The drum parts of a track are a minefield of potential errors, which will ultimately affect the power and quality of your mixes. Liam O’Mullane offers up tips and tricks for making successful drum tracks each and every time – while not stifling your

Whether you’re dealing with a multitrack recording of a real kit, electronic drum hits created from a synth or a bit of both in the form of samples, failing to make your drums successfully deliver their assigned role in your mix is a common problem for many a budding engineer. In this feature we’ll go through the techniques and considerations used by most professional engineers to demonstrate that it’s really not that difficult to get a good drum sound when you know what you’re looking for and why.

Although the rhythms and sounds of a drum track often vary immensely from one genre to the next, they all involve a few core considerations that have to be decided upon for a successful mix. These decisions need to be made at the start of a project and will be implemented either straightaway or during the mix stage (if this is a separate process from your workflow).

The first consideration is the source sound. If you’re recording an acoustic drum kit and have no plans to use sample replacement later, there are a lot of variables to think about way before you set up to record. You won’t get a super-intense speed metal drum sound from a jazz kit being played with lightweight sticks and no aggression. The same applies in reverse: you won’t get the required dynamics and tone for jazz using a metal kit and heavyweight sticks at full force. The point is, if you don’t focus on getting the right sound source in the first place, you’ll struggle afterwards as you try to use fix-in-the-mix techniques to make up for starting out with the wrong source.

Drum samples and the level of editing required on a lot of drum recordings make the techniques we’ll be looking at pretty interchangeable. Samples can be used to either augment your recorded drum sound or fully replace them. Let’s start by looking at the art of choosing the right sounds to suit your genre, and explore the reasons for why you might opt for one sound over another.

Mix and match 
Before you jump straight into the craft of sourcing and matching drum samples yourself, we strongly recommend that you work with preset drum collections for a while. To mix and match sounds yourself is quite a difficult skill that can take a long time to learn, and the production quality of your projects can suffer in the meantime. Doing this first will also train your ears as to what a well-balanced kit should sound like, so it’s good training, too.

We’re aware, however, that the impatient among you will want to get straight into matching samples for your own productions. If this is the case, first grab a few reference tracks that have the general type of drum sound you’re after. You can then flick back and forth to keep yourself on-track. To begin, let’s look at the variations in a drum kit’s anatomy. This will help to identify what you may be looking for in each drum in the pursuit of a balanced drum mix.

In the foreground
The first – what we like to call foreground sound of any drum production – is the bass drum (kick). The first variable in a kick sound is the lower frequency range that it will occupy. This tends to go hand in hand with the bass instrument, as it may occupy the same lower frequencies. If you listen to a few different genres you’ll notice that some have low, sub-dominant kicks which go way below the 50Hz frequency area. These genres will either have the bass instrument playing at the same time in a higher register to avoid direct frequency clashing, use lower notes but play them between the kick sounding, or use sidechain ducking to momentarily dip the volume of the bass when the kick plays. This effectively does the same job as the second approach, but if done right, fools the listener into thinking that both sounds are playing at the same time and at normal volumes. The first questions, then, are what is your bass instrument going to do and which approach are you going to use?

The second foreground sound is the snare drum (or clap). Snare drums have two main pitch characteristics. One is up high without too much low end (below around 250Hz), with its content being mostly audible, characteristic frequencies. The second is much lower, with a strong resonant peak around the 180–250Hz area.

Similar overlap considerations need to be made for snare drum and kick drums – a low and thuddy snare may clash with a kick drum sharing similar frequencies if they are to play together. However, if they alternate and never play together, this won’t be a concern as long as the duration of the sounds don’t overlap. This is something to check for if you’re making faster-tempo music, when there’s less space between these two foreground sounds.
A clap is a common alternative for a snare drum as it can also accent certain beats a kick drum plays on, but as it’s more midrange-based it’s easily heard but doesn’t detract from the low power being delivered from a kick. Once you’ve decided on the type of drum rhythm and bass parts you’ll be dealing with, decide on which process you’ll use. Once these are in place you can start thinking about decorative sounds to tie everything together.

Fore to background
Toms, percussion and cymbals can be as dominant in the mix as the kick, snare or clap, or be placed further towards the mid to background of the drum mix to compliment your foreground sounds. The same general rules will apply for mix space as discussed previously. So if you intend to have full-range toms or percussion playing tribally along with kicks and snares, they either need to leave enough frequency space for each other if playing at the same time, or be spaced so that they alternate.

