Any tips on mixing sample based hip-hop?

[StanleySteamer]

Hey guys as title says, I am looking for some articles or videos or forums or tutorials or whatever to help me get better at mixing sample based hip-hop. Sometimes I use 808 drums or I use boom bap drums or live drums from abbey road drum kit or whatever. I am basically looking for how to really get that loud thick punchy crisp feeling from my drums with tape saturation and stuff so I'm wondering if there is any places I could look at to increase my skills and knowledge. I type it in google and look around on youtube and other websites but I can't seem to find much.

 

[M.E.T.H.O.D...MAN]

I don't do much to the actual samples besides maybe some stereo widening or boosting certain frequencies slightly. As for drums I think that the soundtoys decapitator is one of the best tape saturation emulators and it's great on vintage breaks. Other than that, parallel compression on kick and snare are good for boom bap stuff. Don't do too much compression on samples as they've Already been processed and if you do much, you'll lose all the dynamics come mastering time.

 

[StanleySteamer]

thanks for the response. What do you think about the Fabfilter Saturn? That's what I use for Tape Saturation but I hear a lot of producers/engineers use Decapitator. Is it better or can I get just as good of results through the Fabfilter Saturn?

 

[M.E.T.H.O.D...MAN]

I've never used Saturn but in sure you could heget similar results. The reason guys like the decapitator is because it has multiple flavor of saturation and it's as simple as turning a knob to hear something you like. You can achieve a similar sound with many plugs. In fact, although I have used decapitator at a friend's studio, I don't own it, and so what I do is pull up my Vc76 compressor, place the threshold on 1 so that no compression is taking place, and then I'll drive the input hard to create a saturation type effect that I like on drums a lot. From what I hear, fab filter stuff is top notch so I'm sure the Saturn is dope. I sometimes use the harmonic exciter in Izotope Alloy 2 as well. Also for mixing sampled stuff, check out Ken Lewis mixing sampled hip hop. He goes through a track from beginning to end and shows each step. In addition he provides the stems so you can mix along with him. It costs a small amount of money for the hour or two lesson and is worth it from a guy who is in my opinion one of the best.