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Tycho drums
I just found these tips from no other that Scott (Tycho) himself. It’s amazing all the work that goes into drums for these artists.
It's all about layers for me. It depends on the particular song you're referring to but most of my stuff is a few layers deep. Generally a drum synth to create a solid base, then vinyl breaks high passed, and finally some live drums distorted and smashed to add a human element that floats over the top frequencies. I'll also add a some delay feedback to the midrange stuff, but hpf the echo so things don't get too muddy. Pitch shift everything to taste, slower is usually better for me. I generally ReSample any breaks or drum synth stuff back out through Chameleons or the UA 6176 to get some warmth.
I think generally the key is carving out some specific spaces so your synthetic and acoustic material can coexist in the mix without fighting each other. In my opinion drum synths are suited to low-mid and acoustic to the high end sheen type stuff.
Two of my favorite VSTs for drum processing are the Softube CL 1B (has a really nice distortion when you push it) and D16's Devastor. For hardware, Distressors can add some nice tape sat or just smash things into oblivion. If you're wondering about a specific library, I've gotten significant mileage out of the original
"Classic Stylus" library by Spectrasonics. It fills that vinyl void in the mix nicely when aggressively EQ'ed and compressed.
Usually a couple EQs at different points in the chain, one with more color (like the Waves API 550a or PSP Console Q in SAT mode) for additive stuff and character, and then one towards the end for the surgical mixing stuff -- I use Equality and Waves Req for that.
I take the same approach to compression; something warm with nice distortion (like Softtube FET or CL 1b) that I'll drive pretty hard, open up the tails with fast attack/slow release, and run parallel to blend (which is stock in Reaper via the FX mix parameter). Then I'll do more transparent mix type compression later to wrap up the whole thing.
Here and there in the chain I'll have any combination of distortion, bit reduction, delay, reverb, etc. For drums 1 typically use D16 Devastor, SP Sonitex, Echoboy, and Lexicon Native Plate. I then bus a lot of it to a master drums bus and do a little more comp/eq to glue it up.
Really the big thing though is layering. 4 snares, 3 kicks, multiple shaker, high hat, breaks; all swirling around timing-wise with a lot of heavy EQ / HPF stuff going on to make it all mesh. Use complementary sounds in combination; if you have a nice airy acoustic kick, scoop a little out of the low end and slip a tape saturated 808 Kick in there pitched to taste.
I guess my overall goal with a mix is to saturate the spectrum so that all available frequency ranges are being maximized without stepping on each other's toes and percussion is so dynamic that it can fill in all those gaps your tonal content is leaving resulting in a more dense sound.
Of course you have to be careful as things can get