Top tips for layering drums

PLAN OF ATTACK

Newbie producers aimlessly pile up sound after sound purely because they heard their favourite artist do it – hence why drum layering has a bit of a bad reputation. However, if you stack up a few complementary layers in a considered way, you’ll avoid phase issues and end up with a drum sound that’s infinitely more powerful than if you just ‘choose the right drum sample’.

CHERRY PICKED

If all your drum layers are sourced from, say, the same sample pack, they’ll probably all share common timbral characteristics. If that’s what you want, great. If not, try and gather together components from different places – for example, a punchy synthesised kick for solidity, an acoustic snare for ‘clang’, a recording of you clapping into a microphone, and a noisy piece of a field recording for natural ‘air’.

DRIVE TIME

Layered drums can sound a bit cold and disjointed as a whole, which is why saturation is a go-to treatment for beats. Use drive to add more grunt to individual components and mult your bussed layers together as one, or go to extremes and push layers through multiple saturation stages as you design.

TIME IT RIGHT

The temporal placement of drum layers has a huge influence over the resulting sound. If you’ve got one core drum sample falling exactly on the beat, try shifting other, subtler layers earlier or later on your timeline. This is great for splat-like clap effects, lazy ghost snares, reverse-bolstered ‘whip’ percussion and more.

THE WHITE STUFF

Synthesised noise – be it white, pink or brown – is an essential ingredient when designing and layering beats. Use noise to create metallic hi-hats, tight transient clicks, lengthy snare tails or reverb-like flavours.