How to Create Drums Using Foley

In movie production, most of the audio work is done separately after the filming stage. Actors re-record lines (dialogue replacement), and the audio team layers the soundtrack and Foley over the film. Foley, by definition, is the process of creating sound for video and film. Foley artists ("walkers") don't deal with music but relatively short sound clips and effects that mimic what would happen in real life. For example, if an actor pulls keys out of his pocket, that sound of keys rattling will be recorded in a studio and retrofitted to match the video. In this article, I will make a kick and snare using Foley layers to show the unconventional application it has in music - more specifically, electronic production.  

The Kick

Layer 1   To begin, I'm using the sound of a hammer hitting a chair as my mid-range layer. In addition, I'll be editing and processing my samples in Native Instruments Battery 4 because it gives me a consistent way to work with all the samples together. 

 

~ This is how it sounds unprocessed.  

Firstly, I'll change the articulation of the sound using the volume envelope. I give it a short percussive tail to make it sound more like a drum hit.  

 

Then, in the effects section, I'll add some saturation. Consequently, that'll boost the signal (which is relatively quiet) and will give the sound more "body" by adding harmonic content and distortion.  

 

The LoFi section can be dangerous as it can degrade your sound, which is, ironically, the idea of LoFi processing. I'll use it to add some noise and thicken up the sample. This will help blend the different layers of our kick. Unfortunately, the kick is not potent enough in the low end for me to use it as the low part of the kick. Keeping that in mind, I'll high-pass the sample to make room for another sample underneath it. The volume envelope did a lot of good in shaping the sound to be more like a kick drum. However, it still isn't quite tight enough. To solve this, I'll use a Transient Master to reduce the sustain and boost the attack.  

  

With layer 1 ready, I will use the sound of knocking on an acoustic guitar to fill in some of the low mid.  

 

Since the sound is taken from a whole loop, I must isolate the hit I want before affecting the sound.  

 

Now that I have the sample, I've gone into the volume envelope to make it shorter and punchier, like the first sample. Note that having different lengths for samples can make it easy to tell them apart, which is not a good thing if we want the kick to sound coherent and organic.  

 

I'll add saturation to strengthen the sound and boost the overall volume. The different saturation settings are emulations of different saturators; I chose classic because it complements this sound the most.  

 

After the saturator, I activated the filter and set it to a four-pole low-pass. The purpose of this filter is mainly to get the two samples out of the way of each other. I prefer the high-frequency content of the first layer, so I've decided to eliminate those frequencies in the second layer to prevent any conflict.  

 

Finally, I added the Transient Master at the end of the signal chain to tighten it up, as I did with the previous one. I also lowered the output by about -2.4 dB because the transient master is quick to distort and boost the volume further.  

 

Now, the kick sounds good, but there still isn't any substantial low end. I've decided to layer a low-passed kick to fill in that space.

 

~ Low-passed kick.

Master

To glue these layers together, I added some effects to the master channel. The high shelf will help bring out some of the highs since they only come from one sample. The compressor, transient master, saturator, and limiter aren't doing much but applying some effects to a master bus that affects all your kick layers. I am sure you will agree that they can help to make the layers more coherent and make the kick sound as one.  

 

Here is how the kick sounds all together:  

   

The Snare

Now that we have a solid kick, it's time to work on the snare. As my first sample, I'll be using a recording of a hammer hitting a desk in a warehouse.  

 

As usual, I start by setting the volume envelope. I don't want to do much to the sound because it already has the qualities of a snare. With the decay knob, I'll shorten it slightly to eliminate some of the ambiances from the warehouse.  

 

I'll add some saturation, as I've done with the other sounds, to add some harmonic content and boost the signal.  

 

The filter will help to eliminate environmental mud in the low end of the live recording.  

 

This layer and the snare, in general, already sound pretty complete. However, the ambiance captured when recording the sample makes it sound distant. To reduce this, I've shortened the sound's sustain using the transient master.  

  

 

~ Here's how our layer sounds now.  

The snare sounds good, but texturally, it's inconsistent with our kick. Furthermore, the white noise introduced by the LoFi in the first layer of our kick is missing from the snare. To fill this in, I've found a sample of a spray can I will layer with it.  

 

Moving forward, like with layer 2 of the kick, I have to isolate part of the sample that I want to use since it's a loop with multiple sprays. I've highlighted one of the sprays in Battery 4's sample view.  

 

The sample has a consistent sustain. For this reason, To make it sound more like a drum hit, I have to shorten the decay.  

 

In the effects section, I'll add some noise using the LoFi module, as I did to the first layer of the kick. Not only will this help thicken up a sound that is a little thin, but it will also make the snare more consistent with the kick. The LoFi has shaped the way the kick sounds.  

 

Master

As I mentioned, an excellent way to make these different sounds fit together is by applying effects to the master bus. I've implemented a compressor, transient master, and saturator. However, the saturator is the only one doing a substantial amount of work. Working with sounds recorded in entirely different environments means they will immediately sound out of place when played together. This step helps to fix this issue.  

  

~ Here's our final snare hit.

~ And here's an example of the drums with some other elements.