Yo I'm pitching down these drum breaks in order for them to fit these tracks Im making in the 75 to 85 bpm segment (think Knxwldge, Sam or Elaquent beats).

Now whenever I lower the tempo/pitch of the drumbreak it loses it's punch. Everything sounds more thin and spread out (which makes perfectly sense in a way) which really is not what you want with your drums.
What methods do you use to keep your kicks and snares snappy, punchy and knockin?

layer drum from a drum kit

I read about such methods. like adding an 808 for instance under the break kick.

How should one approach this.

Is it a matter of the right velocity/volume and some LFO filtering to 'blend it in'?

idk ill just gett a kick with like no high end and put it on gate mode and just tap it along with the kicks in the break. give it a lil xtra w/e

what gear you pitching it on?

on the 404sx I find the voice transformer( pitch on the ohgee 404 .. which I've just noticed..wow!) works to get some deep kicks ..

Ctrl 1 .. turn left

Ctrl 2 .. all the way right

Ctrl 3 .. all the way right

hope this helps .. work better than chrom pitch.. for drum sounds anyway

Like ritchrd said, layer in extra drums but use the original break. Not necessarily random kit drums (but these can add some nice flavour). Resample the higher pitched drums with comp for more punch then drop their volume & resample with your pitched down break. Using the original drums in the resample will always help with punch & will always have the right vibe.

@Kalaba- If you're gonna use an 808 kick with other drums (resampled or otherwise) avoid one with a long decay. Same goes for real loud/busy/prominent basslines. Because the 808 kick isn't pitched it can lead to mud.

Thank you very much for the feedback.

I will mess around with the mentioned method.

I use a 303 and Ableton. For now I'm trying this in Ableton.

I'll make an extra channel for the og break. Add some compression (punch) on it and filter out the high frequencies. Then I will layer it underneath the pitched down break.

I get the idea that this will cause 'tonal' issues but maybe I'm wrong.

Also it sounds as if this will give the drums more an overall low end, instead of punch and snap at the right spots... unless I create a parallel channel with similar slices. Maybe that'l do the trick.

Never used Ableton, only seen it in action from a safe distance so I don't quite get what you're talking about but it sounds kinda complex... Dunno if I explained myself right but if you've ever used rex files or similar try this:
- chop a break down to each individual drum hit
- load it into your DAWs rex player twice (use 2 players)
- pitch one player down 2 steps or whatever, leave the other with the original pitch
- have 'em play the same pattern
- then maybe mess around with the original pitched one like only leaving hits that play on the 1-2-3-4 counts to accent the pitched down break.

Try putting bussing both drum channels through the same compressor then run the return on the same audio channel. I've done this with real gear & in Reason, it works a charm both ways. It keeps everything sounding a bit more uniform than compressing the break on one channel differently to the other.

Yeah pitching like this can lead to tonal issues (if you already pitched your drums to match the song, but you can work around this with a little thought). But mostly it'll add dirt & depth but will still leave a bit of power. Remember dudes like Knx, Samiyam etc aren't sound purists & don't focus much on tonality in their own stuff. Most people don't really care if your kick's a G or a brown note either.

Great tips by Unfolding- cheers! I need to remember some of this.

One thing that does come to mind whenever duplicated audio is concerned is you can get phasing issues when one copy is processed differently than the other and can remove or boost certain frequencies. Basically you are making it so the 2 tracks are not playing at exactly the same time. Not really an issue if you use diff drums or they are pitched in 2 REX players as Unfolding suggests. Just something to be aware of when layering 2 copies of the exact audio. Just use your ears, if the sound of layered sounds/doubled sounds starts to sound thin or not good you can nudge one a bit or adjust the fx to change the phasing and resulting filtering that is possibly happening. It is sort of the opposite of resonance where frequencies combine instead of cancel each other out. I have experienced this a lot on the 404SX and I hate it that I will dial up a great kick made of 2 sounds but when I resample it it sounds different and awful- like the SX cannot handle it for some reason and distorts or maybe internal processing bit depth is lower than playback bit depth.

Interesting and technically related to my thought is a crazy ass technique Peter Gabriel and many others have used while tracking. He does not like headphones so plays the track out of speakers but to keep it from bleeding into the rest of the mix the track is played through one of the speakers like 180 degrees out of phase w orig mix and both speakers exact distance from mic. (some fact checking here wouldn't hurt) http://ronansrecordingshow.com/2010/11/ ... eadphones/

But a really facinating example.

Another cool example is how phasing and flanging had to be done to create the effect on Jimi Hendrix "Bold As Love" (first stereo example- had been done before on other songs by Beatles etc.)- I think they had 3x 4track machines or 2x 4tracks and a stereo one. They would start the 2 4tracks at the exact same time (they had same song audio on both machines) and as they mixed these 2 machines playing down and recorded them onto the 3rd machine they physically pressed their fingers on the tape reels or used speed controls to slow them down slightly which created the effect. No Boss Phaser pedals around back then man!

Holy shit look at this quote from this article about difference between flanging and phasing- cool!

"The term 'flanging' comes from the original technique of using two synchronised tape machines playing back identical audio — during playback, the flange (or rim or outer edge) of one of the tape machine's reels would be obstructed in some way — slight pressure applied with the operator's finger to the reel, for example — so that one tape machine was delayed ever so slightly for a brief moment and then, as the 'obstructed' tape machine gradually got back in sync with the other, you'd hear 'that sound'."

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/mar06/a ... 0306_1.htm

</crazy ass divergent tangents>



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