What type of drums do you look for when layering?

[FlyingNinjaBannanas]

I always get stuck here whenever I try to make something. I just can not get this right no matter how hard I try. Whenever I try to layer a few kicks or snare drums, I can not get the sound I'm looking for. Be it a hard pounding sound (which I could probably get with compression or various other effects, but a good base in needed first) or just a decent sounding drum that can carry a beat. I really think this is more due to untrained ears, as I'm pretty sure my samples are not the problem. As I think I can get at least one good snare or kick out of my multitude of free samples. At least until I can afford to purchase some. Could anyone provide an example of just the basic types of drums to look for when layering? Or something help that could ease this process along without relying on already processed drums, which I consider the easy way out of this. If I can train my ear to this now, it'll save a good amount of frustration.

[CDPP]

What kind of drums are you looking for?
For snares I just take some 808 snare drums and layer them with a tom and clap before distorting and compression.

[Mr. Bigglesworth]

Snares - I look for one to be my 200hz punchy bit, cut the treble on it, and get another to be the fuzzy part. Which usually gets me something like these

https://soundcloud.com/testsubject72/175-bpm-drum-loop

https://soundcloud.com/testsubject72/biggles-layeredsnare-5/s-VtUok

and sometimes a little clap sound layered very slightly off time can be pretty useful.

https://soundcloud.com/testsubject72/biggles-layeredsnare-2

You can do a similar thing with kicks. But the problem is usually in that they both have an impact to them, so you might have to get rid of the impact of one of them and just leave the body and tail. Ableton is very good for this because it has great volume automation for samples.

And free sample packs can have great snares for layering. Some of the ones you'd pay for already have processing on them, which can make them sound off (I never layer VEC4 kicks because of this).

[the4thImpulse]

So you know where I'm coming from I make housey/electro kinds of music.


I usually use two kicks; one subby kick and another with the fast transients and general 'noise' in the mid range. EQing them is simple, cut everything above ~100 Hz on the subby and cut everything below on the other. I don't bother with individual compressors on each sample as they usually come compressed.

For snares and claps I do a similar thing, find one sample with a fast transient (usually claps) and one with a longer release (usually a snare). I EQ them so they fit with each other and the general mix.


Back when I used free sample packs I rarely found the 'good' samples that would work with whatever mood I had in the song, and to be honest that doesn't really change a whole lot with the paid ones. Paid packs have better quality but you will still have to hunt for the right sample to fit your song.

When searching for samples it helps to play your song for a measure or two, listen to ~20 samples trying to find one that has a similar 'mood' and if you don't find the right sample then refresh your ears and listen to another couple measures.


Its a good idea to sort out your sample packs and throw whatever samples you know you will never use. Remove excess clutter from your library so you spend less time listen to horrible samples.

[froggy]

It depends on how many drums you're layering (two or three is typical), but the trick is to divide it up by frequency band. This is one way of doing it for kick drums, for example:

Sub - Heavy bass tone (think 808 kick)
Mid - The "smack", no low bass content
Transient - The "snap", short and clicky, no bass content at all

This is how a lot of modern kick drums are made from what I understand (e.g. this is how the Vengeance guys do it, and it's what their Metrum synth does). The only difference here is that you're starting with fully finished drum samples instead of custom made pieces.

The trick is to pick out a drum to use for each frequency band, and then completely EQ out all the frequencies that you don't need for that band. Try to pick hits that are strong in one specific range of frequencies and use them for that band (i.e. don't pick a top-heavy kick for the sub layer), so you can EQ them as little as possible and retain as much power as you can. When EQing, you want to make sure that there's very little overlap between the hits because they'll build up mud. This is especially true in the bass range, where the low tones can phase-cancel and sound horrible (this can completely destroy a kick). You also want to remove the attack from every layer except the transient, to further reduce overlap mud.

Practice at it a while and it'll start making more sense, hope this helps