How to Get Drum Break to Sit in Mix?

C

Czarkasm

New member
I've only recently started using drum breaks in my productions. How do you guys go about glueing the your drum break to the rest of your mix? I assume you chop everything up and give it it's own mixer channel but how do you process it so it sounds more like it belongs?

Also as far as layering drums over a break, how do I know when something is in phase? I really can't yet tell when something is having phase issues or not, is there a way to find out for sure? Thanks
 
As for the phase issues, you'll probably only get bad issues if you have multiple layers of the same original drumsample that are off in the timing.
If you have different samples you don't have to worry about it as long as you don't hear anything strange. You can even experiment with the phase of different sounds and layers to hopefully achieve better results. If it sounds good, then you don't have to worry.

Anyway, to learn what a phase issue sounds like, copy different types of sounds and add a slight delay to the copy, and you'll learn to recognize phase issues. To describe it in words, it's like a static flanger or "1-voice" phaser (or how to put it), depending on the timing difference between the sounds.
If you feel there might be phase issues, sum the mix to mono on the master to check if there's any difference in the phase in a stereo sound.

A good read about phasing:
Phase Demystified
 
a lot of times, when i layer breaks i will hi pass them or at least pretty severely low shelf cut them. most of the time i will try to cut a lot of mud around the 400 - 500 hz range. then layer my own drums. the eq the drum break kinda so it makes room for your own drums to sit and breath. sometimes i might send all my drums to a designated bus and compress/eq them a little, kinda like glueing them together a bit i guess
 
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