how do I get my drums to sound this crispy and clean?

[Ghpstface]

God damn son

 

[DJ Mart-Kos]

gonna need a live drummer first.
Hip-Hop has much better mixed drums than that.

 

[Be@t Bangerz Fan]

Yeah, you're gonna need a live drummer. Back then, a lot of musicians had live bands. They all played live instruments. However, you could just sample the drums directly from the record. Songs from that era usually have the drum section left wide open in parts of the song.

 

[DJ Mart-Kos]

I personally feel like Hip-Hop is the genre with the best sounding drums but that's just me.

 

[Ghpstface]

Hip-Hop has much better mixed drums than that.

Guess it depends on what you mean by "better"

 

[C O O L i N D E E D]

How do you get drums crispy and clean....well I've done lots and lots of experimenting to get drum samples and drum breaks to sound as crisp as possible. I wouldn't say there is a trick to it (based on the drum sample/break sound itself), I wish there was but maybe look into or experiment by EQing that's always one of the first ways on mastering any sample and track. Some breaks and drum samples might sound good on the highs, some on the low frequencies your ear does the judging obviously. I've bought drum breaks online and sampled breaks from records, the ones straight from records are amazing if you can record them right. If you use individual drum samples than EQ is always a must, I ain't no expert but I use ableton live and they have a rack called "corpus", that shyt is amazing with drum samples ,it can turn a kick drum into wonders. Also look into "mid side stereo processing", if you're not familiar with it.

 

[Ghpstface]

How do you get drums crispy and clean....well I've done lots and lots of experimenting to get drum samples and drum breaks to sound as crisp as possible. I wouldn't say there is a trick to it (based on the drum sample/break sound itself), I wish there was but maybe look into or experiment by EQing that's always one of the first ways on mastering any sample and track. Some breaks and drum samples might sound good on the highs, some on the low frequencies your ear does the judging obviously. I've bought drum breaks online and sampled breaks from records, the ones straight from records are amazing if you can record them right. If you use individual drum samples than EQ is always a must, I ain't no expert but I use ableton live and they have a rack called "corpus", that shyt is amazing with drum samples ,it can turn a kick drum into wonders. Also look into "mid side stereo processing", if you're not familiar with it.

The hardest thing for me to get is " warmth" I can make drums that knock all day long but it's been damn near impossible for me to get that "warm" analog sound ...

 

[C O O L i N D E E D]

theres this plug-in that i use that might help, it's called "Satin". It emulates "Tape to Reel" effects,saturation, warmth whatever you want to call it, but I've noticed it gives the breaks or samples some distance, and definitely warmth. I actually bought a real tape machine from eBay, I've "sort" used it on this beat here

I know for a fact I didn't capture the full potential of what the tape machine is because I used my iPhone to play the beat thru the machines audio inputs and outputted it to my mic preamp to record in ableton ,other than that I haven't actually used the tape machine which is why i said sorta lol. It still worked in what i wanted tho so yea.....

 

[KushSkywalker]

Well Im pretty sure Bruce Swedien mixed that MJ record, so that helps lol.

Choosing the right sounds, right EQ and compressions come first.

This can add a nice amount of warmth too

http://www.softube.com/index.php?id=satknob

With hip hop you gotta make sure you get sounds that cut through the mix. The drums sorta sit on top in rap.

With EQs use the sweeping technique to find sweet spots. And cut don't boost when you can.

Choosing the right sounds is the most important step imo.

Layer sounds if needed, but don't get overzealous cause you can smush the sound this way too.

 

[DJ Mart-Kos]

Thing that makes my mixes sound more warm is the CMT Bitcrusher 2.
I use that on my master with this setting:

Distortion Type: 1
Drive: 2%
Bit-Dept: 12 bit
Down-Sampling: 2%

 

[DJ Mart-Kos]

 

[Ghpstface]

Well Im pretty sure Bruce Swedien mixed that MJ record, so that helps lol.

Choosing the right sounds, right EQ and compressions come first.

