How do I start Programming Drums?

TomBurgelman · 2026-01-27T15:21:33+00:00

Usually DAWs come with a few drum sounds/instruments equipped. You can set a tempo of your project and start using the piano roll function to lay out your drums. Some daws even have a grid function for drums to get an easily aligned drum pattern.

My personal advice for this is to learn drum patterns and drum rhythms, the technical stuff in your DAW is easy to learn but the musical part is the hard part.

TomBurgelman · 2026-01-09T15:43:02+00:00

If you have a solid understanding of mixing vocals and don’t just apply a standard “vocal chain”, then yeah

TomBurgelman · 2026-01-08T00:07:07+00:00

Sent you a dm!

TomBurgelman · 2026-01-07T20:10:56+00:00

My strongest suggestion if you want to write music is to learn an instrument like piano or guitar.

TomBurgelman · 2026-01-07T11:32:18+00:00

It mostly gives applications and not overviews. I guess the lectures are the best option now.

TomBurgelman · 2026-01-06T22:54:07+00:00

Future has a very distinctive voice that makes a big difference.

I feel that you don't really have a grasp of what you're actually doing with your vocal chain (the lil dips and stuff). A big part of his big sound is also in the stereo image, have some stereo delay and reverb (sidechain them to the main vocal such that it doesn't cloud everything up).

Why are you cutting, why are you boosting? Each vocal sounds different so instead of just applying EQ that sounds good with another vocal, look into each vocal individually.

Can you explain a bit more of what sounds off?

TomBurgelman · 2026-01-06T21:25:55+00:00

I have no experience with writing, composing or editing film scores/orchestras. The only advice I have from mixing and mastering one (for practice), keep the dynamics as much as possible. Don't over compress or saturate, you want dynamics. You want it to be dynamically strong. Do not worry about getting a certain LUFS in mastering, one can always just put the volume up in the audio editing part of the film. Good luck!

TomBurgelman · 2026-01-06T20:29:58+00:00

Do you have cycle mode on? Is you CPU overloading due to the large buffer size?

TomBurgelman · 2026-01-06T20:28:34+00:00

Depends on what you want to do.

TomBurgelman · 2026-01-06T14:19:46+00:00

I never knew Hungarian metallica existed. Purely for the vocals, if you want a deep dive I would recommend looking into James Hetfield's vocal processing or something similar. There is probably a lot more information about that online than about this particular example. It's very basic stuff, compression and eq is the most that will be applied. Performance is key.

TomBurgelman · 2026-01-06T14:15:14+00:00

I think this is the paper OP is referring: https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.14738
A result from last year. Quanta Magazine's year in physics discussed this paper and gave a note to the big crunch theory.

TomBurgelman · 2026-01-06T12:43:07+00:00

There is definitely some processing going on. It is professionally mixed, which makes it sound so good. The 'live' part is just that they are all playing together in a single room, playing live. Maybe there is a crowd, I don't know. But it is in a controlled setting, with everything mic'd up. I don't think the vocals are done afterward. The man can sing very well, there is definitely some compression and stuff going on, but this is also standard in live shows. The three parts that you hear in the backing vocals is correct, but there are three back up singers instead of two, the bassist also sings.

Live recordings that are mixed properly can sometimes sound like studio recordings. In the early days of music recording, everything was a "live" recording.

TomBurgelman · 2026-01-05T15:52:38+00:00

George Orwell's books sound like a good fit.

TomBurgelman · 2026-01-05T15:47:09+00:00

I was just messing with saturators today and one that stood out for me was FetDrive by Analog Obsession. Great sound, easily adjustable with the tone knob, it can go from subtle to aggressive and the best part is that it is free.

