Drums are the common element in all forms of electronic music.  Getting your drums to beat down dance floors takes some knowledge and a little work.  The kick drum and its relationship to the bass can be crucial for getting a great sounding recording.  Here are a few tips and guidelines to follow to get your rhythm section sounding big and translating on a lot of different systems. 

The quality of the source material you use whether it is a hardware drum machine or a sample CD, is going to play a major role in determining how well your rhythm track sounds.  If you are a digital user, many pros today are using sample sounds from vengeance-sounds.  They are professionally recorded, and EQ’d in ways that are useful in production as well.   There are many excellent drum machines on the market today as well. Some include the Machine Drum from Elektron and the Jomox 999 & 888.  If you have never used a real drum machine you may be blown away at how good they can sound.  In any case, make sure you choose a machine, sample CD, or host drum machine that is ready to use from the start.

Many kick drums today have gone away from a typical 808 or 909 kick to having a real noticeable click in the mid range, but they still maintain some depth in the low frequencies of some of the classic drum machines.  Using a proper decay on your kick can give you a nice low end or shorter can provide a tighter timing, and give you more click.  If you want to achieve a subby low end with your kicks you can boost EQ on your drum sound in the 50-100Hz and that will generally give you the boomy or punchy sound you are looking for.  This doesn’t work with every sound, again you need to consider the source material.  If it doesn’t achieve the desired result you can choose a new sound and start from there, or layer another sound that has the sine wave type frequency and the roundness you are looking for.  The click you are hearing in most kicks is around 1-5khz, which is similar to the snap of a snare drum.  Having a click in your kick drum can really provide some clarity to your drum section, and make the track a much more DJ friendly tune.

Laying your drums out correctly in your mixer will help you achieve a bigger sound.  I set up my kick, clap or snare, and main high hat in mono, all on separate channels in the mixer.  Most drum modules have separate outs and stereo outs that allow you to do this.  This will give you a very tight, crisp low end, and translate well to various club systems.  I use a stereo out to put cymbals, secondary hi hats, and some percussion on it.  The stereo channel allows me to create different pan positions of the instruments, creating a larger stereo field, and allowing the kick and snare to come through untouched.  Experiment with applying effects on these channels, a little reverb, delay, or modulation on a few instruments can really make them shine.  After you have this done, you’ll want to make an AUX/BUS channel on your mixer, label it Drum Aux (Stereo BUS 1), and out every channel you have in your drum section on your mixer to that AUX/ BUS 1.  You will want to put a compressor on that channel and compress your entire drum kit together.  Compression used correctly can really get your kit pumping.  I have a template that I saved in Logic, so every track I start has all this routing enabled at start up.  I have included a picture of the mixer layout.

Compression is a form of dynamic range reduction that is used in all sorts of tracking, production, and mixing sessions.  Compressing your drums together will allow you to get a big and tight sound out of your rhythm section.  I personally like the sound of hardware compression the best, but there are also some great sounding software plug ins as well from companies like Waves and many DAW hosts plug ins as well.  A general ratio setting you can start with is 3:1, with a fast release.  Simply, the release is how fast the compressor is recovering after each drum hit.  The knee settings are curve adjustments in the signal but is also controlling how hard the compressor is working or hitting.  Soft knee is smoother where hard knee compression can give you more “effect”. You can adjust the attack to the snap of the snare or clap, and you can also use a slower attack to create a bit of a pumping effect.  Most plug ins today come with presets like “drum kit compression”, with some minor adjustments your drums will sound great.  Overly compressed material is easily spotted, so be careful you are not compressing all the dynamics out of your music.

Sidechain compression is one of the most popular techniques used today in dance music.  This technique is most commonly heard in productions from Eric Prydz, Daft Punk, or D. Rameriz to name just a few.  This technique can allow your kick and bass to be heard free from each other if you have bass notes in similar timing as your kick.  Sidechaining can also create a pumping effect and, in some cases, may be described as jacking.  Create a separate kick drum pattern and route the audio of the new kick to a new BUS 2 on your mixer.  Create an Aux channel, again, label the AUX channel “sidechain” so you know what it is later.  Select the input of the sidechain AUX as BUS 2, then disable the output on the mixer.  You don’t want to actually hear the kick, you are just using it as the trigger for the compressor.  Select a compressor that has a sidechain insert on the channel that your bass sequence is playing on, FYI not all of them do.  Select the sidechain BUS 2 for the sidechain insert on your compressor, and you should hear and visually see the compressor clamping on the beat of the kick drum.  You may have to adjust the threshold on your compressor before you hear the change.   You’ll hear the compressor pumping the bass sequence when the kick hits, in some cases it sounds like its lowering the volume of the sequence.  (There is also a picture of the routing in the mixer layout.)  This technique can give you pumping effects or general clarity for your kick drum to pound through your bass and synth parts, giving your drum mix a better relationship and bigger image if done properly.

Creative programming of your drum parts is always key to coming up with strong tracks.  If you mix them well and experiment with some of the techniques I have mentioned you should be on your way to creating some big punchy drum tracks for your tunes.  Again, the source material is always a major player.  A little compression can give your track just what it needs to become the next dance floor destroyer.