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/nord...ercussion.html

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/Jul0...ecrets0702.asp

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/May0...ecrets0502.asp

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/Feb0...ecrets0202.asp

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/Sep0...hsecrets09.asp

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/Apr0...ecrets0402.asp

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/Nov0...ecrets1101.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

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

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