90's techno and house drum processing
90's techno and house drum processing
One thing I love about the 90's tracks, is the way the drums sound. They often have chunk, weight and character (as opposed to 80''s house/techno tracks which often sound more like standard drum machines with no processing, or the modern stuff which sound different again). Many 90's tracks, from various labels and artists have this kind of uniform sound to the drums, even if they are sometimes drum machines, sometimes samples of them, sometimes samples of real drums. You rarely hear that in modern tracks, even in the retro tracks.
Any insight into what techniques they used back then, what causes that chunkiness? Especially techniques that don't involve buying an E-mu SP1200 (which gets those drums with no effort, but they can't ALL have been using them back then) or other really expensive vintage gear. The spirit of the 90's was often about finding and misusing neglected, cheap gear, not spend thousands in collector's items.
Overdriving Mackie (the older CR-series, newer models sound like shit when overdriving) mixers was of course one very common technique, that I already know, but I think there's more to the sound than simply turning the gain to 11, as sometimes the drums don't sound that distorted but still have that 90's sound to them.
As that chunkiness I so much love often extends to the other sounds too, how much did common 90's mastering techniques affect the overall sound?
Any insight into the matter?
Any insight into what techniques they used back then, what causes that chunkiness? Especially techniques that don't involve buying an E-mu SP1200 (which gets those drums with no effort, but they can't ALL have been using them back then) or other really expensive vintage gear. The spirit of the 90's was often about finding and misusing neglected, cheap gear, not spend thousands in collector's items.
Overdriving Mackie (the older CR-series, newer models sound like shit when overdriving) mixers was of course one very common technique, that I already know, but I think there's more to the sound than simply turning the gain to 11, as sometimes the drums don't sound that distorted but still have that 90's sound to them.
As that chunkiness I so much love often extends to the other sounds too, how much did common 90's mastering techniques affect the overall sound?
Any insight into the matter?
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- davidblackwing
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Re: 90's techno and house drum processing
Tape recorders. Try Wave bundle. I think that sound is result of tape driven vintage compressed and eqed. Eq, compressor, tape saturation with character. I found that Waves products are good emulations of this matter. Or just resample drums from your favorite records. they did it in the 90s too. multi-dynamic and Eq can help you sculpt drums out of the other sounds. I usually build drums with synths myself but sometimes I just want the punch of the kick I heard in the record so I take that and my own low end and click. Ofc with proper processing.
Re: 90's techno and house drum processing
Good idea this topic.
I feel the same about 90's techno and suspect the high amount of hardware and people who knew what they're doing making the difference.
I feel the same about 90's techno and suspect the high amount of hardware and people who knew what they're doing making the difference.
Re: 90's techno and house drum processing
In addition to what has already been said.
I think it's a combination of overdrive, tape, vintage samplers, lack of parametric EQs and generally more crude mastering/processing. And in general this kind naivity rounding it all up, when people today use these techniques, they do it because they want that exact sound, which I think ends up sounding different than people trying their best to sound clean but just not getting any better.
But also, in general, I think people had a different relationship to drums, in a way some kind of dark art that has been lost. Back then people generally had one sampler with a few samples or 1-2 drum maschines and not a lot of synths either. And this was still the age where people wanted shit as banging as possible. So because of the lack of options in both the drum and synth department, they had to make the most out of that 909. I don't wanna know how much time Hood and Mills spent on that thing ever day in the early 909s.
Even the drum&bass guys like Photek and Source Direct that didn't just jam out their drums, instead they spent one billion hours on pain-in-the-ass tracker software. Who the fuck would do that today? I think that's why Burial's drums did stand out so much in the 2000s, even though he used a computer like everyone else, that absolutely insane dedication to drums.
I think it's a combination of overdrive, tape, vintage samplers, lack of parametric EQs and generally more crude mastering/processing. And in general this kind naivity rounding it all up, when people today use these techniques, they do it because they want that exact sound, which I think ends up sounding different than people trying their best to sound clean but just not getting any better.
But also, in general, I think people had a different relationship to drums, in a way some kind of dark art that has been lost. Back then people generally had one sampler with a few samples or 1-2 drum maschines and not a lot of synths either. And this was still the age where people wanted shit as banging as possible. So because of the lack of options in both the drum and synth department, they had to make the most out of that 909. I don't wanna know how much time Hood and Mills spent on that thing ever day in the early 909s.
