fatten up my drums

jwalk

ILLIEN
ill o.g.
im looking to buy a avalon compressor to improve my basses and synths i was wondering is there any kind of hardware or software that i can use to fatten up my drums
 

sadamz85

Member
ill o.g.
Hey...
The other day, I downloaded wave's blue tubes plugins (compressors, eq's, delay's etc) and I gotta say it's upped the way my beats (drums, samples, and vst synths) sound by about 100%. I reccomend that.
 

Vince

2Cool2BeAHebrew
ill o.g.
Battle Points: 1
layer a 808 with your kick. That'll fatten it up.
 

TymE

Beatmaker
ill o.g.
Blue tubes plugins are dope i've been using those too. J walk for that money on a Avalon i would save it and just try messing with different software compressors.
 

Nick Diamond

Beatmaker
ill o.g.
Yap!
Blue Tubes and Vintage Warmer RULEZZ!!
It gives hella good kick in the ass to drums, bass... and its very simple to use.
 

2_nice

ILLIEN
ill o.g.
i don't think the approach of always trying to 'fatten' drums will really help your compositions and general sound.....

making your drums a bit stereo will help (psp stereo pack is a good plugin for this) and all the common techniques i.e layering, compression eq verb etc.

just dig for good sounds and you won't have to do much
 

Enigma

Member
ill o.g.
Hey man! This is my first post, but imma try to make it a useful one.

This isn't only directed to you, but also anyone else who's lookin to fatten up drums.

Learn how to EQ your drum sounds, and make sure they're all seperated when you track em out.

Start with the kick drum. Adding about 2-5 db at about 3-4K should bring out the drums initial attack. To clean up the muddiness of the kick remove some mids at around 300k. And it shouldn't be too overdone, but to boost the thump of the kick drum, adding about 4 db to the 60-80 Hz range should bring it out a bit.

EQing a snare drum on the other hand is a little different, considering there are millions of snare variations depending on tuning, the type of shell thats on the snare drum, the grittiness or quality of the sample, etc. For a little more crack and snap, boosting lightly in the higher frequencies, and reduction in the lows should help. This will all take some experimentation with different snares.

Hi Hats are significantly easier to EQ. for a crisp cutting sound, roll off the lower frequencies, and add some highs at about 10Hz. Or if you want a chunkier quality, add some high mids.

EQing drums takes some experimentation and patience so stick with it.

Another good useful technique to add some quality to your drums, would be layering. For instance, to thicken up a treble-filled clap sample, take a deep snare and layer it underneath the clap. That should thicken up the sound and give it a little more definition. The possibilities of drum layering are endless. It all depends on the sound you are shooting for.

Also, don't over compress your drum tracks. What i suggest is when you are at the mixdown process is, creating a stereo AUX input track. Assign a stereo bus input to your aux input track. Next take the outputs of your individual drum tracks, and send their outputs to the bus that your aux input track is picking up on. Now your drums should have the aux input acting as a 'sub-master fader'. On the aux input, apply a compressor to the insert, and compress your drum tracks. I usually allow no more than -6 db through the threshold, with a low ratio, and hard knee. This mixing technique is refered to as 'Parallel Compression'. Use it wisely.

You can even add a little reverb to fatten up the sound a little more, but not too much, because you to want to lose the attack of your drums. Drums can really get lost in reverb.

Thats all i have to offer for now. Hope you got something out of this!

KEEP IT VIBRANT!

-=ENIGMA=-
 
D

D'Majishin

Guest
Drum Impact

While listening to, let's say Scott Storch's Drums, they have an incredible impact. Also knowing that it was mixed and mastered in a million+ dollars studio, does anyone have any tips on how to eq the drums (kicks and snares) to get them to have the intensity of his?
 

Enigma

Member
ill o.g.
look at my above post...it'll give u're drums that punch. Another thing is just finding the right drum samples for the beat.
 
D

D'Majishin

Guest
Enigma said:
look at my above post...it'll give u're drums that punch. Another thing is just finding the right drum samples for the beat.


Thanks I guess I should've looked more carefully!! I'll try it out!!
 
G

Guezzwho

Guest
I'm sayin forget the compressor
get 2 NEVE 1073 EQ's
that will fatten up your sound (if used wisely)
 

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