#126: How to Make Your Drums Hit Harder | Compression and Distortion for Punchy Drums

Ever faced the frustration of making hard-hitting drums? Maybe you want to create a punchy kick drum, learn more about drum compression and drum distortion, or even just how to make drums more punchy in Logic Pro. Then check out EP 126 of the Inside The Mix podcast.

In this episode of Inside the Mix, I'm sharing my journey that led to a revolution in the sound of my song "Alive" and how you can achieve that same fierce punch in your tracks. Discover how a peer's critique flipped my approach on its head, leading me to unearth the power of Soundtoys' Devil-Loc Deluxe - a tool that injects aggression into the politest of beats. But don't worry, for those without this magic plugin, I also break down how to wield Logic Pro's arsenal to craft that same raw energy that your drums desperately need.

Step into my studio as I lay out a roadmap for creating a 'drum-dirt' channel right in Logic Pro, complete with a play-by-play on squeezing every ounce of power from a FET compressor, followed by a layer of heavy, satisfying distortion. I'm not just talking about any distortion – I'm talking about that gritty, make-your-heartbeat-faster kind. And for those who hit a snag or two along the way, your music production puzzles are always welcome here.

Submit a music production or mixing question and feature on the podcast: https://www.speakpipe.com/InsideTheMixPodcast

Listen to Alive on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/6GqJSdal2g9olwR0I2F7Pb?si=b0b58bc4929f4918

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

You're listening to the Inside the Mix podcast with your host, mark Matthews. Hello and welcome to the Inside the Mix podcast. I'm Mark Matthews, your host, musician, producer and mix and mastering engineer. You've come to the right place if you want to know more about your favourite synth music artists, music engineering and production, songwriting and the music industry. I've been writing, producing, mixing and mastering music for over 15 years and I want to share what I've learnt with you. Hello, folks, and welcome back to the Inside the Mix podcast. As always, if you are a new listener, make sure you hit that subscribe button on your podcast player of choice, and also, if you're watching this or listening on YouTube, make sure you hit subscribe and that notification bell so you know when a new episode drops.

Speaker 1: 0:45

So recently, just this week, I've been going down the rabbit hole of finding an alternative to Callanly. Now I use that for booking podcast interviews, the producer's pub discovery calls and other bits and pieces as well, and I was paying X amount a month and I thought is there a cheaper alternative out there that would do the same thing? And I found one Tidy Cow. It actually came up in an Instagram advert and it's probably the first time in a long, long while that I've actually stopped looked at an Instagram advert, read the comments and thought actually that would work for me. And I looked at it and I give it a go and it turns out it would do everything I need it to do that Callanly can do, and it is a fraction of the cost. It's a one-off cost as well. I'm not a salesman for Tidy Cow, but I thought I'd share it because it's one of those ones where it's quite easy as creative. So you sign up to all these different subscription-based services and you just forget about them and then they just every month, that money just trickles out of your account, and it's not until you go and look back at your thing. Actually am I still using that and I was using Callanly, but I thought there must be a cheaper alternative or better alternative, because I wasn't using all the functionality that I was paying for and Tidy Cow can certainly do that. The only thing it cannot do that I use for Callanly would to have or embed HTML code or script on my website so I could have a pop-up button to book a discovery call. But, to be honest with you, didn't really use it anyway, and I think the only other thing it cannot do is it can send interview or invite reminders, but you cannot. You can customize one, but you cannot customize more than one invite reminder for a particular booking, if that makes sense. Anyway, this isn't about Tidy Cow, but I thought I'd share it with you. Basically, what I've learned is just to check all your subscriptions, because it's quite easy to have them mount up and then not actually use them. But let's dive into this week's episode.

Speaker 1: 2:36

So before Christmas I released an EP called Lost and Found blah, blah, blah. I've been through it numerous times on this podcast and one of the songs is called Alive. And part of my creative process is to send my mixes out for peer review. And if you don't do that, I strongly encourage you to do it, because often what you'll find is that little bit of the mix that you're stuck on. Your peer won't even pick up on it. I find that there's this vocal section I'm like not quite right and nobody ever picks up on it. And then I'm thinking, actually paralysis by analysis. Okay.

Speaker 1: 3:09

So in this instance, an individual said to me Mark, your drums are a bit too polite. And listening back I think, yeah, they were in that first mix. They were kind of like. They sounded good but they were like hey, I'm drums and I wanted them to be like. You know what? I am a drum kit. You know I'm trying not to shout into the microphone because I don't want it to peak.

Speaker 1: 3:31

So what I did was I set up an auxiliary send and I used the Devil Lock Deluxe plug in by Sound Toys just to add a bit of power, a bit of grit, a bit of unpoliteness to those drums. I wanted to make them more offensive and if you're unfamiliar with the Devil Lock plug in, so I've taken this from their website. It's inspired by the classic Shaw level lock, mike limiter. These plugins add huge sucking compression, grit, dirt and distortion and take drums, but try it anywhere to a wonderful, hellish nightmare. Actually, that's taken from the supplies website, but in this example that I'm going to show you now, I'm going to recreate that effect using native Logic Pro plugins. So let's give it a go.

Speaker 1: 4:17

So here we are in Logic Pro and I'm going to play you the drums without my drum dirt auxiliary channel that I've set up here in Logic Pro. So what I'm going to do is basically I'm going to bus my drum channel out, my drum stack my drum folder to this auxiliary send titled drum dirt, and this is what it sounds like at the moment. Without this dirtiness, this unaffensiveness, added Sounds pretty good already. Nice bit delay going on there. It slaps as it is, but in the context of the mix it was just a bit too polite and I wanted to like scream I am some heavy ass drums, right.

