Getting better sound from modern drum machines

[rustywire]

Inspiration for this thread:

NSFW: show

the sounds on the OG drum brute were so uninspiring to me. like half the knobs did almost nothing or something that u wouldn't want it to do at all.
jived w/ the roland boutiques tr 08 & 09 way more and way faster.

Same, sold mine pretty quickly after buying it. Don't think I've ever spent time with another drum machine so desperate for character, was pretty much worthless without effects.

I literally couldn't stand mine without effects. The Impact does look like a nice revision of the Drumbrute, but everything I've heard sounds the same.

I find that that's true of all non sample-based drum machines (and at least some of those, too). I think of it the same way I do electric guitar: yeah I could plug it into a DI straight to board, and that's a sound I can use, but 99.9% of the time I am using at least amplification or saturation, if not a speaker and room ambience or reverb or effects, etc etc etc.

I don't have a drumbrute, that's just been my observation working with drum machines. I don't consider it a fault, just part of what the instrument is.

Right then. How does one get better sound from modern drum machines?
Figured there should be an ongoing thread with tips, tricks & tactics.


a preface
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I lack modern hardware drum machines in my current stash of gear, outside of a few iOS apps, but my fav is still Rebirth. However, the sounds can be quite underwhelming if listening with headphones plugged direct into the device.

"plugging headphones into drum machine" tends to produce the thinnest, most forgettable sounds (from a drum machine) whether source is sample or synthesis. Even oem 909 is going to benefit tremendously from going through a pre-amp or mixing board, esp one with transformers in/out.

A good pre goes a long way whether yours is ultra fast API or saggy antique RCA; the circuit will help bring out the source's character.
The real magic comes from a recipe of gain-staging, EQ and compression. Done to taste, but it all starts in tracking.


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some general notes for a solid foundation (REMINDER these are not law)

Low-pass filter for bassdrums, highpass for everything else. Play around with crossover points, it makes a huge difference.
-15dB is where I like my peaks when tracking, still gives plenty of room to breathe and get hotter if necessary.
Split or try doubling every sound, EQ one for 'bump' then the other for 'smack' and sum the results for best of both worlds, then- doubletrack the resulting sound.
Doubletracking exact samples results in bigger sounds, but they have to be perfect copies & grid-snap aligned or else you get phasing.
Stick to using slight compression, 4:1 or lower.


***

Cheatsheat options:
Just buy the MPC/1176/EQP1A already

[Inconuucl]

If you have an iPad, just get Patterning 2 (or 1 if you're impatient)

[DRodriguez]

I would actually strongly disagree. Low passing the bass drum can lead it to sound like ass on anything other than nice speakers/headphones. Again, it depends on how heavily you do it.

-15dB for tracking is good if you have a decent pre and A/D converter; but, if you are running a budget system, it may cause unnecessary noise and hiss. This can bite you later.

Double tracking is a great idea, but exact timing is more for transients than anything. As soon as you eq them differently, you're introducing phasing anyways. Alternatively, don't line them up perfectly and get some interesting flanging like sounds. Maybe double track with the bass drum off to keep the lows in tact and just create variation on the rest of the sounds.

1176 is anything but slight compression. But heavy and light compression sounds great on drum machines as long as you don't have the bass drum overwhelming it with low end. A trick is to trigger the compressor from a send with a highpass on it.

Honestly, my best suggestion would be to try and process the output mixed together first. Don't worry about going light, you're working with artificial sounds anyway. Heavy eq and saturation can really make it all sound great together as a group. Maybe take out some of the mud around 300-800Hz to leave room for other instruments. Add some 1-4kHz for snap. Beef up the subs. And sparkle in the high end. Some drum machines sound clicky, a lot of times I find this in the 5-8kHz range. But if you make a big smiley face with your eq, you'll get something that will give you beef in a mix with room for other things.

