Do you make your drums or do you use samples?

[Hipster Bales]

This thread went from me asking if you sample or synthesize to talking about Behringer drum machines. Nice!

[Uncle E]

Better yet, a Jupiter-8-type circuit used for synthesizing drums.

[Hipster Bales]

Better yet, a Jupiter-8-type circuit used for synthesizing drums.

XD

[DrGonzo]

This thread went from me asking if you sample or synthesize to talking about Behringer drum machines. Nice!

Heh - this is KvR after all. Sidetracking is the game
But to get the thread back on track again. For making music, I almost always use sampled drums. I never synthesize drums when making music - that always takes me out of the zone. Unless, I'm using something like a hardware drum machine like the Elektron Analog Rytm, or preferably something even simpler, like a Roland X0X clone.

[kernaudioio]

both, layered, depending on the song. one craft thing that took me a while to learn: layering 3 snares is exactly where mono fold-down breaks first.

each snare has its own dominant pitch (the body resonance, usually 180-280 Hz). layer 3 and you get three close-spaced peaks. in stereo with the layers panned even 5%, those peaks beat against each other and read as "punch". in mono fold-down, the same beating turns into comb filtering and the snare goes from huge to thin in one click.

the test that catches it: A/B the snare bus at -3 dB on a phone speaker after layering, before committing. if it loses 30% of its body in mono, decide whether you're shipping for stereo-only listeners (clubs, headphones) or mono-tolerant playback (phones, single-speaker bluetooth). pick one, mix for it. don't expect the layer stack to translate everywhere by default.

related: synth toms tend to have a narrow resonance peak around the fundamental that sits a few dB above everything else. tame that one peak by 3-4 dB with a dynamic EQ before the kit bus. the toms read as "tighter" without losing the body. the alternative is to detune the layers slightly so the resonances don't stack on the same frequency.

[Hipster Bales]

both, layered, depending on the song. one craft thing that took me a while to learn: layering 3 snares is exactly where mono fold-down breaks first.

each snare has its own dominant pitch (the body resonance, usually 180-280 Hz). layer 3 and you get three close-spaced peaks. in stereo with the layers panned even 5%, those peaks beat against each other and read as "punch". in mono fold-down, the same beating turns into comb filtering and the snare goes from huge to thin in one click.

the test that catches it: A/B the snare bus at -3 dB on a phone speaker after layering, before committing. if it loses 30% of its body in mono, decide whether you're shipping for stereo-only listeners (clubs, headphones) or mono-tolerant playback (phones, single-speaker bluetooth). pick one, mix for it. don't expect the layer stack to translate everywhere by default.

related: synth toms tend to have a narrow resonance peak around the fundamental that sits a few dB above everything else. tame that one peak by 3-4 dB with a dynamic EQ before the kit bus. the toms read as "tighter" without losing the body. the alternative is to detune the layers slightly so the resonances don't stack on the same frequency.

Nice! I’m starting to lay off the samples so this explanation is really helpful

[Steff1968]

I find it easiest to use samples or remade kits for MPC.... Or even using loops.

I'm no pro though.

[TechHaus]

I want to get more into drum sample making with Hive 2 and F'em.

Yuli Yolo's Objects soundpack has me inspired in Hive, and in F.'em the noise carrier / oscillator really helps for layering (it really is so much more than an FM synth).

[Hipster Bales]

I want to get more into drum sample making with Hive 2 and F'em.

Yuli Yolo's Objects soundpack has me inspired in Hive, and in F.'em the noise carrier / oscillator really helps for layering (it really is so much more than an FM synth).

Nice! I mainly use a mixture of FM and subtractive synthesis for drums.

[legendCNCD]

TBH I use samples 99,9% of time, not making the sounds, because ... I want to make music.

[Hipster Bales]

TBH I use samples 99,9% of time, not making the sounds, because ... I want to make music.

True, not everyone likes designing the drums

[Uncle E]

This video is a pretty good demonstration of when you'd want hands-on control of your drums and percussions. Samples + a good percussion synth could easily cover any of these sounds: