Ride Cymbals

[duffdeal]

Does anyone out there know how some producers make their cymbals sound like one continous trebbly hiss rather than individual hits? Would love to know. Hope you know what I'm on about

[heavy beats]

compression

and for some reason, it already sounds like that if you're pulling the sounds straight from the 909

[duffdeal]

Can you expand on that at all ( the compression bit ). I have tried but the results have been far from ideal.

[thetonewrecka]

Well, if you are cutting your samples, just remove the attack and paste them together...sizzzzzzzling.

[duffdeal]

With say sound forge or something similar? I have never delved into the realms of pasting samples.

[thetonewrecka]

Sure..soundforge, wavelab, cool edit, goldwave, whatever. If you have a sampler, chop it off in there, experiment with looping it and then sequence your specific rhythmic divisions while playing with loop length, loop range, etc. Punch it through some reverb to give some more "space" to those frequencies and resample it.

wrap your head in layers of aluminum foil and mic it up while a friend slaps you in the face with some nice hard 16th notes. That'll be sizzling too.

[thetonewrecka]

I should've added that the compression works fine as you are simply trying to "stop" those attack transients from being audible and making you hear each specific "hit" of the cymbal. The sample chopping is a work around so you don't have to give up your compressor for the cymbals if you have other things you need to use it for.

But maybe you have a computer with 300 different software compressors in which case I'd recommend the aluminum foil face slapping. :-)

good luck!

[duffdeal]

Cheers

[loopdon]

Things I found on this Board an pasted together as a 'sticky' for myself:

Ridez:

:!: I read some where else I while back that one way to get ride symbals to kind of "ssssh" and ride across bars (I guess like a Ben Sims track) is to get a 909 ride to distort by having the channel fader turned right down, gain and treble right up, reduced attack and a little delay.

:!: hmm try with pitching down the ride and using a bit of reverb.

:!: compress the life out of it!! will help aswell...

:!: run yer rides through a compressor, and sidechain the compressor to your kick, so the rides will pump with the kick, and heavy compression will give em that distorted head slicing sound.

:!: Hey, if you don´t like to compress your 909 Ride, just open a Fruity Granulizer and stretch the ride out, it´ll work for sure.
And one more thing; try to find a Ride sample with very long release time and skip to cut it when you step it out.

:!: yeah some nice long reverb i tend to use and a little drive, keep them as low as possible too but without losing the effect.

:!: yeah try putting another small hat pattern on top of your normal ones - just stick a few in and put a ping pong delay on em - add a wee bit of top end distortion and filter em right up so they are very very thin - then turn the vol up a bit so you can hear it again & maybe add a reverb lightly and that will open things up somwhat for you

:!: Heavily limit a ride. Sidechain the limiter (or compressor) to a kick so it pumps and fizzes. Plenty of verb too. I think thats what you are aiming for.

:!: 909 ride + treble, -mid, ickle compression/distortion, maybe ickle reverb. Done.
Don't sit it too high in the mix.

:!: i was just gonna reccomend compressing the hell out of a long ride cymbal. boosting the level of the sound as its supposed to be dying out should give it a hissing effect, especially if you over compress a little bit and get that whoosy noise added in....

:!: I found taking the attack off the front of the ride also works well. Sort of decline the ramp until each ride blends with the other.

:!: Yeah, do what bub said. Take some attack off the ride, whack the gain up to maximum (assuming you're using an analogue desk), set treble to maximum, and also mid if you have a sweeping mid, and set the sweep to the top. Then as apus said keep the fader quite low.

:!: Tuning the ride quite high can help too.

:!: distort - reverb - compress the shit- eq ...

:!: compress, distort 2 fizzle, cut a lot of the "bass" with eq!... also use a very busy and repetitive sequence... U might add a little verb 2!

hope that helpz!

loopdon

[duffdeal]

Jobsagoodun

[Evil G]

something else to try is reversing the sample.

[scienceofuse]

Maybe try putting the ride hit on the odd steps (1,3,5,7 etc.) in the drum sequencer instead of just going for the off-beat (3,7,11 etc.)... Worx 4 me! Oh yeah, and like the guys said, compression really helps too. :lol:

[Jimfish]

:!: I read some where else I while back that one way to get ride symbals to kind of "ssssh" and ride across bars (I guess like a Ben Sims track) is to get a 909 ride to distort by having the channel fader turned right down, gain and treble right up, reduced attack and a little delay.

:!: compress the life out of it!! will help aswell...

:!: run yer rides through a compressor, and sidechain the compressor to your kick, so the rides will pump with the kick, and heavy compression will give em that distorted head slicing sound.

:!: yeah some nice long reverb i tend to use and a little drive, keep them as low as possible too but without losing the effect.

:!: Heavily limit a ride. Sidechain the limiter (or compressor) to a kick so it pumps and fizzes. Plenty of verb too. I think thats what you are aiming for.

:!: 909 ride + treble, -mid, ickle compression/distortion, maybe ickle reverb. Done.
Don't sit it too high in the mix.

:!: i was just gonna reccomend compressing the hell out of a long ride cymbal. boosting the level of the sound as its supposed to be dying out should give it a hissing effect, especially if you over compress a little bit and get that whoosy noise added in....

:!: distort - reverb - compress the shit- eq ...

:!: compress, distort 2 fizzle, cut a lot of the "bass" with eq!... also use a very busy and repetitive sequence... U might add a little verb 2!

hope that helpz!

loopdon

yep, thats about the gist of it..

plus you can try adding distortion to only the higher bands after compressing it..

also try putting a heavily distorted, very compressed and a fair bit reverbed ride in the background subtly behind a main one, that'll smooth it out for sure

[acidchild]

The thing is...the 909's Ride already sounds like this naturaly. Throw it on all 16 steps. There ya go=o] Werks for me!

[loopdon]

ridez rock

[Craig McW]

I found also that some filters can add sizzle on top of your compression and reverb to a nice ride.

[Internal Error Records]

if you are using samples - try triggering them in 'note off mode' or 'mono' instead of playing them in 'poly' which is often the default setting on akai's or often the only setting on softsamplers. (score one for hardware:-)

play in mono rapidily, butt them up to eachother. not spaced out.

[AcidTrash]

i wouldn't listen to him. what do yanks know about techno???? ;) :p

[acidchild]

OI! I resemble that remark!

[Internal Error Records]

i wouldn't listen to him. what do yanks know about techno???? ;) :p

hey now. dont make me flyer over to the UK (and have to eat that awsome curry chicken that British Airways serves. mmmm) Just to have to kick your butt. heheheh