The Drop Thread // How To Make Drops

[Brothulhu]

Fill out the frequencies. White noise, high hats, cymbals, pads etc will make your drop fuller and louder

[Genevieve]

make the part leading up to the drop more quiet. Using compression and/or a transient shaper to make the attack part of the drop louder. Or momentarily bump the volume of the sub and kick just when the drop hits. Or all of the above.

Do you limit the shit out of everything? That could squash the differences in volume between the softer and harder parts too.

[mthrfnk]

Sub, white noise, mid range.

Your build will dictate how good your drop is, if your build is shit your drop will be too. Work on your builds.

[ortamusic]

Accent the bass - but make sure you don't overdrive it.

[Hashkey]

Find like, 20 sweeping fx, and place them all before your drop. Then put like a small 1/4bar pause before the drop. Then go to your basses, and EQ up your mids and highs, and remove any low end*(<-SUPER IMPORTANT TIP). Find all instances of massive that are running, open them up, and replace all the wave forms with deep throat. Set up all your basses to one channel, and put a distortion on it, and a flanger, and max all the settings out.

Your result is a sick build up, and a crazy growl bassline.

Jokes aside, seriously, your friends are fucking turds. Don't worry about any pleb structure of how to make dubstep that requires "sick drops" and heavy "bass growls". Your "drops" aren't good because you're a new producer. Focus less on trying to make sick drops and more on learning your DAW and other important things like sound design and mixing.

this

[Genevieve]

Nothing 'plebeian' about a hard drop. That's the point of a drop. They've been apart of EDM since the jungle days and set the crowd off. A band also focuses on kicking the song back in after the quiet part, it's a part of the whole songwriting process and in EDM production, songwriting and production are linked with each other.

I hate the boring ass brostep that doesn't give a shit about the song itself and is only a 'drop' as much as the next dude, but that doesn't mean that the idea of a 'drop' is bad. But learning your daw also involves learning songwriting techniques. And in the process of learning how to make a 'drop' hard hitting, you learn how to make things in general hard hitting.

[Bassf4ce]

I have a problem, and that problem is that I only like making kool ass heavy drops. Each time I start A new project I end up making only some sort of drop then I just abandon it. I usually mix them to, and do some sidechaining. Then I have a perfectly good drop that just ends up sitting there, because I have no idea what to do with it. Is it some sort of lack of creativity? I think it is because I don't know piano cause then I would know what I was doing with some other synth that isnt wub wubing.

[fragments]

why don't you try not starting with the drop...or writing a tune without a drop...or writing something besides dubstep...or just writing a melody...doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result...foolish? insane? you tell me...

[Bassf4ce]

why don't you try not starting with the drop...or writing a tune without a drop...or writing something besides dubstep...or just writing a melody...doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result...foolish? insane? you tell me...

Lol that is not foolish for sure will try that, I have done that before but only once so maybe if I just routinely do it I will get a better idea of writing melodies.

[Hircine]

quit thinking about midrange, a heavy drop should shake your chestplate, the midrange wubs and wobs that goes with it serve only to set a mood. laydown your sub pattern, your drum pattern, feel the sounds with pad and ambience, lay down some incidentals, put swooshes and cymbals to glue the loop together and subtract from there. then start worrying about midrange content.

[wormcode]

Maybe stop listening to dubstep? Replace it with other music...
'Drops' have been around forever but I've never ever heard people talk about them as much as in the last 3 or 4 years in reference to dubstep. It seems 90% focused on that for some reason.

[OfficialDAPT]

...or writing a tune without a drop...

This is probably the worst thread to convince anyone to write a song without a drop.

[Burgeamon]

I used to really struggle with drops but the one thing that I figured out is that the drop and the build before it have to match. The build has to naturally build in to the correct post drop rhythm.

[Tiger Blood]

Hey guys

First up. Brostep warning. Im trying to recreate those drops a lot of people hate, random noises, no emotion and such, but i enjoy it and producing the sounds!

Right, so now thats done. Im having issues having some sort of flow, plan or even melody to my drop.

