Are you frustrated that your drums don't kick people in the stomach and punch them in the face?
I know I was when I started out, but over the years I've picked up some useful tricks to make your drums a bit more adept with their martial arts!
Check it out: 10 things you can do to make your drums punchier...
1. Layer your snares - Snares are most punchy when you have a meaty low-mid snare combined with a snappy hi end. Try finding two samples that fit these descriptions and mashing them together.
2. Layer your kicks - Some people say that it's bad to put too much layering in the low end - they're right. Keep one kick for the low end, but have another with a nice clicky attack so you can hear it as well as feel it!
3. EQ your snares - Obviously this will depend on your sample, but if you boost a sweet spot around 250hz for the punchiness of the snare and around 2.5khz for the snappy attack, you will hear the difference.
4. EQ your kicks - the most common problem I've seen with kicks made by new producers is boosting the low low end like mental. This makes mud, which is not good! Boost around 120hz-ish sparingly to add a gut-grabbing punch to the kick (sounds really violent, huh?) and to hear the kick boost around 2-4khz to bring up the attack of the sample.
5. Be sparing with reverb! - It's good to add some reverb to make your beat sit in the mix, but reverb reduces the punchiness of your drums.
6. Compress! - having a compression with a short attack (less than 70ms) means the drums will smack you in the face like an angry farmer after you pushed over his favourite cow.
7. Distortion - Mixing a small amount of a distorted version of your beat in can add a crisp edge to the beat as well as a more textured low end.
8. Try adding synths - A bit of a subtle white-noise synth behind a snare or a low bass (in key with the song for extra harmonic goodness) behind your kicks gives an awesome tone to your beats!
The second most important piece of advice I can give...
9. Don't use low quality samples - I spent years thinking I was a terrible producer because my beats never had any punch. Turns out that fruityloops' default sound bank wasn't ideal when trying to make powerful electronic music. Make sure your samples sound punchy BEFORE you add effects. You can't add to the punch if it isn't there in the first place.
And most importantly...
10. Turn everything else down - In 90% of conventional music the Drums rule. They should be louder than everything else, barring maybe the vocals. Have a look at the waveforms of your favourite songs - notice how the drums are literally about twice as loud, but feel like they still fit in the song? That's 'cause the low end of the drums is boosted and the hi end taken down, meaning they punch like a black belt, but still feel like they are in the mix.