Even the drum&bass guys like Photek and Source Direct that didn't just jam out their drums, instead they spent one billion hours on pain-in-the-ass tracker software. Who the fuck would do that today? I think that's why Burial's drums did stand out so much in the 2000s, even though he used a computer like everyone else, that absolutely insane dedication to drums.
Re: 90's techno and house drum processing
Speaking of Photek, this has like the best drum programming I've ever heard, regardless of genre. Perfect sounds, perfect rhythms, perfect arrangement. Probably took a while to do in that era!
youtu.be/9qJKxaWb0_A
youtu.be/9qJKxaWb0_A
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Re: 90's techno and house drum processing
Two big parts of the secret was this;
Less super low bass and less super sharp highs, a nice well defined punchy low mid is where it's at.
No side-chain pumping.
Less super low bass and less super sharp highs, a nice well defined punchy low mid is where it's at.
No side-chain pumping.
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- Lost to the Void
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Re: 90's techno and house drum processing
A lot of the sound of jungle and drum and bass can be put down to porky`s mastering, and the influence he had on the sound through his methods.
He cut records with a high pass much higher than you would imagine and use EQ shift to move the emphasis up, so even though cuts were as high as 40hz, there was pre-emphasis at the cut, and then a dip/cut, about half an octave above this.
This led to that really punchy low end that characterised a lot of dance music records, jungle and drum and bass in particular.
Combine that with his love of Feedback Compression, namely the infamous Fairchild, which was a very musical form of compression, emphasising the groove, and you got very lively, punchy cuts.
You still hear that on records a lot actually. Porky was old school, but highly influential in dance music mastering. All the places like the Exchange etc, they followed what porky started.
I wouldn`t say tape was that much of a contribution actually, I use reel to reel occasionally and it doesn`t really add punch so much as pull back transients, so it`s more useful with overly sharp hi fidelity production of today, so soften it down.
The rest was down to economic use of EQ, which is something I always advocate. They didn`t have access to a billion bands per channel of EQ back then, so they weren`t relying on EQ to fit shit together, they were choosing the right sounds in the right place, so the mixes fitted together naturally and needed less EQ work.
Slamming busses through compressors was common too, especially the Jungle and drum and bass guys, you can hear a lot of 1176 on old dance music, lots of snap but with backed off attack, so you get both impact and pump.
Also, lots of resampling to free up resources led to a homogenisation of sound within a track.
Good production technique, essentially.
These days it would just mean making better musical choices of sound, grouping and bussing a lot more, keeping the sounds in one tune down to a minimal variety of instruments (multi tracking was very very common, one or two synths doing all the work, tracked via 8 or 16 track reel to reel making several passes). For those who couldn`t afford multitracking then resampling. So resampling parts with a characterful sampler (in or out the box, it`s all digital).
And then leaving a shit load of the work up to the mastering engineer, or in some cases, going to a studio and working with an engineer to do the mix down prior to mastering.
It would be best to post up some examples because a lot of 90`s stuff sounds like utter gash.
He cut records with a high pass much higher than you would imagine and use EQ shift to move the emphasis up, so even though cuts were as high as 40hz, there was pre-emphasis at the cut, and then a dip/cut, about half an octave above this.
This led to that really punchy low end that characterised a lot of dance music records, jungle and drum and bass in particular.
Combine that with his love of Feedback Compression, namely the infamous Fairchild, which was a very musical form of compression, emphasising the groove, and you got very lively, punchy cuts.
You still hear that on records a lot actually. Porky was old school, but highly influential in dance music mastering. All the places like the Exchange etc, they followed what porky started.
I wouldn`t say tape was that much of a contribution actually, I use reel to reel occasionally and it doesn`t really add punch so much as pull back transients, so it`s more useful with overly sharp hi fidelity production of today, so soften it down.
The rest was down to economic use of EQ, which is something I always advocate. They didn`t have access to a billion bands per channel of EQ back then, so they weren`t relying on EQ to fit shit together, they were choosing the right sounds in the right place, so the mixes fitted together naturally and needed less EQ work.
Slamming busses through compressors was common too, especially the Jungle and drum and bass guys, you can hear a lot of 1176 on old dance music, lots of snap but with backed off attack, so you get both impact and pump.
Also, lots of resampling to free up resources led to a homogenisation of sound within a track.
Good production technique, essentially.
These days it would just mean making better musical choices of sound, grouping and bussing a lot more, keeping the sounds in one tune down to a minimal variety of instruments (multi tracking was very very common, one or two synths doing all the work, tracked via 8 or 16 track reel to reel making several passes). For those who couldn`t afford multitracking then resampling. So resampling parts with a characterful sampler (in or out the box, it`s all digital).
