Dance electronica - How can I improve my drums?

[mikeymike2000]

I submitted "Glassy Eyes" to 3 listings. All were returned. Two for the reason of being not close enough to the reference artists. This leads me to believe it is OK as a whole and could work for something as-is.

The last return said drums sounded thin and mechanical.

Personally I think the drums sound pretty realistic and sit well in the mix.

How can I tweak the drums to be more lifelike?

Also any other general comments are welcomed.

Thanks in advance for your time!

[jazzstan]

The drums had more of a busy rock feel and sound, versus an electronica vibe, which tend to be darker, simpler and with very few "fills" .. at least to my ears. They also sounded very up front on my little computer speakers, so seemed a bit detached from the rest of the mix.

[mikeymike2000]

Hey Stan!

Thanks for the reply.

While this style is "out of my comfort zone" I am glad I reached out there....

I had NEVER considered the idea behind your comment. The loop while being a sample of live drums was from the folder of "alternative" and I do have dance and electric folders. I picked this one cause I liked the sound and beat but didn't think for a second I should keep it within genre. What a fool I am. HAHAHA

That said, any suggestions on panning or reverb to get a dance loop to site better in the mix? (once I use the proper genre loop)

[davewalton]

I think one thing that would *really* help is if you went to iTunes and did a search for "DJ Electronica Trance". That should pull up something like 12 albums of different dance styles. I think if you do that and listen to a few tracks while reading my comments below, some of this will start to make more sense.

There's a few things that are REQUIRED for doing anything in this genre. First is the kick drum. ALWAYS 4x4... BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM or THUD THUD THUD THUD or whatever kick sound you choose. Second is that there's usually some kind of off-beat hi-hat like on the "and" or whatever. Snare, if any, is almost always two and four. There's really never any fills in the traditional sense, no Keith Moon style tom-tom stuff. If there is anything it's the snare "roll" that starts with maybe 8th notes and quickly progressing to 16th, 32nd and 64th note "roll". That's almost always to ramp things up to introduce either a new section or a fairly major addition to the groove. Oh, and the drums are ALWAYS processed or electronic. Never "real".

The groove. You'll notice that there's LOTS of repetition. The trick of this genre is to find a groove and pretty much lock it in, slowly build on that groove by slightly modifying maybe the sound (like synth tweaks) and also slowly adding additional elements until you hit some kind of climax. Then... break it all down and slowly build it back up again. It's formulaic for sure. It's not a "song" in the traditional sense. There's no verse, no chorus. It's actually not easy to build slowly enough to keep the groove while at the same time not sounding too repetitive and boring. Most of these tracks you'll listen to are really long, like almost 9 minutes long. With that kind of length their "buildup" is REALLY slow. We have to build things up, break them down, build them back up again in just two or three minutes. We do what they do, we just do it in a shorter period of time, but the idea is the same.

Anyway, those iTunes examples should really help. If you A/B your track against any of those tracks you'll hear that your track sounds very different and those tracks all sound similar to each other. The goal is for your track to not sound different.

FWIW, I'd start fresh and try to work something up using a few of those tracks as a guideline. Try to get the basic simple beats, grooves and sounds that they've got going. It's a REAL learning process and not as easy as it sounds like it should be!

Good luck!

Dave

PS - A friend of mine gave me a visual one time that helped me "get" what the music is all about. All these people on the dance floor are wide-eyed and totally tweaked out on all kinds of sweat-inducing drugs. They can't focus on much of anything so you have to give them something VERY simple to lock on to. When you lock them in with the beat, if you do anything too sudden or abrupt, you'll lose them and they'll all walk off the dance floor. You have to keep them in a trance, which as a sub-genre of Dance/Electronicia, didn't get it's name for nothing.

[andygabrys]

that is all solid advice above.

