"quiet drums"...sort of a dumb drum question

Don’t bust his bubble. Someone else’s financial success is his only ammo.

Cool, well we can agree on that at least.

I dont see how 1984 was any kind of sellout…more like a big musical peak. Album of the decade.

Van Hagar? yep, older dudes writing different kind of music. But geez, dont you think when you change LEAD SINGERS that you are going to get a different sound??

Metallica cold sold out without changing members lol. Bottom line for me, I cant listen to anything with zero singing talent shown.

Agree to disagree I guess. Not my favorite, but I think it’s a decent album. Had to grow on me.

good to lift weights to. I think it was song #6 I used to try to time my top set of squats to in the gym. of course I didnt bring the album in to the gym but I had to listen to it lol

It was pretty cool how Metallica was all “We don’t make videos”, and one album later they had like 19 videos in heavy rotation on MTV.

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Going back to the main topic, I think that if something needs to sound huge, something has to sound thin, to create the required contrast.
If everything sound huge, then nothing is bigger than anything else… :confused:
Don’t you think?

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IIRC that was the gist of the original question. I was thinking that if I always started my mix with really huge drums, that maybe I was losing out on other stuff being huge.

Hence I figured that maybe there was some logic to having “smaller” drums sometimes

I normally try to match the sample to the original kick and blend the 2. I try a lot of different samples and rarely end up with using the same in 2 consecutive mixes. A good trick when choosing samples (and mixing shells in general) is to crank them up a lot with a clipper. That way you can hear all the nasty and good qualities much better. After that you just reduce the clip amount. Plus, I always audition samples with their respective ambient samples. It can influence the direct mic sound a lot. Don’t hold yourself back by using the same stuff all the time. Experiment and if you feel one sample is not enough, layer more.

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Maybe you could begin with the part that would be bigger than everything, than add the second huge element and trying to use the remaining space and so on…
At the end, the last element would sound thin because there is very little room for that part :confused:

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I think there are albums where everything sounds big. Van Halen, Fair Warning is a good example.

It reminds me why Brandon banished the w*** word on RR :slight_smile:
I think “big” need to be defined to get a better understanding for that “effect”… don’t you think?

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Yeah, true. It’s a matter of individual perception.

I guess I consider something “big” when it sounds loud, apparent and somewhat in the listeners face (ears).

I think “loud” would be the same: something could be louder than another thing, like something will be bigger than another thing.
Loud or big without comparison is more on the feeling side than things that can be defined and objective.

Going back to the topic, if something sounds “big”, it’s because something sounds tiny or thin on its side. And the comparison leads us to think that the first thing is big…
At least, it’s how I feel this idea :confused: