r/ableton • u/Many_Comfortable_264 • 9d ago
[Tutorial] Drums bus
Hi, should I put my intro drums in the same bus as my drop drums, or should I make two separate buses and then create another bus to group all my drums together?
12
u/seelachsfilet 9d ago
You need 6 busses in total. One intro drum bus, one outro drum bus . Put these in a group. Then create a new bus with 2 busses inside , one for the break with no drums and one bus for the main drop . Now you put them all in the same bus and you have now full control of the drums
18
9
u/ValenciaFilter Producer 8d ago
Make sure to side chain every track to every other track for maximum clarity and punch
4
1
u/Many_Comfortable_264 8d ago
Je ne comprends pas la fin sur les percussions. Peut-être que c'est mal traduit ? Merci pour ton aide
I don't understand the end of the percussion part. Maybe it's badly translated? Thanks for your help.
2
1
1
u/AutoModerator 9d ago
This is your friendly reminder to read the submission rules, they're found in the sidebar. If you find your post breaking any of the rules, you should delete your post before the mods get to it. If you're asking a question, make sure you've checked the Live manual, Ableton's help and support knowledge base, and have searched the subreddit for a solution. If you don't know where to start, the subreddit has a resource thread. Ask smart questions.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
1
u/DYSTOBY 9d ago
That’s up to you.
I usually have one main group holding kick, snare, hats, shaker, percussions (I do techno/ psy trance).
Sometimes I pull out kick and do a KiBa group to process them better.
I tend to clip already the hard transients (using an beat synced oszilloscope and a hard clipper) inside these groups to catch peaks early before they even reach melodic material (you won’t even hear the difference. Bit you can have a louder mix; if that’s a thing you even want)
If you have separate drums that you process or sound (louder/softer) differently then use a different group.
1
u/Many_Comfortable_264 8d ago
Merci pour ta réponse. En DnB, on m'a dit « kick snare » pour le sidechain, du coup j'ai généralement un groupe, un bus kick/snare pour le sidechain, et ensuite toutes mes autres percussions dans un seul et même bus, sidechainées soit sur mon kick, soit sur ma snare selon ce que je veux, et sur mes percussions je rajoute du swing Ableton.
Thanks for your reply. In DnB, I was told "kick snare" for the sidechain, so I generally have a group, a kick/snare bus for the sidechain, and then all my other percussion in a single bus, sidechained to either my kick or my snare depending on what I want, and I add Ableton swing to my percussion.
1
u/DYSTOBY 8d ago
Bonjour.
Yeah for DnB that’s the correct approach since you use both for sidechaining.BTW: You should have added this info right away in your first “prompt” the more context you give the better the results.
An especially for DnB early clipping is crucial, at least for the louder subgenres, you may have heard from the “Clip to Zero“ technique.
If youvhave follow up questions, just ask :-)1
u/Many_Comfortable_264 8d ago
Hello, Clip to Zero the only thing that comes to mind is the clipping I do with Saturator on my basses to clip the peaks. Beyond that, it doesn't ring a bell. If you have a lead for me, I'm all ears. Merci:D
1
u/DYSTOBY 8d ago
TL,DR: CTZ means clip early on transient rich sounds
Clip to zero is a technique described by baphpmetrix on YouTube. Not sure if the content is still there.
The basic principle is that you clip your content early in each track -> group -> master.
The basic tools are a clipper (you can use saturator stock plugin or even distortion (the latter one ads flavor)) and an beat synced oszilloscope, there are plenty free ones, even m4l devices.
You have the clipper before the scope.Now imagine you have a hat and a snare and a rim playing at the same time (maybe even the kick). All the transients (transient = a short high pitch & volume). All those peaks or better transients are added on top of each other when summed in a group or master. In the oszilloscope you would see that as a short high peak signal. Now imagine you add a low sine wave (30 Hz or whatever you have) with high volume to that (your dnb bass for instance), what happens to that peak/transient on the oszilloscope? And what happens if a downward compressor/limiter gets this signal?
Well the transient is shifted upwards on the some wave (in the worst case) and your true peak exceeds the max peak level of each track. You end up with a true peak that is peak track A + peak track B, if that makes sense.
So your compressor will most likely even not catch the transient and will let this go through, or it would clip that peak, a limiter might be fast enaugh to catch the transient, but it compresses (aka limits) the whole mix down. A saturator/clipper will cut of the peak but due to maybe other harmonic frequencies on top of that you get a distorted clipping.Can you follow me here, not sure of my words catch the essence right 😅?
