Add textural layers to your beats
Adding sustained textural sounds to beat loops – vinyl crackle, tape hiss or other non-pitched, sustained sounds – can work well. But if there’s no ‘interaction’ between the parts, the power of these can be diluted. It’s the percussive nature of drum sounds which will need to be mirrored in a textural layer for it to feel like it’s being added to the drums and not to the whole track. Try one of these two techniques. First, send all of your drum sounds to a group which can then act as a sidechain input layer to a compressor placed on the textural sound. Doing this will cause the volume of this new sound to rise and fall in time with the beats, gluing them better to the overall drum mix. Alternatively, render the texture as an audio file and chop it up, in time with the beats, leaving gaps where no beats play, or create a new, complementary rhythm from your edited region instead.