FL Studio Drum Mixing

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DJJB

Producer from the Future
SO.. I have been taking music very seriously lately and learning as much as possible. I have a recurring problem that my mixing and sound separation has yet to fix, and I need your advice on it. I use FL Studio and I cannot get my drums to hit hard enough. I am not using studio quality headphones/speakers, so this is a large part of it.. but there is definitely something else missing. As soon as I get a job I'm going to buy some real nice headphones that are relatively flat in sound output to use for mixing, but for now I need mixing tips.

I use bass boost, eq boosts in sub range and peaks around 250 - 500 - 3k, and compression on my kicks. and I layer kicks and run them all through this fx channel and they still sound puss. When looking at the meters on FL mixer everything is hitting at the 100 peak (not above threshhold where it clips) but still they should be banging at that level and they are not.

I love bass and I want my kicks to be extremely punchy... and I want my snares to be really tight and full...

I can't seem to produce hard drums and my db meters are telling me that the levels are maxed out when they still sound like crap!

help?
 
parametric eq 2 should do it. specifically play around with the 1,2, & 3 knobs you see on it. move them around until you get the punchy sound your looking for.thats what i do. hope that helps
 
If you're using shitty headphones/speakers....then not much of anything is going to seem "punchy" because lowend headphones and speakers simply can not pick up the low frequencies very well..

With that said, it may also be your samples. If you use shitty samples, the end result will alot of times be shitty.

Now with that said, you may have decent headphones or speakers, with good quality samples....but you mentioned using compression.....Perhaps you're using too much and are squashing your drums to the point you're draining all the PUNCH out of them, so when they hit, they sound like shit..Compression can be tricky..it can make things sound...not so well..if you use it wrong.


But with all that said, if you had good samples...you probably wouldn't need to BOOST much of anything.....So it is my opinion, without hearing a sample of your work.....that you probably just have low quality samples, and or low quality speakers or headphones that can not pick up the lower frequencies well enough for you to hear their punch.
 
Do yourself a favour: get a hundred or two hundred bucks, buy a cheap 80s or 90s sampler (if you are after something cheaper than an MPC I recommend an Ensoniq EPS or EPS16 or Akai S- series) and resample your stems into the EPS and use FL to sequence the hardware OR resample the new stems from the EPS to your DAW OR sample whole drum patterns into the EPS and use them as scenes triggered by FL.

That's what I would do (have done). Quickest bad ass drum solution I can think of. What kind of music do you make?
 
Firstly when you get some money I would recommending buying a pair of studio monitors instead of headphones with a 'flat' response, because they don't really exist.

Secondly, start with good samples. The level the drums are hitting has no relation to how hard they are hitting, because you could have a loose flabby kick drum at the same level and visually you probably couldn't tell the difference between them.

Start with a bit of compression to tighten up your samples, if they aren't already punchy enough. Start with a ratio of about 4:1 and set your compressor to a medium attack and a fast release. Then adjust your threshold until the initial transient gets though the compressor but then it kicks in to tighten up the end of the sample.

For EQ, a bit of low end boost, remove a bit of low mids if you've got a particularly boxy sample (but if you choose good sample to start with you shouldn't need to), then a boost in the 4-10k to bring the attack of the drums and make them more in your face. For the snare you can boost a bit of 1-3 to make that more harder hitting, and between 180-240hz to make it more full.

Group all your drums to a sub group and you can experiment with parallel compression to get more energy into your drums, and maybe a a bit of tape saturation to glue the sounds together a bit more.
 
volume is perception, if you have the kick drum peaking at 0db, then turn it down to -30db and turn up your speakers, there is ZERO difference in the sound

REMEMBER, mixing is NOT about volume, it is about BALANCE, mastering is about loudness, and by mastering I mean the master track on fl studio lol, get a spl meter

so if you pull all the instruments down, way down, then only pull the kick way out, now you have a loud ass kick, if you don't think its banging, turn your speakers all the way up, at that point the kick should be destroying the song and your speakers. now you have a loud banging kick. is it too loud? you wanted a loud banging ass kick, so now you turn that down until you have a good sounding loud ass kick.

this is evermore important on computers because eqs are all about adding/boosting freqs, when your kick is peaking at 0db, you add on 1db of higher freq eq you are now digital clipping, personally, And you barely changed the kick. when I add eq I add sometimes 15db of volume in some freqs (is this wrong?), you have nowhere to go,

pretty much stop reaching for your fl studio meters and reach for your interface/computer volume control
 
all these guys are absolute. but yo 1st and foremost, how developed is your ear?

anyway...
1. you MUST mix at low levels. keep the master fader at 100% and quiet the faders for each individual track you're working on within your mix. you'll have a higher success rate working like this.

2. STOP mixing with everything turned up in your mixer. too low you say? then turn up your monitors/computer's volume. not the mixer channels lol. its not very smart to mix like that. especially with consumer based headphones on. using them is like having you're music mixed by a record executive. if the mix SEEMS too low its most likely because a) you haven't learned enough yet to mix at low levels and STILL think turning everything up is a solution, and b) your instruments probably are too low and might need to be turned up. MIGHT.


3. VERY IMPORTANT. only use samples that don't need boosting. others will disagree but thats because they know the ins and outs of EQing. but if you're an amateur, newbie, or whatever i'm saying PLEASE STAY AWAY FROM BOOSTING. the "need to boost" means you're using the wrong drums. they are too weak. case--closed. boosting can also lead to distortion in the mastering phase. but once again, if you aren't a pro...DON'T BOOST.

4. who doesn't like bass?! but when you're producing and mixing you should not be hearing a lot of bass. mixing and recording headphones discharge very low amounts. if whatever you're using blows out deafening amounts of it then they shoudn't be mixed with. dso don't expect to hear super hard kicks and whatnot on them.

5. i don't know about other daws but fl studio automatically lowers the loudness of your drums for you. thats why you see they keep their channel settings' knobs and the notes in pianoroll at a low level. because thats how loud the record should be while you're mixing. not turned up the 0db.

hope i helped man. holla' at me.
 
yeaooo

Thank you everyone for the responses!

I have been improving at lightspeed since I moved on from cans to a clear set of speakers, nothing studio quality but they are helping. My drum kick problem was mainly a lack of low frequencies in the headphones, and a combination of bad samples and not using compression/using it incorrectly.

thanks again and stay up
 
Ya man I had problems with mixing my bass and kick levels until I started using speakers. Headphones are good to mix with except for the low end, I can't properly gauge how much bass is really being processed.
 
If you want to do some hard compression that often works for hip-hop, use the 'Fruity Waveshaper' plugin. Make a hard curve and your sounds will get compressed to the point of distortion, which is not a bad thing in certain genres. If you want a snare to punch you in the face or you just need something to be louder, try it.
 
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