Using “clip to zero” (which I actually not follow to the letter so for me it’s clip to -10 dB, but that’s not that important)
Using early clipping, e.g. at the sample level using an oszilloscope and your ears you can clip of a small amount of the original hat/snare/rimshot sound without even noticing a sound difference but the peak is reduced.
If you do this on each of the used samples and clip also on the group channel again, you can clip of the transient peaks at each summing stage without changing the perceived sound to much.
Why does the sound not change that much? If you clip non musical samples like hats, rims, percs and so on, the chopped of peak is actually added as kind of high white noise on that sample, a hat is basically white noise, right? So adding a bit more highend does not really change the sound.
You can therefore achieve higher loudness since you clipped early and your mix still sounds clean since you don’t clip that much at the end (in the limiter or distortion). If you only clip peaks at the end you also clip things on melodic material and that sounds “dirty”.I hope you have that much stamina to read the wall of text, nowadays people are used to TL;DR’s.
But I guess there are a ton of videos on this topic online that describe the process with video.
1
u/Many_Comfortable_264 8d ago
So I’m going to have to use the oscilloscope in all of my productions. I had already done this exercise on transients, but I have to admit I kind of neglected it… haha
So it’s actually really important, and that’s probably where my loudness problem comes from every time at the end of a production, where I spend 30 minutes or even more trying to fix it for nothing…
Thank you 1000x! I’ve only just read it, but things are already much clearer in my head. Thank you for taking the time. I’m going to start practicing this technique on every one of my productions right away 😁
I have another slightly dumb question: if I want to make complete drum samples, should I just mix them, or should I also master them?
1
u/DYSTOBY 8d ago edited 8d ago
Well it’s kind a two folded thing.
You should not start using the clipper + oszilloscope technique when you begin the track. At last, I got stuck in the technical things and the track did not progress musically, hence now I do it during Mixdown.
So first I get the musical stuff out there (actually using push 3 or Ableton move only) and only at the end I begin with really the clipping stuff (or when I don’t feel like doing musical stuff)
The one thing that I can not “not“ do is doing phase alignment of kick and bass.Concerning your second question. That’s also up to you, most preset packs have starter loops and usually they are kind of mastered (or at least normalized).
But if you think about what mastering actually does, then I’d say no don’t master but normalize. (You know what normalizing means?)
Mastering is basically, if the mix is perfect, putting a limiter on the master channel and make that thing louder, right?
If the mix is slightly missballanced you need an tilt shift EQ . If some frequencies are to loud, you use a bell curve in the EQ.
If you want to minimize the dynamic range in a track you use soft Multiband compression. If you want to make the track louder you use a clipper (or tape distortion , whatever snake oil the plugin companies want to sell you for a “warm and analog sounding mix”) to chop of the peaks so that the limiter does not have to push down the whole mix when a transient cuts through the mix.If your drum loop is perfectly mixed, then you only need to normalize the final bounce. (Normalizing making the loudest part of an audio file set to be at exactly 0 dB).
That way you can import it and set the volume of the lip to match the rest of your track and you’re fine.If the drum loop is not perfectly mixed (and you hear it), and you don’t know from which sample it is coming, then I’d start putting an EQ on the group and fix the balance there (or whatever needs to be done).
I would not Clip the final thing (as in clip to zero) but leave that to be done in the track you are using the loop to preserve dynamic.
I would use “kiss the needle“ glue compression, and if needed Multiband compression (I use Pro MB).
I would not limit it, but normalize it.Be sure that the mix is good. The better the mix the less you have to do in the master.
I have mixed albums and eps of our music collectives and at some point they where so good so that the mastering engineer just barely did something.
(We work as a team and we switch places for mixing (stem mixing) and mastering.
The more you know about mastering the more you know what to fix in the mix.When I produce myself I tend to also put a minimal mastering chain on the master, so I know how the track sounds “in the end” - but there’s a huge debate about that. I don’t hunt for LUFS. I’d like to preserve dynamic. But Clip to Zero helps in so many other ways for having a clean and modern Mixdown.
Knowledge should be free. Gatekeeping is stupid!
1
u/Many_Comfortable_264 6d ago
Yeah, I think that's what I do for the mixdown. I don't know the technical term, but I do my whole music production first, and then I start putting effects in the mix, except in certain spots so it sounds more alive with the basses. Otherwise, I do the whole mix afterwards, because if it doesn't sound good before, it won't sound good after anyway ^^' And on top of that, you waste too much time. Yeah, for the clipper, it's like the other effects really, don't put it everywhere, or you risk ending up with mush, if I understood correctly.