For what follows, I am not an expert in this genre, but there are some things you might check out.

about the "thin" drum sound.

take the kick for example

Its not uncommon to have three or more tracks of kick going that as a composite give you the sound.

ex.
One for sub
One for a chesty sound
one for snap

probably leaning more towards Drum machine kind of sounds (808 or 909 etc.) instead of live kick sounds (i.e. so no or very little ambience)

mixed and optimized to give a nice full range sound. Often this music is kinda of minimalistic. so the kick can take up a fair amount of real estate.

same deal for snares.

and like dave says, all leaning towards the fantasy end of things rather than "real".

possibly hi-Hats with autopanning etc.

then usually all the synths and the bass line will be squashed with a compressor side chained to the kick - something like a VCA with a fast attack and release timed to the tempo of the track. Every time the kick hits, the compressor ducks everything else 3-4 dB (adjust to taste). The result is a louder overall track, audibility of the kick and the bass even though they hit at the same time, and the characteristic "pumping" sound of most dance-type music. Actually not that different from mixing rock kick and bass except in dance music all the synths and harmonic stuff is pumping along with the bass.

for sounds, you also can't really go far wrong with automated low-pass filters and the like so even when stuff is drilling you in the eye-sockets with its repetitiveness, at least there is some motion in the track.

Hope that helps.

[DesireInspires]

Drums don't matter too much in Electronic music. The chords and fills do most of the work.

A standard kick and snare with the four-on-the-floor rhythm is just for the technical aspect for a song to be 'Electronic'.


Check out this video for an example of what I am talking about: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5l7fZXRpXJI

[mikeymike2000]

I appreciate everyone's comments!

Just to put one more thought out there... I thought this may also "double" as Indy Pop instrumental. I'm guessing I am way off on that too.

[thekman]

Dave and Andy nailed it!

You HAVE to stack your samples. The most popular and exploding sub genre right now is dubstep and you won't find any of those cats using less than 3 samples stacked at a time. (in general)

Also, having really nice sounds to begin with help a ton. For example, Deadmau5 has a nice pack you can download.

Thud, thud, thud ya'll.

Have fun and good luck!
Kyle

[Len911]

Wave Alchemy??

http://www.wavealchemy.co.uk/drum-samples/ty1

If you have cubase, just go from the media browser and load the sounds into grooveagent one.

They seem pretty reasonable, downloadable, and sound great to me. There also some free loops as well toward the end of the 21 pages, anyway you can audition them.

[2lane]

I think one thing that would *really* help is if you went to iTunes and did a search for "DJ Electronica Trance". That should pull up something like 12 albums of different dance styles. I think if you do that and listen to a few tracks while reading my comments below, some of this will start to make more sense.

There's a few things that are REQUIRED for doing anything in this genre. First is the kick drum. ALWAYS 4x4... BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM or THUD THUD THUD THUD or whatever kick sound you choose. Second is that there's usually some kind of off-beat hi-hat like on the "and" or whatever. Snare, if any, is almost always two and four. There's really never any fills in the traditional sense, no Keith Moon style tom-tom stuff. If there is anything it's the snare "roll" that starts with maybe 8th notes and quickly progressing to 16th, 32nd and 64th note "roll". That's almost always to ramp things up to introduce either a new section or a fairly major addition to the groove. Oh, and the drums are ALWAYS processed or electronic. Never "real".

The groove. You'll notice that there's LOTS of repetition. The trick of this genre is to find a groove and pretty much lock it in, slowly build on that groove by slightly modifying maybe the sound (like synth tweaks) and also slowly adding additional elements until you hit some kind of climax. Then... break it all down and slowly build it back up again. It's formulaic for sure. It's not a "song" in the traditional sense. There's no verse, no chorus. It's actually not easy to build slowly enough to keep the groove while at the same time not sounding too repetitive and boring. Most of these tracks you'll listen to are really long, like almost 9 minutes long. With that kind of length their "buildup" is REALLY slow. We have to build things up, break them down, build them back up again in just two or three minutes. We do what they do, we just do it in a shorter period of time, but the idea is the same.

Anyway, those iTunes examples should really help. If you A/B your track against any of those tracks you'll hear that your track sounds very different and those tracks all sound similar to each other. The goal is for your track to not sound different.

FWIW, I'd start fresh and try to work something up using a few of those tracks as a guideline. Try to get the basic simple beats, grooves and sounds that they've got going. It's a REAL learning process and not as easy as it sounds like it should be!

Good luck!

Dave

PS - A friend of mine gave me a visual one time that helped me "get" what the music is all about. All these people on the dance floor are wide-eyed and totally tweaked out on all kinds of sweat-inducing drugs. They can't focus on much of anything so you have to give them something VERY simple to lock on to. When you lock them in with the beat, if you do anything too sudden or abrupt, you'll lose them and they'll all walk off the dance floor. You have to keep them in a trance, which as a sub-genre of Dance/Electronicia, didn't get it's name for nothing.

Man Dave, I know you never would, but you should charge for advice that good
Steve