7 Tips for Creating Big Drums in Your Mix

Ever wonder how to get those tight, slammin' drum tracks that you hear in dance music? There are many methods to achieve these sounds, but here are a few techniques, ranging from beginning to more advanced to help you get the biggest boom for your drum tracks.

Tune Your Drums - When working with sampled drums, drum machines, or drum machine emulators, make sure to tune your kick to the fundamental frequency of the song. This will allow the kick to sit in a comfortable space that is pleasing to the ear. Also, for most dance music you would want to use more than one kick. I usually use a series of 3 kicks together in the following manner:

1. Sub-bass kick - you can create this with a virtual drum machine such as D-16's Drumazon, where you can emulate the classic sound of a 909, a preset in a soft synth like Rob Papen's Predator, or of course, if you have an analog synth or drum machine you can get your sub sounds from there. Use caution when adjusting the ASDR settings for the sub bass because it can become fatiguing if there's to much sustain on the kick, as it can also be difficult to tame in your mix - A little goes a long way in this frequency spectrum. This usually lies in the 30Hz to 70Hz range.


2. Main kick - this is where you have more power. You can get these sounds from a sample library, using electronic or acoustic drum sounds. Again, if you're using a software sampler like Native Instruments Battery, you can tune the sample up or down about 5 steps without it loosing too much of its original sound. After tuned, this kick will be an octave about your sub-bass kick which again, will add to the harmonic richness of the overall song, not just your drums. The frequency of this kick should be around 80Hz to 150 Hz.

3. Click - the third component to add can be a click or pop. This doesn't necessarily have to be tuned like the others. This adds a snap to the kick, filling out the sound so that the ear hears an attack on top of the full sound of the kick. This frequency range may be much higher - anywhere from 3k to 8k.

Phase Align - After exporting your drum tracks, make sure that they are in proper phase relation. Even if they sound close, they may have subtle attack differences that could contribute to phasing. You may either zoom in and align the samples by hand in your DAW, or you can use a function like Logic Studio's flex time to create a groove template from your main kick, then synchronize the other two kicks to it. I am a huge fan of flex time in Logic, and use it frequently for drums and percussion. This tool is invaluable for aligning loops to the proper quantization that you have in your track, and can be a life-saver when you have a great loop you'd love to use, but it swings differently than your track. We'll talk much more in the future about flex time in Logic!

Groups - Create a drum group in which to process all your drum tracks. I sometimes like to make two groups, one for drums and another for loops. This way you can process the elements individually, then mold the sounds together. This also helps if you
are adding filter sweeps or low cut effects on the drum tracks - you can easily automate these effects to the whole drum bus while keeping the individual instruments in balance. Generally a compressor with some gain reduction and a moderate ratio (no more than 4:1) on the drum group works to glue the sounds together.

EQ - I usually put an EQ insert on each track and sweep upwards to the fundamental tone of the kicks and snare to clean out any low end frequencies not needed in the mix. Sometimes EQ can be used to also clean out any high-end overtones present in any of the drum parts, especially if you're using some of the more tuned percussion parts that have higher frequencies that may cloud the mix if they're in the same register as a vocal or other instrumental part. Like usual, try not to use additive EQ when possible, it's always better to cut than to add.

Dynamics - When using compression or limiters on your individual drum tracks, pay careful attention to the attack and release times. This is what can make the drums sound muffled and lifeless if overused. I don't usually advise mixing with tracks soloed, however sometimes I will solo the snare drum track or tracks to hear the exact amount of compression and how the attack and release times effect the transients and fullness of the drums. Gating can also be very useful when your snare sources have extra reverb or long decays. You can either side-chain the gate to the fundamental frequency of the snare or just use it to cut off the tails to allow more room in the mix in more of a linear aspect.

Effects - If you want to add a small amount of reverb, try to do it on select instruments within your drum group. Delay can be added slightly to either high-hats or shakers, but make sure that the delay setting is not too active or long (try 1/8 or 1/16 notes - not dotted). If the delay times are too long or active, the sounds can loose definition and the mix can become washy. When adding any types of effects that can effect the stereo image, make sure to periodically check you mix in mono to ensure that phasing is not occurring.

Parallel Compression - I am a huge fan of parallel compression, and I think it is the best way to increase your "loudness" or RMS levels within your mix without loosing the original sound of the samples being used. This can be used on the individual tracks as well as the drum group. I like to use a big compressor like Wave H-Comp with a really high setting (from 20:1 up to 50:1) to really fatten the sound without running out of headroom or over-compressing on the insert.

If you start your mix by laying a solid, harmonic drum foundation prior filling in the instruments in the rest of the frequency spectrum, you will immediately notice your tracks getting tighter and sounding more full, allowing you to achieve big drums capable of droppin' the boom!

5 simple ways to improve your track

When you're starting with production, it can be easy to think that more is more.

Well I'm going to explain why less is indeed more as per the cliche, with 5 tips to improve your track - by lessening what's in it...

