punchier/dirtier drums (sp1200 style)?

[ModuLR]

Usage of drums that you've actually sampled from vinyl, altered sample/bit rates, and Elemental Audio's Neodynium (which is particularly good for crunchin' up some drums) can get you in SP1200 range.

[Scratch-D]

mercurywaters
06-16-2004, 03:19 PM
http://www.illmuzik.com/articles/tutori ... ydrums.php

So you wanna make dirty drums?
June 16, 2004
by Mercury Waters



So you're influences are Pete Rock, DJ Premier, 9th Wonder, Large Professor, and D.I.T.C., and you want your drums to have a similar feel to their production. First I'd tell you to go get an SP1200, but of course that's not always possible. You're on a Fruity Loops budget and that crappy job ain't getting you nowhere near enough money to get the SP. So what do you do? Well this article is designed to give you the tools to grimey up your kicks and snares no matter what you bang out beats with. We're going to do this with techniques and ideas that you can apply to any situation.

We're going to break it down into 5 main points:

1. Sample Sources
2. Sample Bit Rate
3. EQ
4. Low End Theory and Layering
5. Compression

Sample Sources

This is going to be a lot harder if you're using super clean 96khz acoustic snare samples from your brand new Korg TrI-Ton (Roy Lee pronunciation). It can be done with super clean sounds, but it's a lot more work. You'll basically be repeating the steps over a couple times. I suggest chopping your drums out of a drum break from vinyl, this is a best case scenario. MP3's, WAV files, tapes, CD's, and 8 tracks are fine to use as well, but tend to lack the character of vinyl. Also cheap quality keyboards tend to have dirty 8-bit drum sounds as well. Don't be fooled by the flower drum pads and cartoon cow on the front of it. You can use those drums. It even helps if the source isn't in the best condition to begin with. A scratchy vinyl record adds depth and character, and tape hiss can thicken the sound. The full idea of this section is that dirty sources can create dirty sounds.

Sample Bit Rate

The key to the SP1200 sound was that it processed samples in 12 bit. Most modern samplers use 16-bit or 24-bit processing which produces a very clean sound. That's not what we're looking for. Some samplers are equipped with a bit rate change function, where you can just change the bit rate to whatever you like. It may have to be changed before you sample or can be processed later. You usually want the bit rate to be between 8 and 12 bits to get that grime, but don't be afraid to experiment. Other samplers have a resample function that just cuts the sample rate in half, just do so until you get the desired bit rate. Now some of you may say, "My sampler doesn't have either of those." Well next you want to head to MP3 processing, becaue you can also change the bit rate. Just take your chopped out sounds and turn them into MP3's at a low bit rate. MP3 bit rate works a little different than sample rate so you want to get in the 48kbps to 128kbps range depending on your desired amount of dirt. Then just change it back to a WAV file or whatever format you had it to begin with.

EQ

More than likely you're going to need to process the sound of your drums about now. For your snares you're going to want to boost your midrange and slightly in the low end. Boosting in the 300Hz to 500Hz range will give your snare more of a bottom and backbone. Boosting between 800Hz and 1khz will give it more of a pop effect to it. And boosting between 2khz and 4khz will give it more of a clap or smack effect. The rules for EQ on snares pretty much apply the same to hi-hats. As for bass kicks you're going to want to boost below 1khz for fatness or above to give a knock effect to the kick. You also my have too much tape hiss or vinyl noise so you may want to cut the frequency between 7khz to 10khz or higher depending on what noise you may want to remove. Also as a side note you may not have enough flexibility with your EQ to do all this at one time. So just remember you can always record or output a half processed sound to another medium and reload it back into the machine or software you use to complete your processing.

Low End Theory and Layering

The premise behind the low end theory is that you're going to take a sample and layer it with a low cut filtered version of itself. So basically you're going to layer the sound with itself, but the second layer will be all bass. Filter out your high frequencies. This is a technique that can be applied to many kinds of samples, not just those containing bass. As for layering, this is a wide open technique. For example; you can take 3 or 4 different kinds of snares and layer them over each other to create a specialized snare. Don't ever feel like you have to just work with one snare, kick and hat. You can layer a bass kick under a snare to make it stand out more. You can layer a hi-hat over a snare to give it more of a smack. Layering different percussion elements can add to the uniqueness of your sound. Shakers, tambourines, congas, random metallic sounds, and anything with a percussive feel can add colors to you drums.

Compression

Compression on the individual drum sounds can give them an extra presence in the mix, and a little compression goes a long way. Too much compression can make the drums too overpowering. This is useful because most production with dirty drums tends to be simplistic, so the drums need to play a bigger part in the overall feel of the beat. Dirty drums need to stick out like a sore thumb and make the listener take notice. They should feel like they're not just a part of the beat, but the star of the show.

Conclusion

Now remember, these are just basic techniques. Feel free to experiment and take these ideas to your own personal new high. So until next time, keep your fingers dusty and your snares crack-a-lacking.

Mercury Waters

[el davo]

wow. it's thread resurrection day.

[Distorted_Mastermind]

I gotta say a good drum sampler is quite a tool for anyone who makes hip hop. I rarely compress my drums, this is the part that can't be done in the digital domain so well. I clip my drums on input. A few things that could help is to sample from vinyl, then output the signal back into your computer while recording at a sample rate under 44.1, that is probably more effective than just resampling since it is actually getting converted and could help to get the alias sound and some of the clipping. A combination of mild distortion followed by compression might get better results faster. Just throwing some ideas out there, but in reality I know you can't beat the real thing. Why spend 20 minutes trying to do something that should only take 2 seconds. Oh I use an ASRX btw and it does dirty drums quite nice and they go for a very resonable price these days (I got mine for 300, but 500 or so seems to be more the norm).

[Ben [Camel Audio]]

You could give Camel Phat a try. Click on the preset name and select 'clear preset'. Then turn the distortion on and set the bit crusher to 25% and then set the bandpass filter on and move the band high slider down to 11kHz. That should be in the ball park. If you want to process them a bit more, I recommend using the compressor with the 'P'hat mode on. There's a link in my sig.

Ben

[No name]

What im really after is the sp1200 effect, really punchy and dirty drums like those of jel, dj signify and buck65. Ive tried a bunch of lofi vsts, predatohm, the ultrafunk compressor and the kontakt compressor but none of them seem to make my drums as punchy as I want. And I have no idea how to achieve the sp kind of grit with software vsts. Any suggestions? I cant afford a real sp1200 so thats not an option. What stuff do you use to make the drums explode in the listeners ears?

Well, the real griot never came from the machine itself, but rather it came from the medthod producers were using. It just sort of happened actually. You get, I think, 2 seconds of sample time on the sp, so what a lot of producers did and still do is, fo rinstance, if they sample off of vinyl, they wold speed up the vinyl and sample the drum or snare or whatever. After that they would pitch it back down in the sp. That's where you got your grime. Want punch and grit? Throw on a lo-fi effect and boost the drum around 60hz.

[No name]

Oh yea, a lot of hip hop producers follow the "new york style" of production when it comes to their drum tracks. Compress that bitch heavily. I read that a lot of the producers will copy the drum track and compress the shit out of it, and then most wil boost really low and highs and layer it just under the regular drum track.

[Patchen]

Shortcircuit can creat amazingly dirty and punchy drum sounds like no other vsti sampler I have tried. Sometimes reminds me of my mpc2000 but it can get much ditier than that