Pitching drums

[aimlessaudio]

Hey,

I'm pretty poor when it comes to pitching my drums and i leave alot of it to chance and see what my ears pick up.

I've brought this up cos i think its a decent topic as its something everybody should be doing really.. How do you do it?

If anybody has any tips i'd be greatful. I usually use Ableton's Spectrum plugin and check to see what pitch is displayed by the frequency but sometimes with kick drums it can be a bit more awkward to work it out.

This may just be me being stupid but other approaches would be great to hear

[ozias_leduc]

already discussed here : http://subsekt.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=713&hilit=tune

[mjudge]

Producers seem to have different opinions about this -- some suggest matching the pitch of your drums to the key of the song, and some equally successful (whatever that means) producers don't worry about it at all. So apparently you can get away with tuning them by ear "until they sound good".

For me I've tried using a tuner plugin and just looping the tail of the kick in order to give the tuner a steady pitch. Seems to work.

[ozias_leduc]

without trying to be completely obnoxious it sounds like something trance producers would do

gotta make sure my clave is in the same key as my gay melody!

edit: also i kind of worry about producers who can't tune stuff by ear

[Barfunkel]

I sometimes tune my kick to the bassline, but I wouldn't worry about stuff like snares and hats (as they are mostly noise anyway, which has little pitch information). Maybe toms, but I never personally use toms.

But in most cases, I think it's mostly unnecessary. Just use what sounds good, in many cases something sounding a bit off can even add to the track, particularly in techno (in which you should avoid trying to sound too perfectly produced imo).

[Opuswerk]

I try to tune all my sounds to the key of my tracks. I find it really helps to gel all the sound together and make it a cohesive whole. Distorted and raw doesn't mean it has to be out of tune too imo . I really love the feel, when the drums literally start to sing together and add another very subtle and high up melodic content.

[ARiFF]

same here basically : tune my drums to the key of the track. I usually spend quite some time to get everything done right at this phase though, because as Opuswerk was already saying : makes the cohesion between all elements so much better.

I dont use spectrum if i cant tune it by ear. Voxengo Span is superb for this kind of work, it will show you the exact note when you hover over a specific frequency in the spectrum. You can easily solo a specific frequency using a sharp bell curve to decide if it needs tunage.

[Lost to the Void]

Well I¬ll try to be brief because I`m pretty sure we have covered this in the forum already.

Tuning your drums can make or break a beat/tune
A beat that for some reason doesn`t work, may well work once the drums are tunes.

I always work by ear, never tune every drum to the root note of your tune, it will make things sound over resonant.

I treat the drums like any other instrument. The drums have to play a little melody, just like everything else.

It is one of the key parts of techno really, melodic stuff going on in a subtle way, in the drums, that doesn`t really POP until you hear it on a soundsystem

[Opuswerk]

It is one of the key parts of techno really, melodic stuff going on in a subtle way, in the drums, that doesn`t really POP until you hear it on a soundsystem

This really.

[loopdon]

I imagine in the sub 100 Hz regions it might make extra sense to get
your kicks in tune with the sub. And with the 808 and 909 it's very doable.
The standard 808 kick rests at G (~49Hz, if i remember correctly?),
the 909 will go down to a static tail at G# (ruffly 52 Hz).

This might even make sense for physical, read: playback reasons.
At least when the a bass is playing over it... God knows.

You can use something like AnalogX's Autotune (free) to
tune entire folders of sounds.

I have come to the conclusion (hear, hear) that what once attracted me
to techno was that it did not conform to set musical rules, i love the dissonance,
the contrasting of polished and just gritty n raw attitude.

[Lost to the Void]

Nothing but dissonance is just noise.
It`s all about balance

[Críoch]

I think thoughtful / sympathetic tuning makes stuff sound tight..

If it sounds right it is right.

The other thing about tuning that I've found & Steve & Hendrik have said the same.. is that yeah, it plays a melody kinda thing.. but sometimes, I think if you dont have different tunings, apart from there being no melody inside the groove, there is no groove; cos its all DUD-DUD-DUH-DUD-DUDDUDDUDDUDDUHHHHH.

If you get what I mean.

Gay Trance tunings - Agree. Happy accidents - Agree. But there's a balance between 'em.. isn't there?

EDIT: Just saw Steve mentioned balance.. haha - Snap.

[loopdon]

Balance, yeah.
Why do i even need so many words to describe what i feel...

[Mattias]

Let's not forget that discordant elements in music is very powerful.

[pskept]

are you guys talking about synthed or sampled sounds? i feel like i get very bad results when tuning kick drum samples. other drum samples i have no trouble pitching but the kick has become a big no no for me. if i want a kick for tonality i synth it.

[saminedia]

If its a sample i might play around with some fine tuning on the pitch, but if im making a kick drum myself i always move the pitch up and down till it sounds right with the other elements.

[Mslwte]

without trying to be completely obnoxious it sounds like something trance producers would do

gotta make sure my clave is in the same key as my gay melody!

edit: also i kind of worry about producers who can't tune stuff by ear

Completely agree mate.

If you use samples then picking the right sample to start with is key (pun intended) to check the note then use something like "span" or any other spectrum analyser. If you use hardware Best way to tune it is to use your ears. I never worry about notes or key, for me that takes the fun out of making music and I like to let my ears decide whether something works or not.

[Mslwte]

are you guys talking about synthed or sampled sounds? i feel like i get very bad results when tuning kick drum samples. other drum samples i have no trouble pitching but the kick has become a big no no for me. if i want a kick for tonality i synth it.

Yeah that's the only way imo.

[Mattias]

I second that its not very good to tune sampled kicks too many notes. A few up / down works fine for sure but when a broader tune is needed its safer to go with a synthesized "body" of the kick and use sampled kick only for the top end of the kick range.

With that being said, pitched kicks NOT used as a bass-drum is one of the oldest tricks in the book and works today just as good. It's a proper classic for old-school Techno to distort and pitch sampled kicks, compress it to hell and gate / duck them via a trigger.

[pskept]

With that being said, pitched kicks NOT used as a bass-drum is one of the oldest tricks in the book

well its a new trick to me. thanks!