Drum Samples Volume and Velocity
The easiest mixing process to apply to drum samples and other sounds is the volume adjustment process. It is so easy in fact that it comes quite naturally to most people. Most don’t even think about it! Factoring this mix technique in as early as possible is always a good idea. It serves to allow more instruments and samples in the mix as everything has its own space. You can also adjust the volume of tracks near the end of the beat.
Adjusting the volume is possible in multiple places in most major sequencers and on keyboard workstations. For instance, Propellerheads’ Reason allows you to adjust volume on each bus for each drum sample, on the Redrum drum console and also in the main sequencer mixer, making it easy to make major and minor changes on the fly. This certainly helps the creative process as you can be altering this whenever you feel like it at a moment’s notice.
An essential rule to volume mixing that every single music producer and beat maker should note is that you should never introduce a sound into a beat if that sound cannot be heard. The best that sound can do is muddy things up, and the worst it can do is totally destroy the mix as a whole. A drum samples beat is only as good as the weakest single track, so if one of the sounds is not pulling its weight in the mix, it may be time to let it go and look at something else. Professional mixing engineers will tell you exactly the same. So have your sounds contribute equally and watch your mix take off.
You can expect that a sound’s volume, when lowered by 6 decibels, will be lowered just about half, and the same thing on the way up; raising a sound by 6 decibels will double its volume. When adjusting the volume of hi hats, it’s a good idea to let it sit where you think it should and then take a few decibels off that further. Because the human ear has a tendency to overcompensate for these higher frequencies, so they don’t need to be as high.
Velocity is a different beast altogether. It is different than volume in the fact that the drum samples sound is not always just lowered in volume. Sure, a lower volume is a given with low sound and low velocity, but the velocity could also trigger the actual samples played. With multi-sampled patches, a lower velocity could play a different sound altogether; it won’t just be quieter.
You should always take care when lowering volume, and never make decisions recklessly. Pay attention with every creative decision. One tip offered by a lot of professional mixers is that sounds should be lowered and never increased in volume. This will ensure that no clipping occurs and that sounds are the best volume they could possibly be. With drum samples, try to mix it in as a group, separate from the mix, before mixing it together.
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