Getting Drums Sounding Better In Fruity Loops

[BPINCdef]

Aite
my drums in audition have the good amount of hit and all that, i like them
then i load em into fruity loops and then they dont sound like that ever, and if i adjust the volume, the only way they even sound somewhat okay is when the beat is clipping and i know we dont want that
and because of this problems my beats sound bad because my drums are always seperate sounding from the sample or synth or w/e is being used

thanks for any help if theres anyway to fix this
thanks
pz

[CrowdAds]

[WDPS Recordz]

try using a miximizer on em, BBE makes a nice one....or use Fruitys Bass Boost then filter it, EQ if needed after filtering, then compress it, and dont think ur beat is clippin just because fruitys DB meter said so....its not accurate....if ur going to use a DB meter check out Waves PAZ meters.....every drum is different but that stuff usually works for me.

[WDPS Recordz]

Props to Pete Marriot for this one.....

1. First you have to decide what kind of drum kit you’re trying to build for the song you’re creating. Today I’m going for a small room kit. I find the best way of going about this today is to find 3 drum loops that share sonic similarities. To expound on ?uest’s recent revelation of drums used by Pete Rock and J Dilla Im going to show you my technique using "Funky President" by James Brown, "Impeach The President" by the Honeydrippers and "God Made Me Funky" by "The Headhunters were recorded in small rooms using drum kits were made out of wood and the engineers back then used fewer microphones then they do today so what you think is an effect on some of these drum breaks are actually the mics picking up all the sounds in the room where the drums where recorded. I personally love that stuff and I like having that ambience in my music because that room noise is what makes the drums sound so cool.

2. I then sample my selected breaks flat, no EQs, no dynamic processors and no effects into Adobe Audition. To insure that your signal is at a good level turn on the meters in Audition and adjust the input level in your soundcard’s mixer to gently tap the number 0 on the meter. The reason you want it to tap is so you don’t distort your signal. Although these applications allow you to produce your music visually, I also find that using your ears as well as your eyes can help you a great deal so make sure what you’re seeing coincides with what you’re hearing. (Message!!!)

3. I then save and export my drum loops to a folder in the .wav format and import them into Propellerheads Recycle where I chop (Cut, edit, truncate, slice or whatever ****ing egghead term you want to use) my drums at the very tip of the attack point. If you’re using a slicing tool like Recycle you can visually cut your samples to perfection within seconds. (If you’re using hardware like the like MPC, ASR or Triton you can find your attack point by pressing the lowest key while scrolling to your desired destination. This of course will take longer. (Message!!!)

4. Within the Recycle environment I normalize my slices at 90% a lot of cats do it at 100% which is cool if you’re not using any dynamic processors at all but thanks to Viacom and Clear Channel your music got to be loud enough to compete with the other cats out thurr. Later on where going to use compression. So how you use your EQs and dynamic processors in the preparation stage is the key to making your drums Bump & Pop. After you normalize your slices export them to another folder.

5. Now open FL Studio 4 set it up to host 3 samples.

6. Ok here’s where the fun part begins; Sound Design. For those of you who don’t know about FL Studio I want you to go to the website I linked for you and check out the features. If you check out the specs you should find that FL Studio 4 has two sets of parametric EQs. The first EQ is a 3-Band parametric that’s very easy to find on FL’s mixer. For those of you not familiar with EQ I’ll break it down real quick. EQ was originally designed to correct frequencies in recordings that sometimes get lost in recordings. But pioneering record producers of 60’s & 70 started using EQ as an experimental sound shaping effect. This eventually found its way over to hip hop music thanx to the legendary producers such as Marly Marl, Hurby Luv Bug & Howie Tee. The other Parametric EQ is a 7-band virtual rack plug-in called Fruity Parametric EQ. What I usually do is load my three best kicks from my sliced samples folder in each sampler (Usually open kicks with no hit hats.) and assign each kick to a separate mixer channel. I then load the Fruity Parametric EQ in each mixer channel to coincide with each kick. There is a preset on The Fruity Parametric EQ called Bass Drum Punch, open it in each channel.

[WDPS Recordz]

7. I then step write a 4 count rhythm in FL 4 using each kick so I can play this pattern while I’m adjusting the EQ on each kick to meet my sonic likings. By doing this you’re actually creating a new drum sound that is yours to claim because there are thousands of sonic possibilities. So play with your EQ and levels to create your custom kick sound. Just remember to save your pattern in case something goes wrong like a power outage.

