How to create these heavy drum breaks (gated/distorted?)

[bouncingfish]

You here these everywhere. I attempted to make one of these, added some enveloped reverb, and some distortion, to an acoustic kit. Sounded absolutely horrible and I tried for like an hour but couldnt get close.

You hear them alot in movie music, sounds dope. KIND OF, but not exactly(this is the only song that I know what it's called that has something similar.... :/ ), like this:


What settings are you supposed to have?
Can anyone just quickly try to replicate this?
Sounds like its easy to make but my settings must have been fucked because I couldn't get close. Or maybe I'm thinking wrong?

If anyone can get close to this please tell me how, love you guys!

[AxeD]

I do this by running the drums parallel through a few compressors.
Increasing in ratio and release.

[zosomagik]

^^^ Yeah, they sound pretty squashed. It also sounds like there's some bitcrushing going on at some points.

[bouncingfish]

Ok. WHere should attack and threshold be?

[zosomagik]

Use your ears brutha

[ehbes]

Ok. WHere should attack and threshold be?

this isnt paint by numbers

[zosomagik]

Ok. WHere should attack and threshold be?

this isnt paint by numbers

That's another way to put it

[karmacazee]

That's actually a pretty cool track.

If you've got ableton this is pretty easy.

Distort with the Erosion plugin on the top end with wide noise.

Use the OTT setting in Ableton's Multiband Compressor on the entire drum mix. Bring the output of the high band down a few db's to save your ears. Also, bring down the dry/wet mix to achieve a slightly more natural sound.

Bounce. Chop. All the little rolls and fills sound like fairly standard glitch effects and spot effects (like the above mentioned bitcrushing, some filtering etc), but one thing they've used nicely on that break is silence/gating. Little unexpected dropouts. Cool.

[bouncingfish]

That's actually a pretty cool track.

If you've got ableton this is pretty easy.

Distort with the Erosion plugin on the top end with wide noise.

Use the OTT setting in Ableton's Multiband Compressor on the entire drum mix. Bring the output of the high band down a few db's to save your ears. Also, bring down the dry/wet mix to achieve a slightly more natural sound.

Bounce. Chop. All the little rolls and fills sound like fairly standard glitch effects and spot effects (like the above mentioned bitcrushing, some filtering etc), but one thing they've used nicely on that break is silence/gating. Little unexpected dropouts. Cool.

Yeah, it's neat isn't it? Thanks. Yeah the chops are nice, and you can hear they automated filters, bitcrushers, etc, on little bits to get that feel.
But it's more the sound of the overall break that I cant get, you say multiband compression?

Should I just take any break out of logics Drummer and and lots of compression? Didn't work last time I tried it, though that wasn't multiband.

[karmacazee]

Yeah, basically compress the entire break. Use this pl;ugin, it emulates the OTT setting on Ableton's Multiband compressor.

It's basically an aggressive upwards/downwards compressor (more info on the difference here). The highs are being upwardly compressed so that they get louder, and the lower bands are being squashed. It brings out all the noise and room sounds of the break, and lots of cool 'dusty' artefacts. Try and use a break that was actually recorded live.

[bouncingfish]

Yeah, basically compress the entire break. Use this pl;ugin, it emulates the OTT setting on Ableton's Multiband compressor.

It's basically an aggressive upwards/downwards compressor (more info on the difference here). The highs are being upwardly compressed so that they get louder, and the lower bands are being squashed. It brings out all the noise and room sounds of the break, and lots of cool 'dusty' artefacts. Try and use a break that was actually recorded live.

Okay! You never linked the plugin though? Or did I misunderstand something?
Anyway, the drums here sound so different from a drum break. Like, the kick here goes "DOOO!" while most real kick go "TIKK." And the snare goes "TSHHSHAAA", most real snares go "K HAA", you know?
Can just compression really create an effect like that or would I have to start with a break that sounds a certain way? Or can I just take, like, the usual amen break, and compress it, and It'll soound like this?

