Adding 'Weight' To Your Snare Hits
- Thread starter dacalion
- Start date
Formant024
Digital Smokerings
ill o.g.
Eq'ing before hand is/can be good but from a mixing point of view i'd advice to keep the eq neutral. This is to stay in terms of non destructive editing/mixing once youve tracked the mpc which gives you better control of the mix opposed to mixing on the mpc itself.
Not saying it cant be done but im following the principle that what you sample is already mastered. Its easy to compensate the quality of your speakers with the "fatness" of sound but in most cases, the sound is right already.
Not saying it cant be done but im following the principle that what you sample is already mastered. Its easy to compensate the quality of your speakers with the "fatness" of sound but in most cases, the sound is right already.
spot on regards to sampled sounds being already mastered. You're basically eq'ing something that has been 'eq'd to perfection(almost) - at least for its application.
I'd half disagree with the firs tthing however... although, I too, love having a neutral sound/sample, sometimes it is best to "commit" to a sound, as it saves time and can improve your mix, because you're making things fit from the start, as opposed to trying to make everything fit later.
It's akin to buying clothes... would you buy a suit that fits like a glove, or buy one way too huge and spend all that extra time trying to get it to fit???
This goes for production too... careful shot selection. If you keep adding loads of sounds, you end up with a lot of unecessary stuff, if you pick your sounds right, from the beginning, choosing where and what there role is... your mix will come together a lot easier.
That's my own finding, and advice given to me first-hand from pros.
Formant024
Digital Smokerings
ill o.g.
dude i love dirth but this becomes even better when knowing the ethics, sorry if i dont give much credit to the ghetto style of doing things hehe. Things ive seen and liked are SP's with parametric moog eq's, my vestax eq's on the pro5 and 7 arent sufficient to correct it properly.
Depending on the daw you work with, you could make a monitormix and eq there while doing undestructive tracking. Once tracked you can copy/paste the settings from the your monitoring or properly touch up/correct the material.
Yeah that's a good way to go about it.
I still think it's very worth considering where/what you want a sound to do before you even think about adding/choosing/playing/recording it.
Cause as I'm sure you know, even with micing you can strongly effect the sound of something.
I'd still say know where and what you want your sound to do before adding it... Sometimes you'll barely have to 'mix' much because of things fitting together pretty good from the jump.
idk about labeling a sample 'safe' just because its already been mastered. I think its a matter of what you're looking for in the end. I say that because most of the samples that we use were mastered 40 or so yrs ago as opposed to sampling something of today. Everything has changed from the gear and monitors that they used back then to what people want to hear now. 70's music in general is just so dull compared to todays music.
Formant024
Digital Smokerings
ill o.g.
hehe well, lots of mastering is done preferably on vintage gear, 40 years or older. The point about that era was that there no was no other way but discrete and tube based designes. i agree that a lot will sound dull but probably for various reasons but you wont remaster them with an average 2 or 3 band eq.
That being said, i mostly take time to sample materiaal before even using it and tackle the audio restauration before chopping. This way i dont have to look into it when mixing (keeping a pace in my workflow) when working with just the mpc.
Again, this is just ethics, I've heard enough stuff from my favorite artists who didnt apply it and made killer tracks (mf doom).
Honestly, I don't take that route as much as I should, but yeah, I think it would be good practice and I think your results (depending on what you're shooting for) will probably come out better as far as clarity BUT then again, grimeyness is a part of Hip Hop, even a little mud in some basslines is acceptable in Hip Hop. This may even touch on the forbidden 'analog vs digital debate' but the desire for the vintage gear feel really supports having that old sound that vintage gear gives you, whereas digital can be more precise. imo, it's all about balancing both and preference. Personally, I like a little grime mixed with clarity, I want my bottom end to have that vintage sound (with a little more umph to it than back in the day) and my drums clean and crisp on top but not a lot of separation, kinda borderline or a nice blend of between the two. Hank Shocklee is a master at it.
You got to think though... Near enough everything that has been mastered has been subject to a string of distortion... Through the analogue gear, throught the compression, saturation, limiting, eqing etc etc... It has laready been subject to a lot of squashing and distorting, by the time you get your hands on it you're distorting distortion...
Imaging someone diluted some juice, then you dilute it, then someone else dilutes it. That's a lot of dilution! Will just end up with water.
