[mp3]help me make sound better

[ambientcoffeecup]

Although I would consider myself a pretty competent percussionist. I'm not sure I really need critique on HOW TO DO BETTER AT DRUM. What I'm really looking for is advice on how to take the sequence that I compose and make it sound more professional and realistic which is very hard with electronic drums and sometimes I get to the point where I have been fine tuning drums for about 4 hours and it ends up sounding worse than it did two hours previous. I think this is probably because I am not very good at LEVELS and COMPRESSION and EQUALIZING which are pretty vital to knowing how to make music sound good and professional.

Anyway I've been practicing with bettering my compression technique over the past half hour or so and I think I'm finally getting somewhere. (I don't really need critique on the composition because what I've actually done is taken the composition from another song to save myself time. (Cat People - Cujo) so yeah.)

I had the song in my head and I just wanted the production practice so I tapped it out on my keyboard and run with it.

Here is the short loop: Download

So yeah, what I am really asking for is general compression tips/equalizing/leveling that any of you guys might have. I'm quite happy with how the bass drum turned out and even the snare isn't too bad I don't think. Could possibly do with a little more verb but I'm hesitant to add more reverb as I see it a lot in amateur musicians thinking MORE VERB = GOOD when I don't think that's the case. I like to use as little as possible. Maybe just a tiny dynamic double-tap delay?

MAIN PROBLEM I feel I have is with Cymbals/Hats etc. I really don't know what I am doing that make these sound so fake.

So yes, please, any advice you might be able to give from your own experience.

Thanks.

[tube]

Could possibly do with a little more verb but I'm hesitant to add more reverb as I see it a lot in amateur musicians thinking MORE VERB = GOOD when I don't think that's the case. I like to use as little as possible.

Either my wife put something in my tea or there's quite a lot of reverb in there already. Could it be the drum samples you're using? I don't know much about music, but I'd guess no amount of mixing would make electric sounding drum samples sound completely natural. Assuming that's what you mean by realistic.

Anyhow, the one and only thing that actually bugs me about this piece is how the volume of the bass drum noticeably fades to "give way" to the other instruments. Isn't this kinda what compression does? Or am I thinking of something else? If it is an effect of compression, why would you want to do more of it? And most importantly, is it time to put my foot in my mouth and shut up now?

[ambientcoffeecup]

I'm not so much trying to create something that sounds like a real acoustic kit. I guess if I wanted that I would head out to my garage and record myself playing. I'm just looking to try and create something as close to pro quality as I possibly can with the samples that I have.

I think the fading bass drum is more that I manually added fades to certain hits of the drum to try and give it a more dynamic feel Naturally a real person playing drums isn't going to hit every time with the same velocity or whatever so I try to go through each individual note and recreate what I feel will be the more dynamic hits over others. Maybe I shouldn't?

Anyway yeah I only added a very small amount of verb to the overall mix of the song to give it a small amount of decay and a little extra to the bass drum to give it a bit more boom. As I said I feel that there is enough on it already but maybe the snare could use some more?

But yeah, thanks for your input. It's good to work these things out.

[Evil]

Well, the drums sound fine to me. A little too much reverb, but it's not really obvious to me even after I read Tube's post. When it comes to reverb, there's a difference between making things sound distant and wet and making samples sound more real. Sometimes I'll reverb the hell out of a track, adjust the eq and then layer it over the original. It can give a more natural feel without all of the reverb.

Another way I've heard of people making crappy samples sound better is to play them out of a speaker and record them. If you can, output the MIDI to an amp and record the speaker. Gives it a different feel.

The best solution is to get better samples, really. The drums sound okay. A bit digitalish, but it's under a weird synth anyway so it's hard to tell. The ride (or whatever cymbal plays on the first part) makes too much of a ping-ing sound and should be a little more washy. Try reversing the sample. It sounds over the top and weird, but a bit smoother.

And the high-hats just sound awful. You could maybe eq out the top end and compress it, but it's probably easier to find a better sample.

My best advice would be to finish the rest of the song, level out the peeks of the drums and raise the levels of the other instruments. It's got a neat sound, but it's digital and the tone works fine with digital drums.

[ambientcoffeecup]

Yeah, the Ride/Hats really do sound horrible I'm not too worried about finishing the song though, it is not my song and I just tapped it out seeing as I had it in my head at the time to practice mixing on.

[EldKatt]

Is that an 808 hi-hat? Because that is sort of cool in a way. My main problem with the hi-hat isn't so much the sample itself as it is the programming. I think this hi-hat with varied velocity and lower overall level could work. And the ride I honestly like, but I think it would benefit a lot from emphasizing the 2 and 4 more than 1 and 3. And maybe being a bit less predictable. Aside from programming aspects, you could try pitching it down for more body. Which it needs.

The reverb is not really subtle. If you want this sort of an effect, OK, but for a more natural reverb I would probably use less gain (and perhaps longer decay to compensate).

I don't really have a clue about good compression technique, so no help there.

[Nikolas]

I do think that there's so much you can do with certain tools, samples. I don't know which "drum machine" you're using, but the samples are not really that great and you can't really do much about it in the end.

I have to say that the quality that you have at the moment reminds me of the 80s a bit. With this repeated pattern, and the rather "tuned" bass drum and the hihat (is it even a hihat? cause it doesn't sound like it).

Compression and reverb I like. But it's not exactly realistic. If you wanted it to be realist, alter the tempo map, every beat at least... many times, alter the drums and quantitising and then you might go nearer.

BTW, regarding the reverb, if you plan on leaving the track as it is, then add the reverb, but if you plan on adding instruments, you might want to wait until you're done to see how much reverb is needed in the end.

[ambientcoffeecup]

I finished it but I think it sounds pretty horrible throughout. I don't feel like improving it from this though, it's one for the scrap heap. Thanks for all the advice everyone. Here is what I went with for the finished product.

Download

I made the bass drum more definitive because apparently the fade was annoying before. I think I like it less this time round but oh well. I swapped out a few sounds and I'm not too worried about things sounding too electronic. That kind of comes with making electronic music so I guess that's part of what I do stylistically.

Thanks for all the advice though everyone.

[Evil]

Wow, this is a great improvement. Just a few things. Bass line tone is very similar to the bass drum tone and it loses a bit of it's luster. The snare cuts off a bit too soon in the sample, but that's me nit-picking. Also the drum interlude thing, the added sample sounds bad, but I've never liked that shaker (or whatever it is) so I'm a bit biased. Feels very movie to me. I really like the final product.

[thousandfracture]

I think you use the bass drum a little too often, though thats more a personal preference. Also I'm not sure the bass drum and the hats interact quite right, they sort of sound a little seperate or off in some way. The new version is much better though, it sounds good.