My Drums Are WEAK (Example Inside)

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Czarkasm

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I've spent of most of my time focusing on composition and theory rather than mixing and I am unhappy with my results when I go to mix and finish a song. I've been practicing trying to get my drums hitting hard enough to where i'm happy and i've noticed a common theme with them, my kicks are especially lacking.

Here is a drum loop where I layered a drum break, 2 sampled kick drums and 2 sampled snares.EQ'd a good amount of the low and mids on the drum break (maybe I should be leaving more of the low in there?) and some heavy compression on it, bit crushing on the kick, bit of saturation on the snare slight compression on the master. Does anybody have any idea why my drums sound so lackluster? I want them to sound more like 90's-esque NY style boom bap drums. Example:

Attached is my drum loop
 

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Pick a better source and bring it up more in the front, im assuming you aren't even hearing whats really there anyways but layering, a better source file and paralleling can help...
 
Nutek Studios said:
Pick a better source and bring it up more in the front, im assuming you aren't even hearing whats really there anyways but layering, a better source file and paralleling can help...
Click to expand...
My room is not acoustically treated so you're probably right but in comparison to references on the same setup, it doesn't even come close to how I'd like.

How would I "bring it up more in the front"?. I'm using all those methods but I suppose I'm not doing it properly. Could you describe what would be the ideal source sample for me to start with? The obvious answer is the kick from the actual song but I'm more so interested in the process of getting to that result
 
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Just find a better source file, a better kick. Up front more would mean turn it up more but if you aren't getting an accurate picture of the image, that won't make sense, try using headphones to match it. Or keep training your ears.
 
It will hit harder with some compression (maybe parallel compression too) and playing around with its volume. Or just find a different sample if you don't feel like doing that.
 
you gettin your drums from breaks? If so, an old trick is layering a basic thumpy 808 kick underneath the break kick, and layering up your snares. Also, try bussing your drums to another channel with some heavy compression and blend the two channels until it sounds right. But like the dude before me said, get a better source. You can't spin shit into silk. EQ, saturation and compression. Things I do in every hip hop mix.

Peep this track if you want (not trying to promote myself) but it's pretty boom-bappy, and if that's the sound you want, I could look at the project and let you know what I did with the drums. ie. break it down for you. Drums come in at like 0:45

 
Well.....
By reading what you did to get results...
Seems more like a cut n paste method to get these results....
rather than paste experiment understand... move on

Like someone said above they seem far away, with alot of air around....
what does this sound like in your mix with the sample playing...??

I would add more lo end in the drums before going on to compress and crush....
 
Yeah, sounds more like a balance issue, once you get the level right, then start tweaking, does it need some boost around 90 to 125? probably... Does it need some high end "tick" to cut through? probably..
 
That could be my problem. For some reason I always felt that boom bap kicks were very subby so I often allocate a boost to around 60khz or kless depending on the kick. Instead should I have mainly a sub bass taking up those lower frequencies (for that 90 sboom bap feel)
 
Boosting at around 150khz is usually where the kicks strength comes out. You can bring it upfront with those frequencies
 
Czarkasm said:
That could be my problem. For some reason I always felt that boom bap kicks were very subby so I often allocate a boost to around 60khz or kless depending on the kick. Instead should I have mainly a sub bass taking up those lower frequencies (for that 90 sboom bap feel)
Click to expand...

are you being sarcastic or just didn't realise that you put a k next to 60Hz - 60kHz is so far above it is not funny, it's more than two of the standard sampling rates (44.1kHz and 48kHz) and we couldn't capture it unless our sampling rate were 192kHz

Alex Got Beats said:
Boosting at around 150khz is usually where the kicks strength comes out. You can bring it upfront with those frequencies
Click to expand...

same deal here: 150Hz not 150kHz even better than 96kHz sampling rate - we would need a sampling rate of at least 320kHz (look familiar anyone) for it to be captured, never mind that we couldn't hear it if it were 150kHz

numbers are meaningless without audio and even then are only ever a best guess given that we tend to hear most audio here as mp3 of indeterminate quality
 
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Meant 60hz my bad. A boost in the higher bass frequencies gave me more of the color and punch I wanted than when I was boosting the fundamental frequency
 
yeah, your drum sounds weaker. Find a better kick wave and then clean it up. The main reason why your stuff is like that is because "I've spent of most of my time focusing on composition and theory rather than mixing. "
Reading how to make something sound and actually practice how to make it sound are two different things. When you read, you will basically do exactly what they tell you do to, but mixing is all about what you HEAR, not what you READ.

 
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