Analysis of S5E07: Disprove – Drums: Distortion & Over Compression

A return to my analysis notes from watching tutorials! I hope people find these useful, and if there is anything that is unclear, or any additional questions, post them and the community here will chime in to help.

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DAW: Ableton Live
Topics: Compression, Distortion, Drums, Drum Compression, Drum Design, Drum Layering, Over Compression, Sound Design

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WATCH NOTES

Disprove states that for this video he wants to ignore general rules, and is going for a creatvie and fun approach to drums.

Part 1
01:15 – Addictive Drums 2 used to make a standard 2-step pattern, with a mix of open hats and closed hats to give the break movement.

02:45 – removed reverb from the hits, and disabled AD2’s overhead mic feature
– Heavy compression might have unintended attributes if those features were left on
– Pulls up existing reverb tail, rather than adding a reverb effect

02:55 – compression with a multi-band compressor (PSP Vintage Warmer 2)
– Drive all the way up, and knew turned up
– Trying to make sense of what he says at 3:30, something “all the drums sound together”

03:50 – EQ after compression
– Low cut and a band boost around 70 Hz

04:45 – using a transient device (Oxford TransMod V3) as a limiter

05:04 – adding distortion (Camel Audio CamelPhat)

05:35 – checks headroom

06:05 – putting a gate before or after distortion
– Disprove’s favorite gate at this time is Waves CLA Drum
– Starts with it before distortion
– Sets it to room setting

07:15 – starts doing bounces of the loop
– Does variations with different drums sounds loaded in to AD2

08:05 – pitching up drums with Ableton’s Frequency Shifter plugin
– Places the plugin after the distortion plugin

09:00 – adding reverb tails back using transient shaper (NI Transient Master)

10:15 – swaps in another distortion unit to try different distortion settings
– Replaces CamelPhat with Izotope Trash2

Part 2
11:00 – moves on to working with drum breaks

11:45 – “Ode To Billy Joe” break
– Quadrant may have used this same break in his S2E11 tutorial, can’t remember
– Setting warp markers in “Beats” mode

13:20 – starts making variations in the beat
– Moving drum hits, picking one particular kick to use, etc.

13:45 – starts building processing chain
– First a compressor (NI Supercharger GT)

14:45 – over compresses the break
– Describes it as having no definition

15:10 – EQ added to take out boominess
– Using transient modulation
– Oversaturation
– Distortion (with Trash2)

16:50 – removes reverb tails using Transient Preserve function in Ableton’s sample clip box; turns down

17:20 – starts bouncing down as samples

17:50 – brings in gate to hear if he can get different favorable results

18:40 – preserves effects chain
– Applies to different breaks
– Focuses on hip-hop breaks
– Lots of layering and bouncing down variations

23:30 – swaps distortion plugins, to hear how it changes

Part 3
24:50 – at this point Disprove says he has enough material to start his main drums
– Uses the loops made earlier in the video
– Trying kicks from one loop, and shuffles from another loop, to create a new loop

28:20 – starts layering in synthesized kick sounds (Sonic Academy Kick2)

29:20 – adds a snare layer

32:30 – sidechaining the percussion layers

33:30 – routing all drum channels to drum group
– References his workflow, as shown in his first SG video (S5E01 at 02:00 in that video)

35:00 – pushing distortion, since there is headroom left to play with

37:40 – explains why he uses multi-band compression instead of an EQ

39:00 – demonstrates trick to quickly add crispiness to drums
– Breakbeat layered with a sub bass track
– Squash the two layers together
– EQ out the low end
– Add distortion
– Bounce down
– Disprove does three different textures, then tests under the main drums, using bits of each crispy pass

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THOUGHTS & NOTES
– Some additional chat about this tutorial from the DOA Grid forum: https://www.dogsonacid.com/threads/sample-genie-disprove.791804/