How do you guys use toms in house or techno?

Electronic Music Production // Dark Arts
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Barfunkel
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How do you guys use toms in house or techno?

Post by Barfunkel »

I personally never use them, due to them more or less always sounding like they don't really belong in the drum kit. I do hear toms in house and techno a bit though, so it's just my poor production abilities that keep me from using them properly.

They have to be of coursed tuned right, but then what? Any nice tips for making them work?
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Plyphon
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Re: How do you guys use toms in house or techno?

Post by Plyphon »

Fuckin love a tom.


Sounds cliche but I've found less is more works with my stuff. Never tried making a full on 'drumtrack' type track though

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Re: How do you guys use toms in house or techno?

Post by Oktagon »

I use them alongside a second kick to get some variety in the low end patterns. Eg, you could have

Core 4/4 kick

2nd kick tuned a little higher, faster decay, providing some syncopation

Floor Tom - pitched higher still, less of a pitch envelope, providing some additional leading/ghost notes to add complexity.

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Re: How do you guys use toms in house or techno?

Post by Lost to the Void »

I honestly can`t remember the last time I used Toms.
Most of my percussion is from sources I have recorded myself.
Toms seem a little cliche to me (if we are talking 808/909 style)
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Re: How do you guys use toms in house or techno?

Post by Críoch »

Always use them as a low sound or stabby kind of sound.. usually after getting filters & FX applied / resampling.

Never use them 'normal'.

909 Tom's sound great pitched down & filtered.
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Re: How do you guys use toms in house or techno?

Post by Monreal »

I never use them either, but if I ever want one it'd probably sound like this one:

youtu.be/9OxtaiPnxjk

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Re: How do you guys use toms in house or techno?

Post by mindstuff »

I wish I could use them more effectively. Since I never know where to place them and get a good sound I usually chop them out of top loops if they work well with the drums.

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Re: How do you guys use toms in house or techno?

Post by mindstuff »

Oktagon wrote:
Sat Oct 12, 2019 3:43 pm
I use them alongside a second kick to get some variety in the low end patterns. Eg, you could have

Core 4/4 kick

2nd kick tuned a little higher, faster decay, providing some syncopation

Floor Tom - pitched higher still, less of a pitch envelope, providing some additional leading/ghost notes to add complexity.
How do you usually arrange them? Kick, snare, hihats...np. Toms seem more or less up to you where to put them but where do you usually arrange them? Do you use them like in a breakbeat pattern over the 4/4?

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Re: How do you guys use toms in house or techno?

Post by Oktagon »

mindstuff wrote:
Sun Oct 13, 2019 7:10 am
Oktagon wrote:
Sat Oct 12, 2019 3:43 pm
I use them alongside a second kick to get some variety in the low end patterns. Eg, you could have

Core 4/4 kick

2nd kick tuned a little higher, faster decay, providing some syncopation

Floor Tom - pitched higher still, less of a pitch envelope, providing some additional leading/ghost notes to add complexity.
How do you usually arrange them? Kick, snare, hihats...np. Toms seem more or less up to you where to put them but where do you usually arrange them? Do you use them like in a breakbeat pattern over the 4/4?
I’ll use them if I want to fill out the low end of a pattern with some additional transients that don’t have much sub energy. So they’ll usually be filling in notes around your main kick(s). If you want something that is busier, more rolling. Has to be a sound that complements your kicks obviously.

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Re: How do you guys use toms in house or techno?

Post by Oktagon »

Here's an example of using a tom to busy up a pattern from something I was doing the other night.

Without toms:
https://clyp.it/lf224d5y

With toms:
https://clyp.it/mr0sf0w0

Attached is the pattern.
Attachments
Screenshot 2019-10-13 at 09.20.56.png
Screenshot 2019-10-13 at 09.20.56.png (20.21 KiB) Viewed 3080 times

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Re: How do you guys use toms in house or techno?

Post by Lost to the Void »

Oh wait wait.

Are we talking about people called Tom?

