Tips for making amazing drums in EDM (especially house)

[odinnshred]

I'm a producer and while I'm very good at synth sound design etc, my drums usually suck a$$. I'm downloading vengeance metrum right now because I can't imagine failing to get a perfect kick drum sound from it, but when making house drums they usually sound lifeless. So basically I'm asking if anyone has any tips for making the beat sound more lively (i.e, variety of sounds used, panning depending on frequency range, compression...) and especially hints on what sort of hi hat/high sounds I could use? Thanks in advance

EDIT: Oh yeah and hints on layering snares too

[3ternal]

EQ, reverb.

I'm gonna be honest I don't pay a ton of attention to hats I feel like at least with closed hats, heard one, heard them all.

I always take some off the top with the EQ or else if I go any faster than 1/4 notes it gets annoying pretty fast.

If the drums sound lifeless I'd think you need to humanize them just a little and see if that helps.

Also remember to think of the song as a whole, not just patterns, that's how you start building something that has a flow to it.

For instance I have like 2 bars just a kick and maybe a hat hitting with the kick, then after those 2 bars snare comes in, then after 8 bars with kick and snare maybe change the pattern on the hats to go double time, and hell you can be doing little drum fills ever 4 bars or something too.

That's all making the drum beat interesting. And then if you wanted to you can use effects to add more variation like say a LPF.

I mean there's so many things you can do but like I always say music is learning things, and then applying those things enough times that they're always on the forefront of your memory. You know man I'm over here thinking of stuff that would help me out too, stuff that I don't use enough or ever.

I can tell by your post you have a good idea of you're doing, now is about getting used to doing different things. You know man think on it and I bet you'll be like "oh yeah, that's something I know how to do but hardly use". Another idea I had- probably wouldn't be a bad idea to write that stuff down in a notebook, maybe have it categorized too.

[Epic Noise Guy]

First off, don't ever bother trying to polish a t*rd! Find samples online that you like the sound of, always A/B them with the sounds of current records that you are trying to create a similar vibe too.

The less you have to layer, generally the better. (may come across phasing issues when layering drums) Reverb on hi hats/crashes to give them a bit of life/shimmer on the top of your drums.

Hope these few tips help out!