1. Removing Percussion for fills

Listen to any decent Hip Hop song and you'll find that the beat compliments the vocals on occasion by dropping out so the listener can focus on those all-important punchlines.

This applies to all genres - by removing small parts of the percussion, it can completely change the feel of the beat, giving more variety with nothing actually added to the track!

2. Remove frequencies

De-muddify your track by removing overlapping frequencies between different instruments, high pass a low pitched synth to get some cool fx as the note becomes difficult to distinguish and the tone takes over, remove notches of a sound to completely change where the focus lies within it.   Frequencies are there for the taking... so take them!


3. Cutting elements for extra coolness

There's nothing like a cool little stutter in a vocal part or lead.   Make hooks catchier with a repeating stutter and make a synth more interesting by giving it that gated effect.


4. Soloing elements to draw attention to them

Remove the wall of sound for a second and focus on an element that's really buried in the mix, then bring it all back in.   It's such a cool effect and makes for a strong fill within your track!

5. Turn it down!

Perhaps the most important thing people leave too much of in their tracks is volume!   Take it away from the vast majority of things, remember - the bigger the volume difference between the instrumentation and the percussion, the harder your beats will hit, since the listener will just turn up their speakers to compensate for the quietness!

Although for dance music producers you might be fighting the loudness war to make your tunes stand out, maybe they'd stand out more with some of the above techniques and you can still retain clarity in your mix.

So stop thinking about what you can give your track and start working with what you already have - you've been far too generous lately! ;)

How to prepare for a studio session

So you've booked yourself into a pro studio to record those songs you've been perfecting over the months - hold up!

It's very easy to let yourself slip into laziness and just wait for that day that you'll drive down, but to make sure you waste no time when you're in there, here are a few tips to remember to maximize that expensive time slot!

Rip it!

Rip down all demo audio tracks you have to stems that are all the same length so you can chuck them straight into your projects. That way no matter what software they use, you can quickly set up an initial track.

This way it's also easier to get a feel for the song - you can re-record any tracks that feel they are lacking and leave the ones that are a good enough quality already (synth and sample tracks for example tend to be fine and just benefit from a little studio polish!)

Get MIDI ready!

As I said, synths don't usually need re-doing, but you might find that a change in the song requires a new sound on an old part.

Having those MIDI tracks nicely organised speeds the process up considerably - especially if you can just boot up your laptop, change the synth patch or sample rhythm a bit, then quickly send it back to the master studio computer.

Practice 'til you bleed!

Well, maybe not that much, but if there's any live instrumentation it's VITAL that you can play it perfectly in time first try.

Practicing along to a click track and recording yourself is a great way to see where you're a bit sloppy - zoom right in on the wave form and see if you're coming in too fast or too slow, notice anywhere you struggle to nail those more difficult parts and find out exactly what you're doing wrong.

Have all samples easily accessible!

Make sure you bring a laptop or external hard drive with your entire sample library, nicely organised, into the studio.

If you need new samples, it's a massive time saver to be able to pick out what you want in a matter of minutes rather than searching through folder after folder of unsorted sounds.

Videography!

Get a film-inclied friend to accompany you and make a video diary for your fans! YouTube is ideal for showing an insight behind the music, so don't waste the opportunity

Boast about it to your friends!

You're going into a pro studio, you've got to milk it!

5 ways to make a good track great

Have you ever been in the position where you've got a good tune and you're happy with it, but think it needs that extra something to make it stand out?

Well here are 5 tips for turning that good tune into a great one.

1. Add in FX

Make sure you've got enough distance from the track (I like to leave it a day or so before adding the FX on) so you're not already exhausted from creating the track, then get to work adding in some reverses, sweeps, hits and other one-shots.

They can make dull phrases more interesting, builds more powerful and fans think you're more awesome. FX are vital for a full, professional sound.

2. Go through inserting fills

When you need something more interesting to make a repetitive section maintain the listener's attention, fills are the way to go! Drum fills, little melody quirks and the ever-useful "throw a random sample in there and hope for the best" technique all apply; just be sure to make your track fun to listen to!

Don't be inappropriate though - this goes for public nudity as well as maintaining musical integrity, but if you have a trance song, sometimes it's good to have a lot of repetition, for example, in order to entrance your listener. Find that balance that suits the style of music you want to make!

3. Remove unnecessary layers

Have you ever found your tracks swimming in pads, arps and keys? I know I've been guilty of it in the past - sometimes you need to remove a few layers, no matter how attached you are to them, in order for the remaining layers to shine.

This can result in the wonderful side effect of having a starting point for another song; if a part you really like is removed, take it into a new project and push it in its own direction!

4. Add extra layers of vocals

For those of you playing with words as well as sounds, it's always adviseable to back up your vocals with double tracks and, more importantly, harmonies. Software like Melodyne Editor is great for this if you're using vocal samples, since then you don't need to get the vocalist in to record again!

5. Get some more opinions

There's nothing like communal music making! Show your tune to a mate, musically inclined or not, and ask them if they thought anything might be an interesting change, or if any sections should be more prominent!

Just make sure they don't ask for co-writing credits!