Cymbals are also mix-specific instruments. There’s no point trying to use a full-range, clangy open hi-hat sound in a mix if it will compete with midrange guitar and vocals. As an exception, cymbals tend to get re-shaped with EQ in order to fit in the context of the mix. But do still try to find sounds that fit the beat first before you try to shape them. If a cymbal crash will be used as a rhythmic tool rather than for accenting, choose one that sits in a free frequency spot in your mix (or at least one that has its level set so that it isn’t dominating everything else).

Before we start reaching for EQ plug-ins, using envelopes and layering things up, there’s a lot to be said for getting the right sounds in the first place. Hip hop producer DJ Premiere is known to have said that he sometimes waits literally months until he finds the right kick for a beat. This is something that Vengeance Sound is a big believer in, too. As he tells us: “The most important but most time-consuming process is the sound selection. I know it’s not fun to browse through thousands of drum samples to find the best matching elements, but it’s definitely worth it.”

Push and pull
Although sidechaining isn’t a new technique, it is very much part of modern production and can be set up quite easily in any DAW. After choosing the correct drum sounds for the content in your mix, you can use sidechaining to let a focal element of your drums push other sounds back, either drastically (as a creative choice) or by just a few decibels (to help these focal drums seem clearer). The ‘Sidechaining in Live’ box (bottom left) will give you an idea of how this can be set up, and the same approach can be applied in other DAWs.

Once you’ve decided what will be ducked in volume (as well as which element (key-input) of the mix will trigger the ducking) you will be able to achieve a tighter drum sound. If you’re using a repetitive kick as the key-input, try using a dummy kick on another track instead. This is never heard – it’s there so you can continue the sidechain effect on other sounds even when the drum section has stopped playing, which is great for breakdowns or build-ups before a drop.

Shaping up
If you’re with us so far and are already taking the time to choose the right samples for a balanced kit to suit your song’s instrumentation, you should already be getting a more professional sound. Amplitude shaping, then, is something to start thinking about next, either as a corrective measure to mould an existing sound, or to use in the process of drum layering.

There are two main points in the chain of events where amplitude shaping can be implemented. On the drum itself, on a sampler’s amp ADSR, or on the start and end fades of an audio clip. The second place is by adding dynamic processing.

Within milliseconds of the start of a drum sound, the rapid increase then decrease in volume is called the transient. The curve of the transient’s attack stage dictates whether it sounds rounded and soft or sharp and aggressive. The frequency content in the transient also dictates if it’s sharp or soft, with higher frequencies creating a sharper tone. But before thinking about EQ, you can actually soften the tone of a drum in a very natural way by creating a longer attack fade. Of course, dynamic processing of a drum buss is a classic technique for achieving a softened and glued-together sound for drums as a whole. But given the ability to control this in the initial stages of drum shaping, modern producers often tend to mould their sounds at source as this offers much greater control.

The duration of the transient, the volume it drops down to, and the slope curve used to get there are other mix-dependent considerations to think about. If you listen to dense rock music with bass, blaring double-tracked guitars and vocals, the drums will tend to have very fast transients and a much lower drum volume after this spiked hit. This means that they can be heard and felt without dominating an already busy mix.

A good way of achieving this – what we like to call ‘pokey’ transients – is by adding a compressor to individual drums for lots of gain-reduction. The trick is to set the attack stage on the compressor to be slow enough that it lets a slither of the original drum volume slip through to create your pokey transient before the compressor slams the volume down. Use peak mode so that the compressor reacts quickly, but try different compressors as they all have different attack curves. A mix of more minimal content with just a lead synth, bass and drums, for example, can afford to have much longer transients and a higher drum volume afterwards as the drums are meant to be a more dominant part of the mix.

EQ work
The basic rules of EQ in drum mixing are similar to those for general multitrack mixing. As good practice, you should always bracket each drum’s frequency bandwidth with a high- and low-pass filter. There’s no point in having a bright kick, snare, hi-hats and cymbal section hammering away at the same time in the same frequency areas unless you want a very clashy, punk-like sound. High Rankin’s technique on low cutting is pretty much universal. He told us: “Take the very low frequencies out of everything. Cut everything at 30Hz. Even hi-hats have rogue low frequencies rumbling about that you wouldn’t hear but will mess with your mixdown.”

