Hi stonebridge, you are the KING of house as far as i'm concerned:)
I am a budding music producer using pro tools le but i can never seem to create the KILLER drum feel you get.
Would you mind telling me which compressors you use for drums?
Do you compress each drum sound with different compressors or do you just use one compressor for the whole drum loop?
I have £1500 to spend on pro plugins - i need compressors mainly because I find all my tracks are missing the vital indregient and since you are the don who better to give advise!
Tom, it's actually not that complicated - just takes a bit of time. First of all: Get a couple of good kick drums and keep collecting in a folder on your computer. The same goes for snares, claps and hi hats. The first thing you do when you start a production is a basic kit with a kick, snare or clap and hi hat. Then you can experiment with beats from records by syncing them up to your basic kit. Then record a section of these beats, chop them up to the smallest ingredient (this is key to get tight drums). Also filter out the lower bass from these parts so they don't phase with your kick. Once it's rock solid, you bounce the sampled drums (record to disk - don't glue them together). Now you have three mono tracks and a stereo loop that you can move around and copy easily. I usually have 8 bar segments and I also try to do a couple of variations of the sample like: just kick and snare, just kick, drop in the end etc. You might need another loop for more percussive feel, just repeat the same formula. Also try to re-program the sampled beats since you don't want someone elses drums straight from the record. Also, never sample signature producer sounds, go for the basic stuff like nice hats or kick sounds.
If you use this technique, you don't really have to compress individual sounds, but instead master the whole mix on the master fader once you're getting close to finished.
I bet you are Jdot, but even though a lot of programs does the editing for you, nothing beats the manual approach when you want tight beats. Saying that though, the loop preview in Logic 7 is awesome and saves tons of time not having to time stretch every bloody loop you want to check.