Imaging someone diluted some juice, then you dilute it, then someone else dilutes it. That's a lot of dilution! Will just end up with water.
That's the thing though, if the imperfection has already been added, further imperfection will likely just ruin it (not in a good way).
The more something's been processed, the more you run out of options for what to do with it.
The more something's been processed, the more you run out of options for what to do with it.
It's not really getting off topic, this info can be applied to adding weight to snares. Plus nobody is complaining...lol. Your point is valid but highly exaggerated considering that most samples are taken from the original mastered release and it would take way more processing than needed to make the sample undesirable (imo). I mean if I really believed that my process of chopping a sample and adding some eq or whatever else to it would basically destroy it, then the only thing left to do is not sample at all and that's not Hip Hop. Not saying that Hip Hop is ALL sampling but it's got it's place in the genre.
I'm saying though, if you sample a sampled record, that someone else sampled... how many processes has that kick drum/whatever gone through.
Lets say the original engineer boosted, second boosted, someone sampled boosted, you boosted. Etc
Or compressing³³³
I'm sure you get my point, and I get yours too, it's not totally black and white, but worth thinking about if youre considering sampling etccc!
Lets say the original engineer boosted, second boosted, someone sampled boosted, you boosted. Etc
Or compressing³³³
I'm sure you get my point, and I get yours too, it's not totally black and white, but worth thinking about if youre considering sampling etccc!
Lets use a snare hit as an example...when sampling, your searching for a specific snare based on it's sound, nobody knows what that snare has been through but if it sounds right you use it...if the snare sounds bad, over compressed or whatever then you find another and make it sound right to your preference. That simple.
FanRan
Member
^
co sign this. I love when something has a little grime and grit to it. As long as it's not muddy or distorting, it's good for me. Everybody got their own way of doing shit. I just love the simpleness of eq'ing it on my vestax and maybe a little more on the mpc. I keep my shit real simple. Barely even fuck with the levels or eq's in cubase. Whatever it sounds like in the mpc is basically what it's gonna sound like in the end for me.
co sign this. I love when something has a little grime and grit to it. As long as it's not muddy or distorting, it's good for me. Everybody got their own way of doing shit. I just love the simpleness of eq'ing it on my vestax and maybe a little more on the mpc. I keep my shit real simple. Barely even fuck with the levels or eq's in cubase. Whatever it sounds like in the mpc is basically what it's gonna sound like in the end for me.
I love big gritty-ass drums too.
What I'm saying though is if a snare for example has already been grittified to the max, then had mastering on top of it, then you process it and crunch it even more, it still has to go to mastering. Could easily end up way over processed/clipped/distorted before you realise it.
What I'm saying though is if a snare for example has already been grittified to the max, then had mastering on top of it, then you process it and crunch it even more, it still has to go to mastering. Could easily end up way over processed/clipped/distorted before you realise it.
Ahhh, this is why this is a great discussion! In the mixing process - If the snare that you like has already been grittified to the max plus already mastered on top of it, then you don't process that snare anymore. You process everything else. I like using a multiband compressor for this exact reason. I have control over any band or group of freqs that I choose. I can compress hard and even not compress - all at the same time.
The mastering process - Same thing, this snare can't handle any more processing so you don't process it. Ideally, this is the perfect scenario, the less processing the better! So now the engineer or you, only have to make sure the volume of your snare fits.
That's largely what I'm saying - but I bet barely many at all consider this...
Also when whacked through a tonne of high end outboard, and re compressed, limited, converted etc, this will add more degradation to the snare... Could enhance it, but ultimately more distortion, perhaps not an undesirable amount, but it will add it certainly.
I've seen commercial tracks with snare that couldn't possibly go through the same kind of mastering again, else would sound distorted to hell!
Also when whacked through a tonne of high end outboard, and re compressed, limited, converted etc, this will add more degradation to the snare... Could enhance it, but ultimately more distortion, perhaps not an undesirable amount, but it will add it certainly.
I've seen commercial tracks with snare that couldn't possibly go through the same kind of mastering again, else would sound distorted to hell!
Yeah I've seen whole tracks that wouldn't touch with a processor but that won't stop me from chopping them up...lol. I feel you though, choosing the right stuff to process is both a experience and a judgement call. Great points on this matter, I'm glad that you mentioned it, hopefully it will help someone.