What Do you think makes the drop good?

[DJTeddy]

I have been working on the "drop" on one of my songs and i was wondering do you think the sound design makes a good drop or the melody? I know having both are good but do you think one is better than the other?

 

[Yumid]

This isn't even worth thinking about. It all has to come into one, they work together COMPLETELY.

Id probably start with a rough version of the sound design, make the melody then tweak the sound design to fit the finished melody. There is no leader or follower, or better or worse. They HAVE to work together.

 

[Jon Neimeister]

As Yumid said, it isn't one thing but a combination of all things. Personally I'd say the biggest key to making a good drop is simply contrast, that whatever precedes the drop is specifically designed to not have whatever is so cool about the drop. Perhaps the buildup has much less bass, smaller sounds, and then when you get to that empty measure before everything comes back in make it reeeaallllly empty so the return of all the huge parts of the track hits you in the face like a ton of bricks. The more you can say, "It was this way, and now it's the opposite of that." the better.

Beyond that, yeah, good sound design and melody are both super important.

 

[scrapheaper]

I think that it partially depends on how much tension you build up beforehand, as well as contrast.
Tension is built up by things slowly increasing over a period, for example: -
-pitch,
-the cutoff of a filter,
-the number of kicks+snares +other percussion in a bar,
-the decay of sounds
I have all heard used, and more.

Also chords can be useful. My favorite tension building chord sequence usually goes something like:
I - IV - V - V7 - V7 b9 -V #5 7 b9 - I (drop)

P.S. I listen to dnb, so it's definitely the sound design for me, not much in the way of melodic content in dnb, just lots of one note basslines