8. Once I have established my desired kick sound, I remove all of my steps except the downbeat and export my custom kick to a folder called "Custom Drums". I then repeat the process for my snare and Hat.

9. Now that I have created my custom drum kit its time for me to create a pattern which I can do in step writing mode, or manually by using my midi controller. I personally enjoy doing it manually so I can perfect it in the piano roll editor. After my pattern is created I then go into the basic envelope mode to adjust the ADSR functions. ADSR stands for Attack, Decay, and Sustain & Release. How you adjust your attack and decay is the very key to creating a buoyant rhythm track that will bounce in the ears of your intended listeners. You want to adjust your attack & decay on each drum sound to give your rhythm a tight and sometimes loose feel so your rhythms will have that soulful bounce. The more bounce your drums have the more danceable your tracks become and the better your chances of getting the DJ’s to play your **** up in the clubs and on the radio mix-shows. I stress this point especially to male producers because most females especially love to dance. Don’t believe me, go to a club sit back relax with a few drinks and watch what songs get the ladies on the dance floor. But while you’re checking out the ladies shake their ass, take notes of how their bodies react to the movements of the kicks and snares. Also take notice of what records the DJ plays more than once. What’s my point? Your kicks need to Bump and your snares need to Pop in order to compete for dance floor time because the ladies want to dance! That’s why certain cats are killing the charts and most of our progressive hip hop heroes are not. My personal theory is progressive hip hop music can be danceable too and I’m personally trying to take my new sound on that level. Now let’s get back to the technical ****.

10. I usually play my rhythm and adjust the attack and decay on my drum sounds as needed to get that bounce. I usually adjust these envelopes according to the sound of my kick, snare and hat. The best way of doing so is by giving my kick and snare a short attack and decay setting so they have a swift response and my hats a looser feel so my rhythms have a semi break beat type of vibe.

11. After I obtained that bounce I’m looking for, I turn on the normalize function and apply a modest amount of EQ using the 3-band EQ on the channel mixer but this time I’m using EQ as a corrective tool. The reason I do this is because that’s where the Bump & Pop happens. Most cats I know apply compression first but I find when you adjust the room sound of your drums with EQ first you have greater control of the sound you’re trying to achieve. Sometimes I use an extreme amount of EQ if I want to get crazy with it but most of the times I use my EQ sparingly.

12. I then apply the vintage compression preset within each of the drum sound’s effect channel. I don’t know who programmed this setting at Image Line but they were right on the money because it adds punch to drum sounds without any coloration. Depending on the tone of the kick and snares I decease the amount

13. For Lessonheads using other compressors the Vintage setting is: Threshold: -15.0 db, Ratio: 8.0:1, Gain: 8.6, Attack 29.2 ms, Release 1532 ms. This setting usually will give your drums that punch you hear on records being played in the clubs but you have use it correctly because if you over do it your **** will muddy or distorted.

14. Sometimes you might have to adjust your channel mixer EQ a bit more but that basically does the job. Once you have created your complete drum pattern you can mix your levels to your idea of sonic perfection export it in a 2-channel stereo mix or you can export it in separate channels. I personally export to both because I never know if I’m going to reuse my drum parts for other projects.
Next week tutorial will be about bass lines. I hope this helps and I would love to see some feed back on this tutorial within this post. I will try to answer your questions the best as I can. If you have any question that’s not based on this tutorial inbox and I’ll try and answer you the best I can.

[BPINCdef]

haha that is a lot to read but ill def. read it all
if it can be said simpler
i take my drums into FL, after having dont all my EQ, filtering, etc... so i have the sound i want
but once in FL, because they lower the volume, the drum doesnt sound nearly as good, and i cant seem to fix that
but thanks so much, im mos def feelin this little article

[BPINCdef]

aite...read it.... ill cop recycle then see what i can do

[Syntax_Mastery]

compression, and equalization

[veral conflict]

reverb is good on drums also...

[WDPS Recordz]

this article right here pretty much explains how to use recycle...http://www.mpc-tutor.com/tutorials/recycle.php ....its for the mpc but it should tell u all u need to know about it.

[BPINCdef]

thanks all!!!!!!!!!!!
that recycle tutorial is kickin ass

[Syntax_Mastery]

Originally Posted by veral conflict

reverb is good on drums also...

i disagree with that... i've never had a good experience with reverb on drums...