Mon Jun 02, 2008 6:34 am   Reply with quote      

Hey matt,

Just want to confirm a couple of things quickly regarding info that ive read on the premium website - when producing house/electro I generally start with the drums, the kick on 1 channel, the hats on another and then percussion/glitches etc on another....once I have the loop how I want it to sound is it best to compress(drum loop) the kick with the hats, percussion etc all bussed onto the same channel to get the drumloop to gel together better?

After the drums I then move onto the bassline, once the bassline is complete do you think is it a good idea to then compress the drum loop againt the bassline(mildly) all bussed on to the same channel or just the kick and the bassline? Im using ableton 6 and reason 4 and just looking to get a more proffessional sound. Whats your opinion on this, any advice would be great.

thanx in advance

Mon Jun 30, 2008 1:29 pm   Reply with quote      

This is a great thread and I hope others reply as well. I would love to learn some new tricks in this area.

First off I would be very careful in using too many compressors after one another. You can kill your dynamics and mix pretty easily by over compressing with one, so many is more difficult to manage.

With that said, in regards to the kicks and hats/zaps you can use other tools besides a compressor (although that works too) to bring the sounds together. Re amping works great if you have a nice colored piece of analog gear (pre / eq ... tubes! etc). just running them through a smiliar color will help melt them together.

With regard to the bass once the drums are pretty well set. I like first compress then eq the bass. Then for some ducking or pumping action sidechain compression. I don't mix my drums and bass before compressing although I am curious how this would sound.
The sidechain compression is great for simple ducking of the bass out of the kicks way or heavy up beat pumping action.

Fri Jul 18, 2008 8:02 am   Reply with quote      

hey guys, awsome thread

personally i have everything in diffrent channels, thje only thing i keep in the same channel are the kick and snare.

also what are compressors.....do they make the music sound more professional, if so how do i use them??

Thu Aug 21, 2008 9:00 am   Reply with quote      

Hi guys,

you could also try things like parallel compression on your drums.

This pretty much consists of copying your drum loop to another channel when its finished so you have the original drum loop and an audio copy of your drum loop on another channel.

Then compress the audio drum loop by a huge amount, but not totally.

You then mix the 2 loops together, by doing this you can increas the punchy-ness and strength of your drum loop, especially the attack of the kick and snare.

hope this gives you some ideas.

Mark