I DO have a small collection of Toms.
They are 1/8th sized Toms. I don't use them much.
Occasionally I might set up a bunch of percussion and then train them to hit it all in sequence, like the percussion act stomp. They use toffee hammers like mallets. Great acoustic effect. And the beats end up feeling more natural.
Also I get them to run up and down the keyboards on synths to do complex arpeggios.
I often feel too many computers are used in electronic music.
You know. Sometimes you want more analog.
Even drum machines and sequencers are just computers, albeit basic ones.
But with some Toms it's real real analog. They run up and down, and sometimes they fall over or run into each other. And that's the thing about real analog right? We love to hear the mistakes, that's what makes it interesting.

So yeah, that's what I use Tom's for, that really analog feeling.
Everyone should get some Toms, it is DEFINITELY that one bit of kit, you know, that bit of kit that will be THE ONE that completes your setup so that finally all your music will be great and you'll never need more kit, and you'll just focus on making great music and not worrying about gear.
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Re: How do you guys use toms in house or techno?

Post by Plyphon »

On the 'filling up the groove' comment above -

If you're clever with it you can take a sparse groove, with the hats sitting at the back of the groove, and use the toms to drive the movement:

youtu.be/3XffpB7VG0o

I love the sidechain here too, really makes the toms drive the groove and track.

Or theres just the classic off beat tom which you can't go wrong with really

youtu.be/zGZUSHaYUbQ

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Re: How do you guys use toms in house or techno?

Post by ZenoSupreme »

I somethimes use them on the 7th and the 15th, yhis adds to the groove somethimes. also somethimes as the high end of the kick (to enforce the click if that's needed) and very rare for the bottom end (when I need a rounder kick).

But then again, I use them sprasley to, it's not like my tracks have toms all over the place, same goes for congos/bongos by the way...

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Re: How do you guys use toms in house or techno?

Post by Root »

I never used toms in a track. Even if I played around a lot and tried to make it fit, I deleted the tom track, just because it's too fast too cliché. Still I think that toms can be powerful, but maybe it's like with good fx - if you can hear and identify it, if it stands out in any way, it's wrong.
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Re: How do you guys use toms in house or techno?

Post by Críoch »

^^^

Same as.

808 Toms sound good as long as they don't sound minimal.

909 / 707 Toms. It can be challenging to program anything other than Tribal.. or modern big room 16th swingy patterns. I program those & enjoy.. but they become repetitive quickly & likewise, I'll delete.

Said it already. But I like to detune them if I DO use tyem. And I'll add FX to make something different out of them.

Would love to make a straight up, heavy Tom track.. but I don't have the bottle. Samples always sounds a bit flat or something No matter what I do.

On the other hand.. a synthetic p3rc & polymetric pattern in the Analog Rytm could be interesting..
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Re: How do you guys use toms in house or techno?

Post by raab »

I've been experimenting a lot with toms to add some groove, speed up the track and reinforce the low end. I used to apply delays on the kick for this but I think toms give you a lot more rhythmical freedom. Not totally satisfied though, as I find toms to sound a little bit too "organical" in comparison to the way I like my kicks and, if you try and saturate/distort it too much, it quickly loses a lot of its character.

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Re: How do you guys use toms in house or techno?

Post by Masari »

Last time i used toms, i removed them when arranging the track and it was sounding better without it
So, not a Tom guy :)

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Re: How do you guys use toms in house or techno?

Post by speen »

I often use low filtered toms with a slow attack to get some groove going in the low end of a track. you could probably just as well use another bass sound but the toms are often available in my drum rack and it's easy to visualize the right placement there.

I always felt that those maurizio grooves had toms in the low end to do something similar, i think that is where i got the habit from.

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Re: How do you guys use toms in house or techno?

Post by Prophän »

I use toms in every single track I make, they can be a great way to add drive and also improve the groove by offsetting them a few ms.

I discovered the best way to use toms is to leave their decay pretty short, they also work well with polymeters and polyrhythms, add a slight rhythmical delay on top and you're golden. (watch the panning of your low end)


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