Here is an example i threw together to demonstrate, Its 16 bars. made from 2 massive patches with a few modulations, split into 3 bands, effects applied, reconstructed, bounced and cut into chunks i found interesting.

My problem from here is arranging the chunks to make a drop which is 'nice' to listen to

Soundcloud

so thats what i have (ignore the white noise, drums and crash, they are just loops and stuff thrown in for quick fillers as im not on my production pc)

Any tips on getting a local plan to it that will sound good? I hear call and response works well but dont fully get it, so any help here would be greatly appreciated, its the one thing that holds me back from completing the tracks I really enjoy making!

[Aufnahmewindwuschel]

ok i did start doing a bit bro again for the comp

try using call and respond as you said mostly it means let your drums and occasional hits etc work with your bass and not against

let your bass stop throw a little silence inbetween or some unexpected stuff etc

basically the bassline you hear is based on beat basssounds atmosphere etc maybe some reverse sounds or some open hats on the first bar

make some send channels with some effects for more then one main channel to create a feel of a glued together tune

[Tiger Blood]

ok i did start doing a bit bro again for the comp

try using call and respond as you said mostly it means let your drums and occasional hits etc work with your bass and not against

let your bass stop throw a little silence inbetween or some unexpected stuff etc

basically the bassline you hear is based on beat basssounds atmosphere etc maybe some reverse sounds or some open hats on the first bar

make some send channels with some effects for more then one main channel to create a feel of a glued together tune

so more silence with drum work, a contrasted synth seems to be a trend, like a high pitch saw wave synth contrasted with the growls as a call response.

I dont get what you mean with the sends? And i used a couple of reverse samples but its a good point that throwing more in would improve flow.

[Efrafa11]

You could chop n drop your bounced bass into a drum pad style sampler and tap out things.
Keeps it fun as well.

[Aufnahmewindwuschel]

so more silence with drum work, a contrasted synth seems to be a trend, like a high pitch saw wave synth contrasted with the growls as a call response.

I dont get what you mean with the sends? And i used a couple of reverse samples but its a good point that throwing more in would improve flow.

yeah but throwing in screeches is really personal taste you definatly dont need them for a complete song try maybe a different bass sound instead or reverse bass, or chopped up basses as mentioned

send channel is basically a channel with a effect that just has the effect on it so lets say reverb just reverb on wet and no dry so you can have drums and atmosphere in the same "room" while the bass works in the basement or maybe delay so you dont need to apply the same delay to several channels and makes it easier to chop of all the volume from one effect when you dont want to have it anymore (sidechain etc works to of course on a send)

[Tiger Blood]

You could chop n drop your bounced bass into a drum pad style sampler and tap out things.
Keeps it fun as well.

sounds like a good idea to try out, i have a maschine controller so can load them into the VST

mainly want to know about the types of sound and patterns i should be going for though as i can get most of the sounds I want just the puzzle is the hard bit!

[Tiger Blood]

so more silence with drum work, a contrasted synth seems to be a trend, like a high pitch saw wave synth contrasted with the growls as a call response.

I dont get what you mean with the sends? And i used a couple of reverse samples but its a good point that throwing more in would improve flow.

yeah but throwing in screeches is really personal taste you definatly dont need them for a complete song try maybe a different bass sound instead or reverse bass, or chopped up basses as mentioned

send channel is basically a channel with a effect that just has the effect on it so lets say reverb just reverb on wet and no dry so you can have drums and atmosphere in the same "room" while the bass works in the basement or maybe delay so you dont need to apply the same delay to several channels and makes it easier to chop of all the volume from one effect when you dont want to have it anymore (sidechain etc works to of course on a send)

yea i quite like all the screechy noises they keep it interesting for me, doing for the doctor P ovely choppy sound if possible (i know that probably gets a a lot of hate though)

And yea i know about send channels as i use them for parallel compression and snare reverb i have just never used them for synth as its all bounced audio with a hell of a lot of effect on it already, wouldnt know what else to add on a send!