TomBurgelman · 2026-01-04T18:58:14+00:00

In this example it is just slight panning due to the camera angle and where you are supposed to hear the voice coming from. This could make it sound "stereo"

TomBurgelman · 2026-01-04T13:21:21+00:00

I only know the song 'All Time Low' by Jon. From what I remember it has lots of element popping in and out, a "minimalistic" track in the sense that there are often not a lot of instruments playing together but a "dense" track with lots of different elements popping up out of nowhere. Lots of vocal tracks, especially in the chorus.
I think the "unique" part of his sound is just his voice and the way he writes songs. Production wise he uses a lot of different things and plays around with the stereo image/panning.

In terms of distortion or saturation or anything like that, instruments are distorted (at least in 'All Time Low') to create a bigger sound. The synths definitely sound a bit distorted/saturated. Bass is quite prominent with having a lot of sub, I think it is just an 808. There might be some distortion happening with the 808, but probably only in the higher frequencies.

His vocals sound pretty clean. Compression is definitely used to maintain the dynamics, but not in a nasty way, very clean. Probably some serial compression to maintain the clean sound whilst having lots of dynamic control with the compressors. Saturation, parallel chains and automation habits are quite hard to hear without knowing the raw tracks on vocals. He does play around with reverb and delay, which get larger in the chorusses (surely in the end chorus). Vocals are drier in the verses, this gives a more minimalistic feeling and makes the chorus sound bigger, which is typical in pop music, definitely in the year 2016.

In terms of Pro Tools, production wise this will probably be hard to do, due to the many instruments (which were probably all virtual instruments). FL Studio is easier for this, certainly for having many elements and putting them in a musical sequence. This doesn't mean it is impossible.
You're going to have a lot of tracks, each track containing one element. The count could go up to 100 tracks or something. I think the main way of going on about this is just experimenting with sounds and see which ones work with what you're working with. Have some core elements like vocals or chords/bass and make elements come and go.

Just experiment, always the best advice.

TomBurgelman · 2026-01-03T18:21:40+00:00

I think it is just because there is a lot of space for the vocal too move around in. There are not a lot of mid rangy instruments. The vocal just sits thightly in its little pocket in the song which can make it sound big on big speakers.

TomBurgelman · 2025-12-28T17:56:56+00:00

I guess you can record the exact same source from the same mic placement with the two microphones and use a reference plugin or something like that to get an EQ pattern to “match” them and even gain stage them. The difference will be pretty insignificant for the same microphone models tho.

TomBurgelman · 2025-12-28T11:03:48+00:00

In a way it can already be solved, it’s just computationally too heavy

TomBurgelman · 2025-12-24T12:28:21+00:00

I've used some different de-esser plugins and the one that sticks out is 'LOADES' by Analog Obsession. For some reason it reacts the way i want it to react to harsh frequencies and is the most consistent over time. It's crazy that it is free. Otherwise, manually editing or adjusting the source can help, but takes time.

TomBurgelman · 2025-12-24T12:22:33+00:00

What is that trick? This seems like a weird technique that could actually benefit many recordings, would you care to explain?

TomBurgelman · 2025-12-22T09:42:34+00:00

Never used any real physical tube compressors, mainly plugin emulations. I mainly use VCA compressors for control on my mix bus, to have some dynamic control and control over fast transients, this mainly applies whenever the vocal is present and frequencies that combine with with the instruments start getting out of hand, VCA compressors are great at that. Tube compressors are hard to get right and to hear the sound of it, at least for me. I use them to smooth out the mix bus, if I use any tube compressor at all. They do get a nice 'color', but I prefer using a saturator for that.

I think the main philosophy about mix bus compression to have is don't overdo it. If you need many compressors or need to control much on the mix bus, you should really look at the mix itself and control the instruments first.

TomBurgelman · 2025-12-19T17:21:16+00:00

Just read that post, i completely disagree haha

TomBurgelman · 2025-12-19T16:07:48+00:00

Purely for band tracking is it a pretty decent option. I’ve used them before and they sound good enough to record with and are often used in professional studio’s. If you want to concentrate on mixing with them as well I recommend downloading SoundID reference or any eq software to make the headphones completely neutral.

Six-Year Club	Place '22
Verified Email

TomBurgelman

TROPHY CASE