[crochambeau]

Low pass filter for bass is intuitive, but don't overlook high passing subsonics and hitting your pre harder. I find grain wins over ultimate bass extension on all (most) but the best reproduction systems. This is, of course, completely a personal taste thing.

[rustywire]

Yeah I could have been clearer: LPF/HPF for tracking is primarily for the subsonics. More of a bookending/scalpel approach than hatchet. Having said that, I struggle to find reason for anything above ~11khz to be coming from a drum machine's bassdrum
Good call @crochambeau for the HPF on the BD. 20, 30, 35hz are my go-tos but it's situational.

@DRodriguez makes a fair point worth mentioning about the -15dB producing significantly different results depending on your front end.

Doubletracking suggestion is only after the 2 copies have already been eq'd and summed back together, effectively doubletracking copies of the new result.
Good EQ point suggestions. 60hz low shelf is magical on the bottom, 16khz high shelf for the top.

Most of the 1176 coloration, FME comes from driving the output. Even with the compression bypassed, it makes its presence felt in what tend to be very flattering ways. But yeah, it's all about destroying drums with All-or-multiple button mode(s). Gotta try to know if it's a go. That said, trimming 1-3dB on the meter is what I was speaking of w/r/t "slight" 4:1 lol. Not necessarily with 1176, but it can be done if it's your only option. "you only have an 1176 boohoo too bad so sad"

[repoman]

What about double tracking with compression on one, open on the other
What about splitting signal into different EQ bands and then putting compression on one and open on the other
anyone ever do this?

[DRodriguez]

Yup, you're talking about the techniques called parallel compression and multi-band compression. Both work fantastic on drums, real or fake!

[rustywire]

Yup, you're talking about the techniques called parallel compression and multi-band compression. Both work fantastic on drums, real or fake!

[friendship]

Regardless of what I want my drums to do, I carefully apply four things to drum machines: saturation, compression, resonance, and ambience. How much or how little of each depends on the specific drum sounds, what the drums are doing, what mix context they're in, what feel I want, etc etc etc.

SATURATION
I don't have to tell anyone here that playing with a wide palette of dirt sounds is fun and profitable. Soft clipping gets the most mileage for me, tape emulation especially (or use real tape if you have it). I'm careful using it on kick and toms because the harmonic enhancement can accentuate the pitch of those sounds too much, unless I want laser toms and bwwoooowm kicks, of course. I use it especially sparingly on hihats and cymbals, because they're basically noise already*. I can pump the shit out of snares though, while being careful to not utterly squash the transience and punch. If your drum machine's snare drum sounds like someone flicking a piece of paper, blow it up with dirt. Parallel processing is your friend here and lets you get away with higher dirt levels as you pull up your unprocessed drums’ fader.

COMPRESSION
Here I'm just looking to "glue" the drums together and maybe get some pumping if the style calls for it. Sometimes I like to use a multi-band compressor so I can let the kick and low toms breath while smooshing everything else a bit. Keep in mind that dirt compresses a signal too, so you have to play a careful balancing act between them. There are a lot of strategies out there about using compression on drums, and much of it is as useful for drum machines as it is for acoustic drums. I like to be judicious with compression on drums, because usually the drum’s whole shit is using relatively short transients to give a song rhythm and movement, and if you overcompress your drums will sound flat and no one will shake their booty to it.

RESONANCE
I find applying speaker resonant curves (whether you're using a plugins, cab sim box, or actual speakers) to drum machines to be extremely helpful for getting the sounds to pop. Unless I'm going for a trashy, blown out sound, I set it pretty subtly most of the time, so that you don't really hear it as "drums coming out of a boombox" but more like "drums pumping out of a decent PA or bass amp.” Sometimes I’ll apply the same speaker curve across the entire kit, and sometimes I’ll use a different curve for each drum, or maybe just two or three curves. It really depends.

