Help with my drums (sample attached)

B

breakitdown

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Hello,.

I have started on a piece and am looking for some tips and tricks - i only just started on this so its not like im looking for advice on arrangement etc. there is a link down the bottom...

Im looking to make the track and more importantly the Drums alot "darker". probs by distortion - i dont know - im used to making house music, where everything is clean.

So, what are your best tips for making music/drums sound "darker".

I'm thinking Boards of canada and Massive attack...

Here is the link to a 40 second sample of it so far:

http://d41.yousendit.com/E/0S94JWLUH6CBV3PENCIEUN3VZ5/test.wav
 
Link is broken m8, but when you start using distortion remember less is more (and that goes for everything).

Trouble with distortion is it can literally ruin the drum loop, you do not however want to distort whole drum loop. If you can you want to choose wisly the few samples in the drum loop you do want to distort.

Again your ear comes into play here, try checking out few artists who do use a bit of distortion in their tracks. I'd recommend listening to few techno artists.

Crystal Distortion do good job (in my opinion). Can't think of anyone else off top of head just now, Just up from bed. heh heh

Peace

Jakal
 
http://d41.you send it dot com/E/0S94JWLUH6CBV3PENCIEUN3VZ5/test.wav


take out the spaces and replace the dot with .
 
Hey,

Pm me link plz, also was going to say that good house tune from this year that uses distortion very well is M83 - Teen Ansgt (original) check it out give you good idea for house.

Jakal
 
That's kind of a hard question. I listen to alot of Boards of Canada and everything like it and it's hard to put a method to their music. It's always different. Some songs have really low volume simple drums that are overpowered by the melody and some songs have complex, distorted, reversed, filtered, reverbed drums. I've tried to make some stuff sound like them but my own sound always ends up surfacing anyways.
 
Hey,

How good are Boards of Canada man, I love em. New album is o.k.. But prefer Music Has The Right To Children.
Hope they will be on tour soon.

You are right though, some well thought out ideas on samples in their tracks.

I would be quite interested to hear you attempts in re-creating their sound.

Would you not agree though that they use alot of EQ'ing and compression. Some tracks I have heard when the bassline kicks in everything else seems to go down a notch in volume. Works well though.

But again with most things moderation is the key.

Peace

Jakal
 
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Another idea is to downsample the loop several times. Each time it adds some artifacts which will give it a "dirty" feel. You might want to check out "The Dance Music Manual. Tools, toys, and techniques" by Rick Snowman. It's chock full of tips.
 
Sure... here is a quick example:

Say you have a loop which is a 32 bit wav file. Well convert it to say an 8 bit wav file, then back to 32 bit wav. Repeat several times. Each time you sample it down to 8 bit then back to 32 bit it will grunge it up a bit. You could also encode it as a mp3 then back to wav a few times.

Try it, you might be surprised what a little creative sample manipulation will do for the loop.
 
Hey,

Is there any documentation on web that goes into this alot more.
Would really like to read up on this

Jakal
 
Not that I have found. If I find something though I will post it here.

Guess I could write a tutorial with a better explanation if I had the time but with work and all I doubt that's going to happen anytime soon.
 
Yea, definately thanks for the tip. I was told once that my hiphop beats sometimes lack 'dirtyness.' Going to play around with that idea.
 
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