Tom tom help...

[Armistice]

So this is sort of where I'm heading for the backing for the "One take" thread guitar piece. I've left the guitar off the recording below so you can hear things more clearly, but I've tracked bass and left that in.... it's just a short section of basically all the drums as I think they'll be throughout the verse sections.

Toms are usually incidental in what I do so I've never given them much thought, but here they're going to feature, so thought I should check what I was doing before going too far.

They're from my "stock" Steven Slate 4 kit, which in itself has already had significant envelope changes to the toms so they don't ring out too much (in other tunes) but I haven't otherwise done a thing to them - ie. compression, EQ, reverb - and these are uncompressed samples (or so they tell me).

Any suggestions, including using a different tom sample set completely, taken on board. It's going to be a sparse arrangement - I'll probably add an accent guitar in in spots, but that'll be it.

Idea 5 - Toms.mp3

Cheers

[Greg_L]

They're a little boxy. They sound like raw unfucked-with toms. I'd start by looking to EQ out a little low mids....usually around 400-600hz. IMO that frequency range doesn't have much use in toms or kick drums. Scooping some of that out usually tightens and deepens the tom tone. It gets the boxy dirty shit out of it. Then compress as needed for further tightening or bringing out more body. Start with gentle compression across the whole drum buss and see how the toms react.

[CrowsofFritz]

There’s a great plugin by analog obsession (free) called SweetDrums that does wonders for toms. It’s a mixture of multiband compression and saturation.

[Armistice]

They're a little boxy. They sound like raw unfucked-with toms. I'd start by looking to EQ out a little low mids....usually around 400-600hz. IMO that frequency range doesn't have much use in toms or kick drums. Scooping some of that out usually tightens and deepens the tom tone. It gets the boxy dirty shit out of it. Then compress as needed for further tightening or bringing out more body. Start with gentle compression across the whole drum buss and see how the toms react.

Thanks... I normally just apply the stock ReaEQ setting for toms on them and I notice it's got a pretty big dip around there. I'll experiment.

[Armistice]

There’s a great plugin by analog obsession (free) called SweetDrums that does wonders for toms. It’s a mixture of multiband compression and saturation.

Aaaaaaaaghhhhh. More plugins...

Ta - I'll have a look for it.

[Farview]

If you want them more "wet" sounding, dip around 900hz and add a high shelf around 8k.

[JD01]

I've just tried this cut on my toms - made a fairly deep, relatively narrow cut centred on around 400hz. Immediate improvement.

[JD01]

I have a tom heavy track that I've not been able to get to sound right. For some reason I thought I had these weird boxy guitars and I was trying to mess with them for ages. I just applied a cut at 400hz on each of my toms and then another similar cut on my tom buss and the boxiness has gone from that section of the mix! Sorted.