[karmacazee]

Yeah, basically compress the entire break. Use this pl;ugin, it emulates the OTT setting on Ableton's Multiband compressor.

It's basically an aggressive upwards/downwards compressor (more info on the difference here). The highs are being upwardly compressed so that they get louder, and the lower bands are being squashed. It brings out all the noise and room sounds of the break, and lots of cool 'dusty' artefacts. Try and use a break that was actually recorded live.

Okay! You never linked the plugin though? Or did I misunderstand something?
Anyway, the drums here sound so different from a drum break. Like, the kick here goes "DOOO!" while most real kick go "TIKK." And the snare goes "TSHHSHAAA", most real snares go "K HAA", you know?
Can just compression really create an effect like that or would I have to start with a break that sounds a certain way? Or can I just take, like, the usual amen break, and compress it, and It'll soound like this?

Sorry! Here's the link, it's the top one.

http://xferrecords.com/freeware/

Well it's not going to sound EXACTLY the same, no. But it will bring out all the weird and strange artefacts hidden in the recording, so experiment with different ones until you find the right one. I imagine, in fact I know, an Amen will come out of that process sounding REALLY aggressive, so dial stuff back a little.

But yeah, some other little fx on the mix would be some kind of erosion/white noise plugin. In Ableton there is a dedicated plugin called Erosion that adds noise or sine waves to the audio, making it sound a bit more crusty and sort of broken. It reacts to the volume envelope of the original sound so it blends it really nicely. Not sure what Logic or other equivalent there is for that.

Also a subtle bitcrushing or downsampling. There's a nice one on that site I linked.

[bouncingfish]

Thanks alot man. Xfer records are so good, love those plugs! Going to try this tomorrow, installing the OTT thing now.

[bouncingfish]

Yeah, basically compress the entire break. Use this pl;ugin, it emulates the OTT setting on Ableton's Multiband compressor.

It's basically an aggressive upwards/downwards compressor (more info on the difference here). The highs are being upwardly compressed so that they get louder, and the lower bands are being squashed. It brings out all the noise and room sounds of the break, and lots of cool 'dusty' artefacts. Try and use a break that was actually recorded live.

Okay! You never linked the plugin though? Or did I misunderstand something?
Anyway, the drums here sound so different from a drum break. Like, the kick here goes "DOOO!" while most real kick go "TIKK." And the snare goes "TSHHSHAAA", most real snares go "K HAA", you know?
Can just compression really create an effect like that or would I have to start with a break that sounds a certain way? Or can I just take, like, the usual amen break, and compress it, and It'll soound like this?

Sorry! Here's the link, it's the top one.

http://xferrecords.com/freeware/

Well it's not going to sound EXACTLY the same, no. But it will bring out all the weird and strange artefacts hidden in the recording, so experiment with different ones until you find the right one. I imagine, in fact I know, an Amen will come out of that process sounding REALLY aggressive, so dial stuff back a little.

But yeah, some other little fx on the mix would be some kind of erosion/white noise plugin. In Ableton there is a dedicated plugin called Erosion that adds noise or sine waves to the audio, making it sound a bit more crusty and sort of broken. It reacts to the volume envelope of the original sound so it blends it really nicely. Not sure what Logic or other equivalent there is for that.

Also a subtle bitcrushing or downsampling. There's a nice one on that site I linked.

Tried this now, IT TOTALLY WORKS! Thanks alot man, this is so strange! I tried to achieve a similar effect with logics multiband comp, but I didn't get close at all, wonder what I did wrong. Anyway, that OTT plug got me just what I wanted! Tried it on a Sly And The Family Stone break, a Funkadelic break, and the break in Free - Mrbig, worked. Totally sounded like I wanted it to, perfect man!

Just added some eq, some overdrive, and transient shaping to get it perfect. NEAT!

[karmacazee]

Glad I could help!

[hirszu]

I thought of this thread after watching this tut, good stuff