AMBIENCE
In most cases, a bone-dry drum sounds unnatural and unpleasant. Drums are designed to act within a physical space, not a vacuum. Even when I want my drums to seem bone-dry, I still apply a small amount of super short decay reverb and mix it so that I don’t even notice the reverb is there until I turn it off. It might sound pointless, but it makes a huge difference to my ears. It’s rare that I want bone-dry drums though, so I’m generous with my reverb and mix the wetness of each drum separately if I’ve given myself that option. Keep in mind that reverb adds sustain, and use that information to your advantage. You can make a tight snappy snare sound fuller and longer, but you can always make your bouncing kick drum belch noxious clouds of bass frequencies all over your recording. To that end, I also like to roll off the low end of a reverb going to my drums.

*this isn't saturation per se, but ring modulators (no LFO) on your hihats and cymbals, especially if they're dull and one-dimensional sounding.

[K2000]

Off to a great start!

[MrNovember]

I think friendship covered everything really well.

As for my original comment regarding disliking the Drumbrute without effects, I ran the full Drumbrute mix through compression (Accountant), fuzz (Unpleasant Surprise), and reverb/delay (Bitquest or Dispatch Master) every time I used it.

[friendship]

That sounds awesome November, I'd love to hear some if you recorded any.

Just a couple more extracurricular tips I was thinking of:

Try applying a little chorus (perhaps in stereo) to your hihats. Prince did this all the time, according to Susan Rogers.

David Bowie and Tony Visconti loved using a harmonizing delay on drums. They got some especially bangin snare sounds this way, used most obviously on "Breaking Glass" or "Love Is Lost." They were doing it with acoustic drums, but I've gotten great results with this technique on drum machines too, especially when linking the amount of pitch shifting to the envelope of the drums.

I haven't had much success double tracking identical drum sounds; I don't like the phase gremlins that come up and feel it ultimately makes the drums sound thinner and smeared. But I do like re-tracking a drum pattern using totally different drum sounds/samples/whatever to build a composite kit, e.g. layering an analog kit with a mid-80s-style PCM sample kit. It goes without saying that this also gives you the opportunity to edit the pattern a bit to get some interesting things going like polyrhythms or ghost notes

[MrNovember]

I don't know if I ever did record anything with it. I think there's a few things on my Instagram, though.

[Bartimaeus]

Bunch of great points were made already, especially by user "friendship". Here are the main things that I've picked up over the years:

All drum machines need light saturation. Very subtle dirt adds the bit of grit and compression that kicks and hihats desperately need. Ideally, you want a transparent OD with the gain set quite low, something like a BOSS SD1 will be totally unsuited unless you want a particular effect. Process each individually for best results, but run the mix through some light dirt if you want to glue it all together in a gritty way. You basically get natural ducking just by running your kicks and snares into the same light OD.

They also REALLY need verb. A very light room verb for kicks goes a long way. Put a verb with noticeable pre-delay on a snare and you'll suddenly realize what all your favorite producers are doing... Hats need a light room verb or they'll just sound annoying, but too much verb makes 'em sound annoying too.

Lastly, EQ enough to give each sound space, but not so much that they lose detail. Shelf filters can often be preferable to lowpass/highpass for this reason. They let you reduce the high end on a kick, but keep enough in that it still sounds interesting (you especially want that high end if you run them through some dirt).

[Ghost Hip]

I cannot offer much advice other than I use to run the DM-1 iPad app live in a post punk/indie rock context. I would use the in app low pass filter on the kick, but set the wet/dry blend to 30-40% just enough to make the subs move a bit more. I disagree to some extent with what was said above about no higher frequencies should be involved in kicks. Really depends on context and the mix IMO. With that said I can really dig a kick that is all lows. --Then I added compression with a wet dry blend as well. A lot less work is needed in a live indie rock context i'd imagine as the drums aren't the primary focus, but there it is.

Also, default ILF answer: Team Awesome Fuzz Machine. always sounds great on drums if you are looking for a more aggressive fuzzy drum sound.

Those are my very unprofessional pointers