How to distort drum tracks

S

Soulgolem

Member
Hello, what is the best way to apply some distortion on drums, is there any specefic plugin to do this, without the cymbals getting too brittle ?

Francis.
 
Distortion on drums?

The whole kit or just one drum like the kick or snare.

This may be one for Walters.
 
It's done often in hip-hop, etc...If you have individual tracks, you can put distortion on just the snare and kik or whatever it is you want distorted. But I think the few times I've heard distorted drums, even the high hats and cymbals were effected, too. Gives an industrial, machine type sound.
 
sub mix the kit, then re-amp it.
(that's how i'd do it, o'course there are a few options)
 
Personally, I would make copies of the tracks you want to distort and blend them with the undistorted tracks. Also, I would probably only do it to kick and/or snare (not overheads). Try some heavy compression (Digital Fishphones Blockfish) to make them pump, and maybe a saturation plugin, like the Digital Fishphones Dominion. Also, the SSL LMC-1 is a cool free plugin to compress/distort drums.

http://www.digitalfishphones.com/main.php?item=2&subItem=1
http://www.solid-state-logic.com/resources/lmc1plugin.html
 
Route the drums mics through a guitar amp or two, and then mic that with distortion on from the amp (assuming your amp has a built in distortion channel). Could yield some interesting effects. I suppose you could also run the mics through an amp simulator.

Or record the drums to an old mulit-track cassette recorder and over-gain it, or something like that. Also could be kind of cool.

Not really sure exactly what sound you're going for, but there' also always a gated reverb. Not necessarily distortion, but you certainly not a "clean" sound.
 
SSL has a FREE compressor plugin that makes some usable distortion, especially for drums. Do a google search for SSL free compressor.

Rory
 
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