Something has been on my mind a long while.

Apart from one producer I've seen in a studio interview, all the rest layer oodles of percs into thier productions. Lately I keep finding myself thinking the percs sound too cluttered, not enough space and air between hits.

When producers show all thier perc layers adding one after another in the video interview is sorta makes sense and I think 'yeah, that 5th twisted perc loop added even more drive', but later when listing to thier tracks on beatport or whatever I keep finding myself thinking 'this sounds cluttered'.

I have made many mistakes over - layering my own percs and end up loosing definition and introducing a wall of sound clutter.

So what do you think about this matter? Do you like lots of percs loops going on?

Think about the purity of the drums in Jacko's Billy Gene - just a snare kick and hat and one of the all time best drum groves was born.

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It depends a lot on the style of the track aswell. When your track is full on detailed and fast, the more percussions you throw the messier it gets. But at the same time too much layering in a more minimal track will completely kill the mood.

I think the best thing to do is just find some sort of idea to the percussions, maybe a common rhythm line to all sounds, and not just throw loops and notes here and there.

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Don't listen to shit on beatport. The quality is way too low to make accurate mixing judgements based on it.

With all, it's possible to overdo it and of course in rhythm a pause is just as important as a hit.

Every percussion sample has its place, overlaying closed hats can be fine but not to much, don't over due it. Obviously hi hats can placed on top of closed hats as well as shakers. You don't need alot in order create rhythm.

The less the better, and if your kick, snare or clap sucks the rest will sound crap too.

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the more elements you have the "thinner" each of them have to be and the overall volume must go down. I dont see the problem if you think about these things. Again I would like to mention LSG - The Black Album. It has TONS of elements, but it doesnt sound squashed or stressed or anything, he just lowered the master and eqed the elements more. Another example is Prodigy - Music for the Jilted Generations. Tons of stuff going on. Each element quite subtle.

quote:

Originally posted by Richard Butler Think about the purity of the drums in Jacko's Billy Gene - just a snare kick and hat and one of the all time best drum groves was born.

Whenever you have a live drummer you have microtiming variations, and if its a skilled drummer then there are controlled microtiming variations. You can't(as far as I know) just duplicate this out of a template or using a randomized function.

Compare this to a lot of producers on the EDM side, everything is probably programmed and most can't perform a groovey rhythm. So a lackluster performance is "made up" by over engineering.

Part of really drumming is the limitation of only being able to hit a limited amount of percussion. Part of the interest comes from the variations of one hit to the next.

Skrillex's Kill Everybody uses this rhythmic compositional effect with his glitches. They are not stacked 10 high on each other; they come at you one at a time and their sequence makes for a good and interesting groove.

EDM producers are building stuff up layer by layer like a brick house. The crux of the problem is when producers try and use layers to overcome a bad choice in sound, loop, or composition. Whenever you start to layer up percussion, it can become more and more static and it can lose some of its groove. It can go even further when you start to evaluate your song and you say, "This part is lacking, it needs another layer of stuff."

The way I go about composing now is in a "brick layering" way. First I would work on basic percussion, then work on percussion, then the bassline, etc or some variation of that. Maybe its a very "trancey" way to work? I don't know. Now that I think about it, I do not really care for it and I'll be changing up my methods here.

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quote:

Originally posted by dj_alfi change your avatar for fucks sake.

i believe in order to make your perc sound good, a wise use of S/M and stereo width and imaging should be taken into account.
side chain helps a little, in case if you have multiple layers of perc in a single frequency domain, this will facilitate a more natural flow.

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It's not about what, but about where.... (sounds v/s placement)
you can have a killer groove with just 3 elements or mashed patatoes with 8 non interacting loops.....

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Ralph pretty much tapped the nail on its head. The quality of the loop might be the greatest, but if it does not sit right in the mix, its useless.

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If your using 2 or 3 loops together with different grooves, its probably not going to match up that great. Your better off using a bunch of 1 shots(so you can choose the rythmic timing) with maybe 1 loop to go with it.

I've fallen into a pattern of what I can only describe as 'filling the rhythmic gaps' between the bass and melodic elements with percs. But I make all my own percs, I've only used a loop once as it fitted so well.

Not that it's revolutionary but I also separate certain aspects of the percs with filter, downsampling and distortion.


As for Billie Jean IMO all the groove came from the bassline, the simple 4/4 just supported it.

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