An Alternative Method for Tightening Your Drum Groove

Putting together a basic drum rhythm is a simple procedure, thanks to the high-quality software and sounds available nowadays. After that, a common challenge is skillfully manipulating those drums to create a tight and attractive groove. This will be done chiefly with fades, editing, compression, and EQ, but many ways exist. The following tutorial will show you an alternative method for tightening your drum groove.

As usual, we prepared a short sequence in our SoundBridge: DAW. It includes most of the drum elements of a full mix. Let's take a listen to it.

~Full Mix - Drums (Unprocessed)

The drums, particularly the shakers and hi-hats, sound unbalanced and loose, as illustrated in the audio sample above. We could fix it by processing with a compressor, EQ, or similar tools, but this time, a transient shaper will be our alternative tool for the job. We covered the use of transient shapers in some of our previous tutorials. In this case, this alternative processing method will give us more control over the dynamics of the drums.

Tightening Your Drum Groove with a Transient Shaper

Let's start by grouping the hi-hats and shakers and listening to them separately. We'll add an instance of LFOTool by Xfer to this "Drums High" group track. The initial effect may be familiar to our previous tutorial, where we used it as a go-to side chain tool. We'll use it differently this time.

Since we want to apply a process different from the classic "ducking effect," we must draw an extra curve on LFOTool's interface. To control the tail of the signal, the curve must decrease in time, and the rate should be set to 1/16 beat to begin with. Additionally, we will increase the "Smooth" slider to avoid unwanted click sounds, highlighted in the picture below.

The audio example above is set to 100% wet mix, the most extreme setting. We don't need such an effect, so let's put it to 60%.

Let's hear our "Drums High" group solo in the context of the whole mix.

If you liked this article on guitar processing, here are some more on the same subject:

• Add Texture to Your Drums
• Add Edge to Your Drums
• Separate the Elements in the Full Mix by Using UNMIX::DRUMS
• 3 Simple Steps to an Effective Drums and Percussion Tuning Strategy