if your sample has a flat amplitude why is there really a need to compress? (unless you are using compression for tone shaping)

Enveloping or a transient is probably gonna do a better job imo. Its very hard to make punchy drums with software compression you can do it to a certain extent until it starts to sound unnatural & you will start to effect the frequencies within your sample (a lot of the time you will get sibilance if you go to overboard).

In my opinion good drums come from good transients with the tail being the afterthought. With envelope shaping you can bring the tail up or down with much more control & timing and you can make shapes that some compressors can't do regardless of settings or type.

Compressors have good uses if you are strapped for time & just want to use a little to control peaks, but if you are doing electronic music & work on a sample per sample basis you will have much more fun with envelopes I think.

No reason you should get flamed. If you actually want to get down to writing actual music rather than spending so much time layering & making your own samples then respect to you. No one is gonna care where you got some drum samples from when they hear it in a club, they just want a good tune at the end of the day. If you have the time, make your own, if you don't then use ready samples, I dont think it matters imo.

totally man!!!!

I can't think of anything more boring than "making" a kick from scratch, I simply don't have the time.

very good points raised ,
I always adjust the ADSR on drums to suit the song - and I never compress my drums either - no need.

Now THAT is friggin hard. Absolutely amazing.

1:07 minutes in—it gets monstrous.

Hardest are probz in actual dub music, but...

For older stuff, I always liked this one:



It's not mastered like today's music but it could be.
Just turn it up a couple dB.

It's a good balance between punchy and hard but
there is still a groove or emphasis.

Throw it up to 1080 on resolution if you can... helps
the HF transients a tad.

For me definately this. And what a tune to wrap around the drums.

I really enjoyed that as a whole package, with the video.
Thanks for sharing it.

DISCLAIMER: quote for conversation reference only.

I'm with you 100% here. If you have a flat amplitude, envelopes or using
a buss-compressor as a grouped envelope for groove is nice.
Individual samples without a flat amplitude, limiting or clipping and texture
shaping on the early portion of the sample (ie, distortion, pitch bend,
waveshape) helps define.

Also, a little bump up in the 7k-10k area helps the initial transient shine thru.
You just have to be selective, which is why I typically use a separate short HF
transient on kicks, snares that don't have hi-hats on top. If everything has
7k-10k, then it's mush... selective HF helps define the overall roll and groove
as much as pumping and the two can play against each other.


This is where I'm going to deviate a bit and make a distinction. I'm sure
we are on the same page, but I'll make a distinction in language that may
be beneficial to some. It also helps me to write because the thoughts
become more concrete.

Transient: to me is very fast, usually high frequency because bass
frequencies take longer to cycle and develop. This is the 1-5ms attack portion.

Tail: to me, this is the release which I agree can be an "afterthought" for
HARD specifically. Not so much FULL or HEAVY. If you think of a snare,
a soft tap and quick lift will ring out. A hard hit while dampening the snare
leaving the stick on a bit shortens the decay. Lots of hard, fast music
will even gate the tails out.

Body: This, IMHO, is the most important portion, which is also where the
HOLD stage or flattened dynamics comes into play. Transient limited,
TEXTURE change into body.

A older trick, popular recently again, for hard electronic music was to
put the early reflections from the transient into the body, so increased
HF content while increasing the body's volume, in effect helping create
the HOLD stage. Then gate the tail.

Think about the sound of a plate dropping. If you drop the plate outside
in a large empty parking lot, the sound will not reflect of any ceiling or walls.
Same initial dB of the crash, less early reflections = not psycho-acoustically
as loud. Then imagine the same plate dropped inside a small room where
the reflections quickly bounce back and stack up = psycho-acoustically
louder. Basically more RMS for the entire portion of plate breaking.

END THOUGHT

During the creation of Driven Machine Drums Strikes Back, I learned that
the ear/mind will recognize a change in texture and place more emphasis
on it than a change in amplitude. Makes sense for survival. The slightest
change in texture from blowing leaves to a snake hiss is life or death.
Snake hiss growing louder, hopefully you are already running or hunting.