This can add a nice amount of warmth too

http://www.softube.com/index.php?id=satknob

With hip hop you gotta make sure you get sounds that cut through the mix. The drums sorta sit on top in rap.

With EQs use the sweeping technique to find sweet spots. And cut don't boost when you can.

Choosing the right sounds is the most important step imo.

Layer sounds if needed, but don't get overzealous cause you can smush the sound this way too.

I actually read Bruce swedian's book lol

Good info breh I knew u would drop some knowledge in here

 

[KushSkywalker]

I actually read Bruce swedian's book lol

Good info breh I knew u would drop some knowledge in here

You know its cutting through the mix when the iphone speakers translate

 

[GPBear]

spend a couple grand on rack mounted analog compressors. there's like four basic types and they all do different stuff, so find some software or cheap gear that emulates the types that get the sound you want. I'm kinda confused, because you're saying you want a "crisp and clean" sound, but are having a hard time getting the "analog" sound. It seems like Disco vs Soul or something to me. Not that Disco didn't have analog stuff, it's that now it seems like analog, vinyl, fuzzy, and warm is on the opposite spectrum from crisp, clear, bright.

yeah so avoid any optical or variable mu based emulators, because those are like for warm more idk 60s shyt. Like how amplifiers used tubes so it would take some time to heat up and cool down, you don't want that. So don't fuqqs with those

FET compressors are ultra fast with their attack and release times, they're colorful, but not for mastering. That might give you some of the snap. And the speed might help with the clean.

Then there's VCA (Neve 33609, SSL X-Logic G-Series, Vertigo Sound VSC-2)
Versatile, smooth gain, full control over attack & release. Good for mastering and gluing things together.

So some combination of the last two, because that'll give you the control you need to hone in on the sounds to make them crisp.

The reason you can't get "Warmth" is because on an optical compressor, the sound would enter and there's this Film that is hit by the electromagnetic sound waves of the music, and that film then controls how much the sound gets compressed. That's why those old pieces of gear always had that weird yellow light glow, optical compressors. They were actually taking in the amount of sound and dealing with it with physical materials. I don't know what kinda studio you have or gear/equipment you're using, but if you're just going in Laptop, then the best digital can do is use like a software program to say "slow the processing down by 25%" to estimate the length of times it would take the analog gear, but that's a poor substitute for the real thing.

 

[Ghpstface]

spend a couple grand on rack mounted analog compressors. there's like four basic types and they all do different stuff, so find some software or cheap gear that emulates the types that get the sound you want. I'm kinda confused, because you're saying you want a "crisp and clean" sound, but are having a hard time getting the "analog" sound. It seems like Disco vs Soul or something to me. Not that Disco didn't have analog stuff, it's that now it seems like analog, vinyl, fuzzy, and warm is on the opposite spectrum from crisp, clear, bright.

yeah so avoid any optical or variable mu based emulators, because those are like for warm more idk 60s shyt. Like how amplifiers used tubes so it would take some time to heat up and cool down, you don't want that. So don't fuqqs with those

FET compressors are ultra fast with their attack and release times, they're colorful, but not for mastering. That might give you some of the snap. And the speed might help with the clean.

Then there's VCA (Neve 33609, SSL X-Logic G-Series, Vertigo Sound VSC-2)
Versatile, smooth gain, full control over attack & release. Good for mastering and gluing things together.

So some combination of the last two, because that'll give you the control you need to hone in on the sounds to make them crisp.

The reason you can't get "Warmth" is because on an optical compressor, the sound would enter and there's this Film that is hit by the electromagnetic sound waves of the music, and that film then controls how much the sound gets compressed. That's why those old pieces of gear always had that weird yellow light glow, optical compressors. They were actually taking in the amount of sound and dealing with it with physical materials. I don't know what kinda studio you have or gear/equipment you're using, but if you're just going in Laptop, then the best digital can do is use like a software program to say "slow the processing down by 25%" to estimate the length of times it would take the analog gear, but that's a poor substitute for the real thing.

Clean and crisp vs warmth ...they're not mutually exclusive shyt listen to those links I posted ...anywhozle good looks on the info...did you go to school for audio engineering or something?