Speaker 1: 5:02

So on this drum dirt channel I've got the Logic Pro compressor which you heard me in episode one to five banging on about because I love it so much. I think it's fantastic and I'm using my favorite compressor version in here, the Studio FET, which is a mimics, a transistor compressor, so transistor circuit. So it's mimicking that tube valve warmth and it's known for its speed. So I use it because I wanted to clamp down on those transients. So this is a transient heavy sound, right, it's a drum kit and it's going to add some punch and also a bit of color as well, and I'm going to combine that with the Logic Pro distortion to plug in afterwards, which I'll demonstrate in a minute.

Speaker 1: 5:46

So my auxiliary send going out to my drum dirt channel is actually set to pre fader and I went through this in episode 125. But the reason being, if I make level changes to my drum kit, I don't want it to affect the performance of the compressor. Okay, so I want the compressor to stay how I set it, regardless of how I change the level of the group of instruments that I'm sending to it. And that's why I'm using pre fader. And here is my drum dirt channel. So let's solo that.

Speaker 1: 6:23

And what I'm aiming for here is I want about minus 10 dB of gain reduction. I've got it set to four to one. In terms of ratio, makeup gain is off at the moment. I don't like using auto gain makeup. I've got a fast attack on this is at 15 milliseconds. In fact, I might put that 30. I just might actually leave it at 15, I'm gonna leave it at 15. And I've got the release set. Well, that's way too high. I want it 242 milliseconds. I've got the release set about 240 milliseconds to breathe with the track. What I don't want is to hear audible pumping. So let's give that a go. And then I'm going to increase the output gain to compensate for that gain reduction. So let's give it a go. Okay, cool.

Speaker 1: 7:16

What I'm going to do now is I'm just going to go to my, I'm on the mix bus here, so I live on the mix bus and I'm going to quickly stick the metering tool in there on the RON 1 metering loudness meter, and I'm just going to check to see where my gain compensation is at. So this is without about minus 23 laughs in terms of short term and with the compressor on I wasn't too far off. I'm just going to bring it down by a couple of DB, so gain compensation about six DB. So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to drag that down, that drum dirt. I'm going to drag it down to zero and then I'm going to bring it in. I'm probably going to bring it into around minus 12 DB and then you'll start to hear it. So let's give it a go.

Speaker 1: 8:08

So it's going to start without the drum dirt channel and bring it in and there we go, that's minus 12 DB on that drum dirt channel. So I'll mute it and then I'll bring it in. In fact I'll play it with and then I'll take it out. So this is with the drum dirt channel in and this is without, okay, and this is with. So you can hear, that's probably too high. Actually I'm going to bring it down to about minus 15 DB, but you can hear the difference. It's just making it that bit more offensive. It's just making it that it's louder in essence. Yes, so you're going to need to check what you're doing in your mix bus if you've got any processing going on there. But it certainly sounds more powerful, right.

Speaker 1: 9:16

What I'm also going to do, then, is I've got this distortion to plug in and I've got it set to the nasty distortion heavy and it's about. I've got it at minus 46%. So I'll put it all the way up to 100% so you can hear what it sounds like, and I'll just bring my drum dirt channel up again. So it's a bit too loud and let's have a listen. Too much, right, let's drag it down. But yeah, I think I think around minus minus. I think around 46% was about right.

Speaker 1: 9:56

But you'll notice the great thing about this distortion to plug in it kind of mimics the controls of the devil lock. If I open devil lock and I've just enabled it rather than opened it you'll see you've got the mix. You've got darkness, crunch and crush, and in the distortion to plug in you've got tone and I'm using that to control that darkness, and then I've got drive which is going to control that sort of crunch and crush as well, and then also I've got my compressor which is doing the whole crunch and crushing as well. So I've combining two native plugins to get the sound of the devil lock. Now this is a good opportunity to AB between the devil lock plug in the devil lock deluxe and my custom customized version. It'd be great if I had a macro here to quickly flick between the two. So I'm going to play the compressor and distortion to Logic Pro plugins first, okay, and then this is the devil lock plug in Now.

Speaker 1: 11:11

Listening to it, I think the Devil Lock plugin's probably got a lot more power to it. So I do need to do a bit of tweaking on my compressor and the Distortion 2 plugin, probably up the mix in terms of the distortion and maybe slam it a bit more in compression. But you can see how you could use the native Logic Pro compressor and the Distortion 2 plugin and with a few tweaks you can get a sound similar to the Devil Lock. I mean, the Devil Lock plugin has sounded its own right, but you can get relatively close to it. So give it a go.

Speaker 1: 11:42

Folks. Make your drums less polite by creating a drum-dirt channel auxiliary. Send with a prefade ascent from your drum kit and use the FET compressor. Okay, slam those drums and then add the Distortion 2 plugin afterwards with the nasty distortion heavy plugin setting there as well. Give it a go. So before I go, folks go and check out Episode 81. If you want to learn more about compression basics and also if you have a burning music production question, you can submit it as an audio message via speakpipe. Simple to do you can use your phone, you can use your headset and you don't need an account or to download anything. Use the link in the episode description. If audio isn't your thing, then send me a DM on Instagram at InsideTheMix Podcast or email me insidethemixpodcastcom and submit a question and remember to include a link to where our audience can find you so I can give you a shoutout and I cannot wait to have more of your questions on the podcast.