This is a vague question, but I find that my beats aren't very powerful, like most Drum and Bass tracks have. They just don't seem to have much "oomph", or enough of a punch to them.
For example: If you listen to Black Sun Empire's "Breach" the beats get heavy at around 2:12 or so, and if you listen to NOISIA's "Stigma" the beats get heavy at 1:20 or so. I don't have any real equipment for Drum and Bass producing other than Fruity Loops and sound files, and I'm hoping there's an easy way to get the same heavy, hard hitting beats that most DnB tracks have. Something with plenty of punch.
Like I said, this is a strange question, but I'm really hoping there's a way to match the powerful beats that most Drum and Bass tracks have.
Sorry for the strange question, but I'd like to know what would add more punch to my beats. :/
Thanks in advance!
__ Starving artist an aspiring musician. Also, game designer.
This post has been edited 1 time(s), it was last edited by W3R3W00F: 11-02-2011 08:32.
Layering (adding several kicks & snares).
You can layer a kick with enough oomph together with a kick with good low mids to have a powerful punchy kick. Make sure not to combine the low ends of both kicks (hi-pass the kick with the good low mids at around 60Hz).
For snares you can layer a punchy attack, just the very first short bit of a punchy snare onto a snare that has enough body and length to sound full.
You can layer on white noise to give it more smash.
When layering you need to make sure that the different layers are tuned to each other and you have to check the balance. You don't want them to clearly sound as a bunch of drums on top of each other, it has to sound like one big monster of a drumhit.
Good compression on the kick, snare, other stuff and the whole drum section can help to add power but the risk for FAIL is pretty high. Don't overdo it and make your drums sound flattened and characterless
If your drums sound fine but you want just that extra bit of attack power you could run them through SPL attacker. A very simple plugin (I think it's just a compressor) that does a good job to give the whole thing extra power.
Sending your kick and snare partly through a distortion unit works really well too (get CamelAudio's free plugin called Camelcrusher, easy to use and it does a great job).
I also use a warmifier on the whole mix to give the whole track a more analog sound.
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Excellent, thanks BattleDrone!
Will remember this advice for future projects. I'll look into learning more about FL Studio to see what I can do with it.
__ Starving artist an aspiring musician. Also, game designer.
you have to experiment with the limiting and compression stuff. I know you will think that this is obvious, but think twice. You've not had enough time spent with the EQing too. Try to add harsh frequencies with the snares end experiment with limiting of separate frequency fields.
I really like adding CamelPhat to my drums (and just about anything else)
I find that the distortion always adds more power to the sound, while taking it down several dB, so it's a good way to give yourself more headroom. However, you may need to add an EQ after the CamelPhat to pull out some of the unwanted harmonics and low end rumble.
Compression, limiting all that stuff is icing on the cake.
What is neccesary is getting the sound right at source....which is basically, either finding hits in sample packs(many are free) which fill out the freq ranges as u want, or as desribed in one of the aforementioned posts, layering.
Compression, limiting, saturation, and eq will provide, character, definition and phatness(be aware that initial phatness comes from sound selection) to the sound.
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