And then leaving a shit load of the work up to the mastering engineer, or in some cases, going to a studio and working with an engineer to do the mix down prior to mastering.
It would be best to post up some examples because a lot of 90`s stuff sounds like utter gash.
- davidblackwing
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Re: 90's techno and house drum processing
Yeah makes sense.. spectrum was limited back. now added with vintage gear and tape recorder re-sampling techs. We got plenty of info to try that 90s sound.Mattias wrote:Two big parts of the secret was this;
Less super low bass and less super sharp highs, a nice well defined punchy low mid is where it's at.
No side-chain pumping.
As said wave EQ plugins can do the trick.
Also,
http://sonimus.com/products/soneq/ this one is pleasant, personally ofc.
Re: 90's techno and house drum processing
Yes I actually prefer the Soneq sound over any of the Waves takes on "analog" sound personally!
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- Lost to the Void
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Re: 90's techno and house drum processing
Waves suck ass.
Dates and overrated.
Dates and overrated.
Re: 90's techno and house drum processing
Dafuq does 'homogenisation' mean? I need a dictionary.
Thank you for the laughs, debate, new music found, production tips etc etc over the years. I wish Subsekt and everyone all the best for the future. Wiu.
Re: 90's techno and house drum processing
To keep it simple. Use shitty old drum machines, sample tribal loops/breaks and run through a nasty old sampler. Then throw a 909 kick over it all. Drive the mixer a little and then send to a decent mastering chap to sort out any resulting nastiness.
Maybe.....
Maybe.....
Thank you for the laughs, debate, new music found, production tips etc etc over the years. I wish Subsekt and everyone all the best for the future. Wiu.
Re: 90's techno and house drum processing
Here's a few from the top of my head:Lost to the Void wrote:
It would be best to post up some examples because a lot of 90`s stuff sounds like utter gash.
This one is actually from 2005 (so could be even fully ITB), but it has that chunky sound to the drums. No drum machine I've tried sounds like that straight out of the outputs, so there's something funky in the processing. Doesn't sound like just mixer overdrive either, at least no mixer I ever tried sounds like that.
youtu.be/pw5j9VOqy9A
This, classic Dance Mania track. 909 action through some kind of distortion, but at least I have no idea how to make my former TR-8 sound like that.
youtu.be/RHaQ7jemFHs
And some Carl Craig. Again, the drums have the kind of presence drum machines don't produce in their raw state.
youtu.be/v8l7aRm7QEQ
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Re: 90's techno and house drum processing
There is no secret really. It's all pretty basic but takes time to master.
- It's all about first balancing all the sounds (not only the drums) together.
- Drive the drums, saturate them, distort them
/ Compress pre or post EQ or saturation, depending what flavor is needed /
- Gentle EQ and adjust balance accordingly
- Never listen in "solo" but always in full context
- It's all about first balancing all the sounds (not only the drums) together.
- Drive the drums, saturate them, distort them
/ Compress pre or post EQ or saturation, depending what flavor is needed /
- Gentle EQ and adjust balance accordingly
- Never listen in "solo" but always in full context
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Re: 90's techno and house drum processing
Mattias wrote:There is no secret really. It's all pretty basic but takes time to master.
- It's all about first balancing all the sounds (not only the drums) together.
- Drive the drums, saturate them, distort them
/ Compress pre or post EQ or saturation, depending what flavor is needed /
- Gentle EQ and adjust balance accordingly
- Never listen in "solo" but always in full context
that's too much work Mattias !
Sin cambios no hay mariposa
Re: 90's techno and house drum processing
i get some serious 90's drum vibe when writing a 909 pattern, EQ that shit an run everything through FX Pansions Strobe Amp. Easy but boring.
- Markus Wolf
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Re: 90's techno and house drum processing
Old Akai samplers. They all used them at some point in their productions. And they are cheaper than the sp 1200 way way cheaper. Seriously you want the vibe use the same equipment. Sample drums from records.
- Markus Wolf
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Re: 90's techno and house drum processing
Tobias and Shadow Dancer are two people that use samplers for their drum's.
Re: 90's techno and house drum processing
I actually used to own an Akai S950. Regret selling it a bit (as it does sound lovely), but they're quite expensive these days too. Last time I checked, someone asked 700 euros for one on ebay.
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- Markus Wolf
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Re: 90's techno and house drum processing
Yeah thats allot!! But keep youre eye's open maybe you will find one for a good price.