How do I remove the tappiness out of percussion?

[Tyrisia]

I use Attack for percussion sounds, but the results always have a certain tap to the attack phase, I basically want that nice soft but hard sound that professional producers get.

I've tried light compression but that compounds the problem, just wondering if anybody had any other ideas?

[loopdon]

don't know exactly what you mean but you might get something more funky than attack. maybe battery with a sweet sample-set, loads ship with it. or microtonic. if you could upload an example of what you have and what you want someone might be able to help.

i think a nice compressor can do do a lot of nice stuff. light compression could be a lot of things, imo. maybe use two compressor instead of one and use lighter (different) settings on each. or ny compression, basically mixing the compressed sound with the uncompressed sound.

i think layering drum-samples can be very very helpful in carving out the sound you want. say a boomy kick (808ish) for the solid foundation and another one at least for the attack region.

i am sorry this is vague but so is your description, imo.

please provide some sound samples, mate.

[Tyrisia]

well when I mean tappy, it's a really unwanted attack sound where the attack happens too fast, and the frequency of the wave is too frequent, and sounds too solid.

It's all down to my sound design I'm sure, but I refuse to use percussion samples unless absolutely necessary, I want to stick with makin my own and learn how to get the sound I want out of what I've got, cause I know Attack can do the sounds, it's just how to get them that's the problem.

I was hoping someone might give me a few clues with regards to sound design, but I defo won't go down the sample route, it's just too plain boring..

I'll post an example tomorrow when I've got a little more time to spare, I really want to get to the bottom of this quandry.

[loopdon]

understandable, mate!

i will put up a shitload of percussion synthesis tutorilas tomorrow. btw, microtonic is a percussion synthesizer and a great one at that. i can provide you with loads of presets to learn from for that as well. surely transferable to attack as well at least partially.

how does that sound? :)

[loopdon]

http://www.cim.mcgill.ca/~clark/nordmodularbook/nm_percussion.html

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/Jul02/articles/synthsecrets0702.asp

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/May02/articles/synthsecrets0502.asp

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/Feb02/articles/synthsecrets0202.asp

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/Sep02/articles/synthsecrets09.asp

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/Apr02/articles/synthsecrets0402.asp

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/Nov01/articles/synthsecrets1101.asp

search that site for loads more...

just for starters

[Tyrisia]

Spot on, cheers Loopdon, I could really do with a good read of some tutorials, that'd be great. I'm sure the answer's in the question here, but try as hard as I might, I can't get the sound I'm after. I came very close using sine waves instead of square, but no cigar unfortunately. The other option is buy a machine drum, which I'm seriously considering, if anybody's got any feedback on them things I'd love to here it..

[dirty_bass]

your best bet, is post an example of what you want, and an example of where you are at.

I`m sure I could help you then.

[Tyrisia]

Ok here's an example of what I'm after, it's the main snare on the second and fourth beats, really soft and lazy but sounds all so good..

what I want (http://www.tyrisia.co.uk/collabstest.wav)

and here's what I've got, remember it's just the attack phase I'm interested in at the mo..

what I've got (http://www.tyrisia.co.uk/snaretest.wav)

I'm basically trying to get the lower regions of my percussion to sound good as I've tended to eq them out up to now, but listening to the likes of speedy j, his percussion goes really low in the mix and sounds really beefy. The resulting drastic eq'ing I'm doing also creates a big hole in the 250-600k area which is no good to get that full sound, so I really need to address the problem and get my drums sounding good lower.

[loopdon]

sounds like a bitreducer/bitcrusher effect over the snare and other sounds. i'd try an effect of that kind.

[loopdon]

and tuning the snare relative to the kick/route note of the bassline is always worth a try as well.

you could have a kick a G1(49 Hz) and a snare tuned to G3 (196 Hz) as an example. makes them gel a lot better. although that would be a more 'smacky' snare than what you seem to be after.

if you lay down a bassline that is in a minor you could have a kickdrum at the route note, A1 (55 Hz) or maybe A2 (110 Hz) depending on how you like it and in which octave(s) the bassline plays. tuning the snare to a note from the scale of a minor would deffo help, possible at a muliple of A1, say A3 (220 Hz).

A minor scale notes are: A,B,C,D,E,F#,G#,A

so you could pick any of those notes to tune your snare and (every) other instrument to. only tuning all the instruments to A would prolly sound weird. Dirty_Bass said something along these lines in his excellent little tutorial.

back to topic: bitcrush/reduce ftw

[Tyrisia]

Cheers for the advice loopdon, I tried a bit of bitcrushing with redux in ableton, didn't really get what I'm after though. I'm still convinced it's down to good initial sound design than fx, so I'll have a good read through those tute's you posted. The crack function on Attack seems to go part of the way though, and backing of the amp attack also helps. If anyone's got any other ideas please let me know as I'm really wanting to know what I'm doing wrong here..

[stjohn]

try a synth like Absynth for some of your percussion. there are loads of percssuion patch banks that are easily tweeked.... and it has a great sound. u can layer 3 oscillators for maximum effect!!

here some banks

http://www.kvraudio.com/bank.php?getbank=107&order=date

[Tyrisia]

Thanks for the tip mate, I'm gonna see if they've got any Attack patches as well just to see if I can get this sorted in Attack first. I've actually sorta solved the problem now by managing to get roughly what I want outa my supernova, tbh I've never really used it for drums but it does a bloody good job of them, I was quite surprised with the results, but it also helps that I know that synth very well. Pain in the ass recording everything in though.