We would add that anything which doesn’t have to have low end below around 250Hz should have a higher cutoff position for low-end filtering to leave more room in the mix. Again, this depends on when it plays in relation to other sounds. As already mentioned, cymbals can have a lot of EQ-shaping applied, and drastic lower-frequency removal is essential for getting those whispy-sounding crash, rides and hi-hats. The position of the HP filter’s cutoff is up to you, but it can be so high that only 14kHz and above passes through, creating a more rhythmic-like noise rather than a recognisable heavy cymbal crash. Remember to remove the high end or part of the midrange in a drum sound. This is to position it somewhere between the fore and background of a drum mix. Even the large, dominant drum sounds of today can need the digitally brittle frequencies around 2–5kHz pulling back.

Sample layering
It’s no surprise that you don’t get something for nothing, and the infinite possibility of potential drum sounds available from drum layering comes at a price. You will need perseverance and the ability to know when to stop. Even the ability to know when you don’t even need to start is handy. The old ‘if it ain’t broke…’ term springs to mind.

Asides from the need to craft a unique-sounding drum, the other reason for drum layering can be to augment existing drum sounds from a recording. There’s only so much EQ and gating can do on a problematic recording without turning it into undefined mush from over-processing.

Using samples as layers works best when used to construct or enhance the fundamental parts of a drum sound. Using a snare drum as an example, one sample might supply the transient part of the drum. Then, a low, thuddy snare might be used to add a longer duration of lower body frequencies. But character (mid to high) and air (high) samples are where we hear the character of a drum. All of these component samples can have their start and end points edited as well as their amplitude curves in order to create a clean, overall drum sound. EQ also has a part here, bracketing the frequency range of each layer for more clarity and definition.

Characteristics samples can be single drum samples, found sounds, slices from drum breaks or even white noise. Drumsound and Bassline Smith have some good advice to share on the power of character layering. They said: “We have always tried to use drums that have a warm, organic sound and the right amount of punch necessary to cut it in drum&bass without needing to push them to the edge of oblivion with processing. We’ve been using chopped, high-passed breaks at around 200–500Hz underneath the kick and snare since 2000, which has helped us get that live, organic feel to our beats.”

Vengeance Sound also mentions that adding the same character-based sample as a layer to the kick, snare and hi-hat for your drum sound will help to tie everything together. He recommends a ride, closed hi-hat or percussion sample. Layering samples to construct new drum sounds is a very enjoyable process and we thoroughly recommend giving it a try as a standalone process at first. You can then export your results to use in future sessions.

Creative processing
There are as many ways to process your drums as there are audio plug-ins available to buy. So we grabbed a few of our guest professionals to share a few elements that make up their unique drum production style.
When we chatted to DJ Krust about his Bristol drum&bass sound, he said: “I grew up listening to hip hop and took all my cues from that. I wanted phat, crunchy, loud and pitched-down drums, so I made sure that the kicks were deep and phat along with the snares. I ran the outputs from my E-mu 64 sampler in the red through a Mackie desk. The sound was all about harmonic distortion rather than simply noisy distortion.”

Aquasky shared this: “We use the old multi-band compressor from SX3. It’s got a funny sound to it, like a weird EQ. It works really well on a drum buss, but is often too harsh on its own so we sometimes run it in parallel for a mashed yet defined sound.”

While on the topic of parallel processing, Drumsound and Bassline Smith said: “We started using parallel compression in early 2010 where necessary to help create a much thicker sound to our kick and snares. This helped us to push our drum mix towards the required levels in D&B while still maintaining the drum’s original characteristics. Our other most common processing for beats are EQ, to help the kick and snare hit the right frequencies, plus a compressor in parallel or series to help gel the sounds and bring out the depth of individual sounds. The we use a saturator for that raw edge and slight click.”

Davide Carbone swears by his hardware Transient Designer: “It gives all my drums their envelope, character and punch.” For just the snare drum, Ed Solo likes to use Logic’s Overdrive plug-in a lot. He told us: “It’s to pull down the transients so the overall level of the drums doesn’t suffer as the snare is the loudest element. I use this rather than a limiter as it also adds a nice sound.”

So, once you’ve chosen your drum selection, try some of the processing techniques described above to see which best suits your desired production sound. And don’t forget to experiment, as this really is key to getting  sounds that will stand out from those of other producers. But the techniques covered here should make sure that they always have the right character in the right place. MTM

This feature first appeared in Music Tech Magazine issue 103
Filed under Home, General Features, Features

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