I've been making music for a bit over a year now (and amassed about 55 songs, around 35 or so of which are complete), and my biggest weakness by far is my inability to write satisfying drum parts. I've done everything I can, from buying new drum software (purchased battery 3 in December of last year), to reading guides for real drummers online, to listening to parts and trying to mimic them. While my drum parts have improved significantly since I started, I'm still lacking something important, and I can't quite seem to put my finger on it.
I stumbled upon this artist recently: http://wc08.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=a ... fexqugldfe
Here is an example of some of his work: http://www.htfr.com/playlist/?catno=MR180154
His drums succeed tremendously well where mine fail. They somehow embody the triphip/downtempo sound, and I have no idea where to begin replicating them. I don't even know if it's possible with my software.
For a reference, here is a piece I recently did: http://tindeck.com/audio/my/ujun/Real-time-early-01
Can someone point me in the right direction here? Help would be extremely appreciated.
edit: I'm using cubase sx3 for mixing/writing/recording my music. It's all done in MIDI, which could be my problem. Am I going to have to bite the bullet and hire a drummer or learn how to play them on my own (which I've wanted to do for a while but never had the cash to do)?
Downtempo/triphop drums, with example
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- KVRian
- 507 posts since 15 Mar, 2002
thats not a bad track, but your right the drums are the weakest link. They might be more interesting with more layers and a bit of extra percussion - perhaps a bit more reverb on the snare so its a bit bigger, and a kick with a bit more grime and body would help. Also if your using battery 3 have a play with the articulations section, some subtle flammy/ rolly/ ruffly stuff with snares and hats might spice it up some. Some great melodic stuff there though, very promising.
come on you ..... lets have some aphex acid.
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- KVRian
- 795 posts since 2 Apr, 2006
Your drums are too clean. Try getting your hands on some old breaks from funk records. If they're not sampled off vinyl directly run them through isotope's vinyl plugin, put a fuzz distortion on them (very very mild, slightly audible) resample and use those for your drum parts.
Also layer up your sounds, like get a good groove going with clean samples out of battery and then high pass some slightly distorted percussion over that. (I mostly use rexed breaks and quantize them a bit, it depends)
A great deal of the charm, for me anyway, of old triphop stuff came from the distortion introduced by the old samples they used and the low quality samplers.
Also layer up your sounds, like get a good groove going with clean samples out of battery and then high pass some slightly distorted percussion over that. (I mostly use rexed breaks and quantize them a bit, it depends)
A great deal of the charm, for me anyway, of old triphop stuff came from the distortion introduced by the old samples they used and the low quality samplers.