[loopdon]

i zipped up some attack presets of unknown origin that i found on my hdd:

http://www.mediafire.com/?4lzxly3yzky

[Tyrisia]

snagged - cheers Loopdon, much appreciated.

[dirty_bass]

and tuning the snare relative to the kick/route note of the bassline is always worth a try as well.

you could have a kick a G1(49 Hz) and a snare tuned to G3 (196 Hz) as an example. makes them gel a lot better. although that would be a more 'smacky' snare than what you seem to be after.

if you lay down a bassline that is in a minor you could have a kickdrum at the route note, A1 (55 Hz) or maybe A2 (110 Hz) depending on how you like it and in which octave(s) the bassline plays. tuning the snare to a note from the scale of a minor would deffo help, possible at a muliple of A1, say A3 (220 Hz).

A minor scale notes are: A,B,C,D,E,F#,G#,A

so you could pick any of those notes to tune your snare and (every) other instrument to. only tuning all the instruments to A would prolly sound weird. Dirty_Bass said something along these lines in his excellent little tutorial.

back to topic: bitcrush/reduce ftw



Ok, took me a long time to get round to this sorry.

Well, basing my comments on the examples you posted.

What you are looking at is less attack, without, pulling back on the attack of the sound, and thus losing overal snap and impact.


Very very simple solution to this.
Compression.
With a real fast attack and long release, and reasonably crushing threshold and high reduction ratio, the compression will reduce the audible difference between the initial peak of the attack phase, by flattening out overall volume.
You will get a nice big punchy sound, but with reduced attack phase.

Then to replicate the sound on that sample, a little post compression bit reduction or waveshaping will give it that final fizz.

Easy.

Compression is a tool of many uses, make it your best friend.

[Tyrisia]

Many thanks Dirty, I'll try this first thing tomorrow, must admit compression as a sound tool hasn't really clicked with me yet, but hopefully with the advice you give I'll be able to replicate the sound to good effect.

Yet another problem sorted by the good people here, many thanks to all.

[loopdon]

i agree with steve here. having gone deeper into compression i must admit that i underestimated the possibilities that compression has on offer. i'd really start out with a basic compressor, possibly gui-less so you can work out exactly how you can sculpt sounds with it. drum-loops are nice to test compressors on. i sat down on several occasions with my only goal being to find out how you can sculpt sounds with it.

starting out with good sound sources, be it via synthesis or samples or a blend of both will be of great help as well. i wouldn't compress anything for the sake of it and always check back later if what sounded wicked the evening before isn't to squashed next morning.

parallel compression enables you to combine extreme squashing with the original soundsource and more and more, even free, compressors offer this via a mix button (dry/wet control).

[dirty_bass]

Yes it`s easy to overuse compression.
But also, compression has many uses, so it`s not only a case of when, but of how, as well.

As for parallel compression.
I`m not convinced. I`ve never really seen it or used it in a proper hardware studio, so in my opinion if you are needing to mix in some original sound source, then you`ve probably just compressed the sound wrongly/badly

[Tyrisia]

yeah loopdon, i've been using parallel compression on a return channel for a while to phatten up the whole mix, work's a treat, but i've got a good grip of everything else in my studio environment, and purposefully left compression until I had a good grip of all the other stuff as i know that if i've got crap sounds etc even a compressor can only do so much.

i've just tried out dirty's tip and on headphones anyways it's sounding more like what i'm after, it's the release bit of it i've had trouble gettin to grips with for some reason, but i read a tutorial on my Master X3 tc plugin and it explained it so well, that the penny dropped and it hasn't been as much of a mystery since. I'll actually post that tute as it could be of some use.

[loopdon]

Yes it`s easy to overuse compression.
But also, compression has many uses, so it`s not only a case of when, but of how, as well.

As for parallel compression.
I`m not convinced. I`ve never really seen it or used it in a proper hardware studio, so in my opinion if you are needing to mix in some original sound source, then you`ve probably just compressed the sound wrongly/badly

What's the definition of "wrongly/badly"? Now that's thin ice to me.

If you think of it, it's nothing but layering, i'd say. I want certain qualities from the original sample mixed in with changed/exaggerated qualities caused by compression.

I could of course do that on two separate channels.

But if i am true i don't know if i do it very often or always? Same as with sidechaining something to something; but i daren't say it's useless or bad practice just because i don't always/ever use it.

[dirty_bass]

What's the definition of "wrongly/badly"? Now that's thin ice to me.

If you think of it, it's nothing but layering, i'd say. I want certain qualities from the original sample mixed in with changed/exaggerated qualities caused by compression.

I could of course do that on two separate channels.

But if i am true i don't know if i do it very often or always? Same as with sidechaining something to something; but i daren't say it's useless or bad practice just because i don't always/ever use it.

I dunno, in my head, if you want the original source back in the mix, then why did you compress in the first place.
Also you will be mixing adjusted EQ (due to the compression) with the original intended EQ and...
Well there`s a whole load of reasons why I see this as a bad idea in all but very specific uses.
Most people don`t understand compression as it is, without having a wet/dry mix to really screw up the mix.