Reply To: Drum dynamics – please help!
RAGG1WOW thanks so much for all these replies. it was quite a while ago i posted this thread and i kind of have this problem sorted now.
i think my main issue was that i was falling in love with my drums too early, i had to learn that no matter how much i like my drums they are going to change when it comes to giving them (heavy) processing.
so now when i make a break i find a kick and snare i like in addictive drums or whatever, pitch them, tighten them and maybe even a little eq.
but i make sure not to get too attached because this is just a starting point (i also monitor at a really low volume so i don’t get too used to the way the kick and snare hit at this stage} they are going to change.
then i compress the low end
the more you back off the low end the more you can push them into a limiter or saturator etc without mangling them.
i purposely crush the drums too much so i can go back to addictive drums and tighten them up again. now i am tightening them before they go to the limiter so my transient stays really big and fat but without any mess. this is the point where i can design my sounds in a little more detail and really get them sounding the way i want without having to worry about them changing because the dynamic processing has already been done.
another issue i had was with the way i used to synthesise my snares.
i would follow the classic technique of using pitch envelopes to give the snare a snappy transient but no matter how good it sounded it always just ended up getting chopped out of the snare during limiting.
so now i barely use pitch envelopes when synthesising snares, but if i do i always leave my decay and decay level on zero. you can still achieve a really nice clean tight snare like this and its amazing how much you can crush these snares without destroying them or losing that nice tight sound.
