:40 ratio. Set the release so it is dropping right before the next snare hit. Then put an amp sim or tube emulator on it to distort it just a bit.

Unsolo it and take it all the way down. Bring up your regular kit with the rest of your mix then slowly bring up this bus mix to add some balls.

You can screw with the eq and distortion and compression to taste, but it can really add some guts to your sound.
 
thanks for the replies, i'll give them all a shot tomorrow!
 
that clip's really got a compressor slamming when the kick's in. do you have something across the buss?

you can make the drum hit bigger by making it last longer with compression and some reverb. adding energy per hit. this may require two compressors, one with a fast attack and short release and then another with a slow attack and longer release. the latter is tuned to make the hit last longer. also, maybe a Room reverb with some pre-delay can help, but be careful. a gated Plate reverb on the snare can sound fantastic. done well it won't sound like a reverb, but the snare will be much bigger.

if you're slamming the whole kit with a compressor, then do parallel compression and tuck the slammed kit underneath the original. also, clipping the slammed kit before the compressor can be cool.
 
I actually think the drums sound pretty good. Did you use stock midi files in EZd or play them in with a midi controller? Cool tune! Are you planning on adding vocals?
 
I used the stock EZDrummer samples. I've been thinking about getting the Hard Rock/Metal kit upgrade, but I'm fairly happy with my recent results.

I'm writing lyrics right now, and plan to record them in the next few weeks hopefully.

Thanks for all the input, I'll be posting the finished song in the MP3 section.
 
YellowMatter said:
You can squash the drums hard but I'd do it on a buss and have some uncompressed drums as well. That way you can balance the two. I compress individual tracks and ditched the drum buss squash. I do squash the rooms a lot though.

Examples:

www.yellowmatterrecords.com/slate/AmbrosiaNewMix.wav

Click to expand...

Dude, that's gotta be one of the most impressive mixes i've heard in a while, that and the newer dredg cd....
 
You might actually like the vintage kit add on for ezdrummer.
 
YellowMatter said:
You can squash the drums hard but I'd do it on a buss and have some uncompressed drums as well. That way you can balance the two. I compress individual tracks and ditched the drum buss squash. I do squash the rooms a lot though.

Examples:

www.yellowmatterrecords.com/slate/AmbrosiaNewMix.wav

Click to expand...


I can't stop listening to the first one. Great recording...great mix...great song! Who are they and how to I get a cd?
 
To the original poster, how did you get your guitar tone, very nice distortion?
 
get yourself a big juicy hunk of beef. then, solo your drum tracks and assign them to an output of your interface. take a 1/4" out (2 if you want stereo) and plug it deep into the beef. take another 1/4" (again 2 if stereo) and run it back to your interface and record the result. the level of "hugeness" will depend on how big the beef hunk is.... ;)
 
Thanks for the comments guys.

Ambrosia is a band called September Twilight who I produced, recorded, mixed and mastered. Their website is www.septembertwilight.com and they were a great band to work with.

If you guys are liking the drum sounds, you'd probably be interested in my drum sample CD. I was making drum samples for a lot of the top mixers in LA (and still do) and then finally came out with a drum library for everyone to use. There is a ton of audio demos at www.stevenslatedrums.com

As of now the drums are just for use with replacement plugins like Drumagog, but the version 2 free upgrade will add cymbals and mappings for all the samplers like Kontakt, Halion, EXS and more. I know of quite a few guys who CURRENTLY use EZ drummer to program and then replace the hits with my samps so that you don't have to do any processing to the EZ hits.

The second band is called IN ENDING, I just mixed and mastered them. They are at www.inending.com. Thanks guys, good to be here.
 
I have the steven slate samples and they are excellent. I kind of want to keep them under wraps though, from a purely selfish point of view!
 
Thanks man! Hey guys, ever mix for a metal or hard rock band and get this: "Dude can you make my drums sound like the Deftones?"

I think the Deftones drum sound is one of the most requested, at least it was for me. So for my collection I modeled some of those sounds, and you can hear a deftones inspired audio demo using snare5 and kick1:



Hope you guys dig.
 
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