I applied this idea to drum sounds, limiting the dynamics while making the
textural changes more dramatic. So, at a minimum, those are the 3 areas.
Transient (into) body (into) tail/release.

END THOUGHT

@mecdnb

I think with that name, you are likely making DNB which makes use
of faster tempos. In your case, certainly the body and tail need to
be shortened because there is less room (time) between hits.
I get the whole half-tempo groove thing, but generally the HF percussion
is quicker which helps define the genre of DNB.

Whereas something like this:



is half the tempo but the space between the percussion allows more
body. This to me though is HEAVY vs. hard, although on the harder
side of heavy with the subtle distortion.

although I'm not the biggest fan of their music, I would consider KOAN Sound to have some of the "hardest" drums at the moment

Although not purely just hard beats but when Prodigy Smack my Bitch up kicks in I've always been blown away by the impact of it

Ben

uh...... Tipper. It's interesting to read all of the comments about how you guys go about making drums. With any source sound (literally anything) a compressor.. and an eq, you can make the hardest hitting drums. Screw transient shapers.. those are for noobs :P

I'll respectfully disagree re: Transient Shapers. I'm currently under the
impression that SPL Transient Designer and Elysia Nvelope both rely
on similar technology to compressors, although routed slightly different
in regards to make-up gain. (talking hardware here)

This is a good one:
Mescalinum United - "We Have Arrived" (Aphex Twin TTQ remix)


Actually the hardest stuff I heard was all of the gabber/hardcore stuff from mid nineties. It was all sort of the same when it came to the beats.

Haha, I'll check them out. I was slightly kidding.. I use transient shapers as well



Not sure why the youtube video isn't showing up. Here is a direct link

Tipper - Off Kilter (VIP)

fixed

Cool figured it out. This guy has some good beats. Couldn't find enough of his stuff on youtube.. Definitely worth checking out. This isn't his hardest hitting stuff, but it'll give you an idea.

'Hardest' for me has always been a description more so of the attitude/groove than the sound. Appears im wrong as everyone in this thread appears to be talking about the most DISTORTION and Loudest..occasionally mixed with very punchy. I suppose that could be an attitude.

In terms of that commercial PUNCH/distortion paper like I would have to agree with the OHM those are some nice punchy distorted in your face drums.

I always found this was slamming with a decent sound system-

Those crystal method tunes from the 90s, get busy child, trip like I do, I love how fat the drums are but it doesn't sound fake and sample-y.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODBm...feature=fvwrel

you might like this then, it is Dubstep though so be warned!

Great RMX!!

Yep, all beautifully explained better than I did lol! Nah don't make as much dnb these days as I do dubstep or complextro house.

I forgot to mention that I also like to layer drums horizontally i.e.
Transient (can be anything sharp like a clap, white noise etc) > Body from 909 or Alesis HR > Tail 808 or Pitched down electronic tom.
This is a great technique for getting huge house drums like Madeon or Avicii.

Some different opinions about what constitutes 'hard drums'. But lots of mention of Aphex Twin / Rephlex stuff. Aphex usually springs to mind when talking about full on, tough, crazy, electronic tracks. I vote for Tamphex

Isoprophlex bass drum: self-oscillating filter w/swept cutoff, run through some sort of distortion. I got similar results back in the day with an SH-101 running through a Mackie mixer, with the mixer preamp gain turned up full to get overdrive.

Isoprophlex "snare": A self oscillating filter "zap!" sound.

Isoprophlex "high hat": Noise through a resonant filter. The sequence sounds like it could be sample and hold, but a similar sound could be obtained by sampling a single noise/filter sound, and playing the sample back at different pitches. I hear some gated reverb in there as well, probably Alesis.

All of the above sounds were probably sampled and played back, maybe with the Studio 440 Aphex Twin used back then.

Another possibility: the sounds could have been synthesized / played back using one of the "drum brains" Aphex was known to use, such as the Drumfire. However, none of the sounds in the track would require anything more advanced than an SH-101 and a sampler.

Later on, Aphex would take a similar drum track, and run it through the filters of his MS-20:

hard as f*^%