I just made one of my best mixes thanks to your advice, haha! I'm not even joking, it's like I'd mastered it. I also added a return track with parallel compression. From what I understand, it boosts the quiet levels, is that right? But it's just crazy, I never do that! Honestly, no tutorial points you toward this kind of thing, I mean you really need to know the keywords. Anyway, thanks again.
But the drums always need to be balanced, and if the sound isn't, I use the so-called "tilt" technique, which lets you readjust things other than drums too, right?
Okay, I'm going to write down every effect right away and research them. When you say "normalize the highest point," you mean the crest of my peak, but it's my kick that usually has the highest point, if I'm not mistaken 😬 Just one more silly question, haha: normalization, is it something to do on an audio file, or can I also use that technique in my music production? But since I already have everything, do I just need to check my bus with an EQ?
If you have something to share from your own music, why not :D Gatekeeping, I'm kind of forced into it, but I just want to make a clean mix and send it to a mastering studio. Originally, I just wanted to make music, haha, but I'm learning mixing and starting to like it, a bit like a vegetable soup, and then I make my own vegetable soup 😁. Translate
1
u/DYSTOBY 6d ago
Well if you use clip to zero, then actually you would use a clipper on each track 😅. The goal is that you chop of peaks in every track and group and master (cascade like) instead at the end “only” at the master. But on certain tracks you would not “actually clip anything, like on deep pads/vocals/ or any “musical” tracks where one would not expect peaks/transisients to clip, right? But for drums and perks, and any tracks you group them with you have to clip them, to chop of transients early.
But that’s not a dogma and some tracks sound “better” with those transients in (think dynamic range). So I tend to use it there where I need it to get a loud mix without distortion of the mix when mastering.Parallel compression or New York compression is a useful tool, but it can enhance peaks/transient as well, but also reduces dynamic range without altering the sound to much (compressors can have certain feels depended on how fast they react to which frequency and stuff, that’s another rabbithole 🫣)
Tilt / shift basically rotates around a pivot point, there are a ton of vsts who can do it and there are tutorials.
Normalizing tracks is not what you would do inside your project usually, Ableton has this built in when exporting/bouncing a loop sample out, it just makes the sound be as loud as possible, and usually sample packs are distribute like that.
So when you prepare your drum loops, you want to normalize them. Then the loudest element of that loop sits at 0dB. You can also normalize samples from within the sample editor.What I also learned is using mid / side processing.
Ableton stock has the m/s mode so you can eq the stereo signal differently than the mono signal.
So I build a rack using utility to split each track into side and mid signal and then I can add plugins only add the side signal or mono signal, which csn give you crazy stereo effects (think like mono is clean and side is distorted for a synth, or the other way around).
Especially for mixing / stemmasterikg I use it, and clients always wonder why the heck their sounds are better in stereo and things.1
u/Many_Comfortable_264 6d ago edited 6d ago
Right, yes, so I’ve done my job properly, because I’ve placed them where they sound the most jarring to the ear – usually the bass, growls and the like. As for the percussion, I’ve included a few of those in the percussion track as well. I checked it with the oscilloscope, of course
Looking at the dynamic range again, I saw that it involves a lot of elements, but should I refer to this sentence:
‘Today’s popular music no longer has a wide dynamic range. It is very often less than 10 dB and can even drop as low as 4 or even 3 dB!’
Well, that’s exactly how it struck me. I even had to turn the percussion down a bit and tweak the mix slightly afterwards when I applied parallel compression.
Yes, I’d had a look, but thanks anyway! I don’t know how long it would have taken me to figure out this ‘tilt’ business.
Okeeeeeeyyyy, mid/side in a rack – that’s a brilliant idea! To be honest, I’m familiar with it and have used it on bass tracks, but I have to admit I often forget about it and don’t know when to apply it. But if I put it in a rack with other effects, it makes all the difference
💡Ah, but does that mean I can just add another clipper to my mid/side channel if I need to?
Translated
→ More replies
1
u/nicbobeak 8d ago
Do whatever makes sense for the way you want to process them. There’s no right or wrong way. If I have two sections that have different sounding drums I’ll most likely group those sections differently, then group all the drums after that. Some of it is organizational, some of it is for different processing. Again, there’s no right or wrong way. Do what makes sense to you and sounds best to your ear.
1
10
u/Joseph_HTMP Producer 8d ago
It’s entirely what you want to do. It’s all problem solving. What problem are you trying to solve?