[EDM] NEVER ALONE

[danc]

Usual culprits for making the beats... Kick 2... Battery 4.

Bass - SH101 and Thorn CM
Lead - SH101
Filters - Arturia SEM and M12.
FX - lots of Soundtoys, Unfiltered Audio SpecOps etc.

[bossa]

Good!

[Hauser+Quaid]

Enjoyed this! Huge fan of Kick 2 as well. Out of curiosity why do you use Battery over Kong etc?

[danc]

Enjoyed this! Huge fan of Kick 2 as well. Out of curiosity why do you use Battery over Kong etc?

Hi - for me... Battery has a lot more - and I mean a serious lot more - functionality to mould drums sounds........ whereas Kong only gives you a handful + plus you are limited to how many you can run at once. Yes you can route the audio out and use whatever FX you want - but for me I want the extra power in-built into my device. I do use external FX a lot, but for easy I do like to have the power built in. Especially useful to me is the control I have over layering, tuning, compression, filtering, envelopes, modulation, transient-shaper etc.

However - I don't just work off Battery... I use Dr Rex RE extensively for loops, (and cutting them up)... along with various VSTs, like Geist, Klip, Revolution, Evolution, and various other Kontakt libraries (e.g. . Each has their own pros/cons. However... I do have to say... Battery, Kick 2 and Dr Rex do get a lot (70+%) of my attention. For FX on drums I am often using Soundtoys, Toraverb, Looperator, Glitch and a wide range of filters.

[Hauser+Quaid]

Enjoyed this! Huge fan of Kick 2 as well. Out of curiosity why do you use Battery over Kong etc?

Hi - for me... Battery has a lot more - and I mean a serious lot more - functionality to mould drums sounds........ whereas Kong only gives you a handful + plus you are limited to how many you can run at once. Yes you can route the audio out and use whatever FX you want - but for me I want the extra power in-built into my device. I do use external FX a lot, but for easy I do like to have the power built in. Especially useful to me is the control I have over layering, tuning, compression, filtering, envelopes, modulation, transient-shaper etc.

However - I don't just work off Battery... I use Dr Rex RE extensively for loops, (and cutting them up)... along with various VSTs, like Geist, Klip, Revolution, Evolution, and various other Kontakt libraries (e.g. . Each has their own pros/cons. However... I do have to say... Battery, Kick 2 and Dr Rex do get a lot (70+%) of my attention. For FX on drums I am often using Soundtoys, Toraverb, Looperator, Glitch and a wide range of filters.

Cool, just curious really. I use Battery as well but only in Logic projects. When I'm in Reason I find for me that Kong works better. I was surprised really when I made a drum beat in Battery using all the additional features that it has I thought "there's no way Kong will sound as good as this". Then I remade the beat in Kong and it actually sounded better for my taste. Of course everyone works different, that's why I was curious why you prefer Battery. Whatever you're doing it's working

[danc]

Cool, just curious really. I use Battery as well but only in Logic projects. When I'm in Reason I find for me that Kong works better. I was surprised really when I made a drum beat in Battery using all the additional features that it has I thought "there's no way Kong will sound as good as this". Then I remade the beat in Kong and it actually sounded better for my taste. Of course everyone works different, that's why I was curious why you prefer Battery. Whatever you're doing it's working

Getting good drums is a time consuming exercise - and I'm no expert - just a wannabe...

From my experiments... each individual drum hit must sit together like one happy family. Each one owning a unique zone in the frequency spectrum and harmonically coherent. Achieved with fine tuning and judicious EQ - especially HPF'ing everything away from the kicks body and notching sweet spots for character. Regarding tuning - pick carefully what sits on the 1st, 3rd, 5th and 7th. If you want the kick to stay away from the bass, consider tuning to 5th, 12th and 17th.

Gluing everything together is paramount, with subtle saturation, compression, limiting etc.

Then it's down to ghosts, swing, choking, velocity, filters, echo, reverb, and the dreaded aim to get it to sit as one with the bass line.

What really helped me was this superb tutorial - well worth the financial and time investment - https://www.dancemusicproduction.com/product/drums/