What am I doing wrong with these 808s?

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StanleySteamer

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Hey guys, as the title says I am having a huge problem with 808 drums right now. Right now I am using maschine and pro tools. I keep using analyzer plugins and I have even took the 808 kick drum and the 808 bass drum and loaded them into FL Studio or Logic and looked at them using pitch detection and even in Pro Tools and overtime I am getting different keys. It fluctuates around F-G#. I can't get the tune of these drums right for anything and its driving me crazy. If it says for example that I am at F#2, to correctly pitch so it is from C3 across the keyboard I pitch them up by 6 semitones assuming I am now at C3. I then go down an octave and play my 808 kick and my 808 bass drum. But heres the problem. The 808 bass drum sounds nice and deep and full like it is supposed to sometimes although I am having a hard time figuring if I got the pitch of the drum right on spot as I said before my analyzers and stuff are giving me different answers its hard to figure it all out. But my kick sounds ridiculously high pitch. Like it lacks low end almost and sounds extremely high ended and punchy and when I listen to my other favorite tracks that use 808s their kicks sound low and solid just like the 808 bass drum does. This has been a huge problem for me the past few days really looking for some help and advice here!

Edit: I was compressing before and compressing really made the low end disappear and made the top end so bright in the 808 kick drum that it made my problem even worse. I then stopped compressing and just stuck with the tape saturation but the punchiness of the high end and lack of low end in the kick is really pissing me off!
 
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Jesus, how many daws do you have man?

You might be getting those readings off because the 808 bass drum is essentially a sinewave with its pitch modulated by an envelope, the amount of the modulation determines what the initial pitch will be and then it sweeps down a couple of octaves quickly, and that's where you get the low end. Depending on the envelope set and how many layers there are there are it might be that the initial pitch is not the dominant in the sound and may spook you when you look at the analysers. It's better to go by ear in this case, pitch the 808 up 3 octaves until you get a nice tone and compare it to something with a definite pitch, and then count your steps in either direction to determine the pitch, that's how I usually tune my bass drums.

Pitching it up 6 semitones is quite a lot, and I can definitely see how it's messing with your sound that way. I would suggest you try and synthesise your own 808s, that way you'd have complete control of the pitch and the sound as as a whole.
 
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Lol not a lot of DAWs. Maschine and Pro Tools and I started off with FL Studio years ago. I also have Logic but thats another story lol. Anyways though thanks for the response. Idk man like its crazy because I listen to songs like bird on a wire by harry fraud which is what the beat I am working on reminds me the most of so I am trying to mix it like that and my 808 bass drum, like the boom I can get to sound deep like his but my actual kick sounds super punchy and high ended vs his and other songs I listen to as well. Here is his song: ACTiON BRONSON & RiFF RaFF - BiRD ON A WiRE" OFFiCiAL ViDEO

I pitch up in semitones though so I can accurately reach the C3 key. Then I just pull them down to the second octave so its not as high pitched as you think it sounds although it is still an issue. How do I accurately read and figure out the pitch of my 808 drums? Not just the kick and bass drum but the snares and stuff also? My spectrum analyzer shows like the peak at first but then it decays and sometimes holds longer in other spots. Should I go off of what key it shows the longest or should I go off of where it peaks at initially? It is all so confusing lol.
 
If you pitch your bass drum up 6 semitones, it's plenty. Plenty enough to screw with your sound. After all its half an octave. You would really get better results by making those drums yourself. It's a piece of cake to do.

To determine the pitch I would use a sustained note from any synth (maybe a sine wavr) at whatever note you want your drum to be in, pitch your drum up several octaves to get a clear high pitched note that is much easier to distinguish and then pitch it accordingly.

If you dont like the sound of the 808 bass drum, use a different sample, or again, make one of your own. Eq, compression and whatever not you may use will never turn a sound into something it's not.
 
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It will default at whatever you set it to. You could essentially do it with any synthesizer. Make a sustained note at middle c, c3 in your case. Pick a sine wave and modulate it's pitch with an envelope at a positive value of let's say 24 semitones. Use a really short attack, almost none, fast decay and set the sustain and release to your liking. In this case your drum would be in the pitch of c, but you could just as well modulate it 26 semitones to get an initial pitch of D, and or transpose your midi note to whatever note you want the modulation to end at (depending on what value your sustain envelope is at)

Now this by itself is not going to leave you with a very banging 808 bass drum sound but with some processing and layering you can make a really nice sound and it's really simple.

Check online for different techniques on what you could do to make it better or just experiment with different parameters and/or oscillators and effects.

Don't take this personal, but I don't understand how anyone can make electronic music without knowing how to use their instruments. It's the equivalent of a guitar player not being able to play the guitar. Which is nonsense in its entirety.
 
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Sounds tight. In maschine they added a drum synth thing that makes drums. So if I make one in there it would automatically be at C for default?
 
I'm not familiar with Maschine. But I imagine most drum synths are just synthesisers with limited control over what kind of timbres you can achieve and use these basic principles along with some others like noise and what not.
 
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Sounds tight. In maschine they added a drum synth thing that makes drums. So if I make one in there it would automatically be at C for default?
Click to expand...

In Fruity Loops yes.
 
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Middle C would be the starting point for the sound. So middle C would be equivalent to whatever the pitch of the drum sound in the synth is. Can't say for sure that the pitch would be in C just because of that because that's entirely dependent of the pitch set in the synth.
 
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Simple solution since you mentioned FL: If you have an 808 in say, G, you could just go the misc tab of it's channel, go down to the piano and change the root note from C5, which is the default, to G4 (or G5 if you want). Once you do that, if you play a C, it'll be a C. An E will be an E...and so on and so forth.
 
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