?Livening up? a drum track from cheapie keyboard?

[bipedal]

Am currently mixing an indie-rock-ish tune with primary percussion sounds coming (intentionally!) from a cheapie casio keyboard, mono.

Looking for interesting ways to enlarge / broaden the sound of that track and fit it into a mix with two electric guitars, bass and vox. (For example, I really like the way the Broken Social Scene tune ?Swimmers? opens with that drum machine loop; that sound integrates well with rest of instruments as the song progresses.)

I?m thinking of doubling the perc track and panning a high-pass and low-pass channel, then adding a touch of reverb to hint at some space. EQ to bolster the bottom end. Brain-freeze on what else might work...

It'll be fun experimenting with this, but am curious if anyone has faced a similar situation and stumbled across useful tricks they're willing to share.

[mjau]

I like to take two drum machine parts that are complimentary and hard pan them. Also had some fun with a mono drum loop, the UA space echo plug, and then some heavy, fast UA 1176 compression. The echo tails kind of exploded after the initial snare and kick hits.

[SaneMan]

You could try soloing the percussion and throwing up some mics(either both speakers, or a mono room) to add some liveness/ambience to the existing persussion tracks. Just make sure you mute the track(s) you're recording on to avoid a wicked feedback loop.

Or maybe duplicate the track and try a bunch of crazy shit on one of them(flanger, phaser, sweeper, pitch shift, reverb, etc.), and tuck it underneath the original(compressed/eq'd to taste) track. Might be cool to try trippling the track, pitch shifting one up and one down a little bit and panning those out, leaving the orignal in the middle. Might not be cool too, but if you're looking to experiment...

Your idea sounds good too. If theres no drums in the song, I'd probably try and get some low end out of the percussion. I've never heard Broken Social Scene, so I really have no idea what you're looking for, just throwing out some ideas off the top of my head

[drumsound]

distortion, envelope follower, severe filter

[eeldip]

yea, distortion will help you out a bit. you might want to try a variety of tricks.

reamping is nice with those.

like you said above sometimes i'll put a HP filter on, then sample delay L+R like 300ms and 500ms, just to add some HF "interest" and "stereoness".

i've been using hipno plugins instead of delays/reverb on drum machines for a bit. adds a lot of weird stuff

[sparky]

reamp it through a guitar distortion pedal and a guitar amp, mic the cab (try something close and something far) bring those back in.

[inverseroom]

Or try an amp sim like Simanalog or FreeAmp. I love what they do to drums.

[syrupcore]

adding a single live drum track (like a snare) can do a ton.

[DinosaurSR]

Just squash it with a compressor. I've been runny the Casio SK-1 drums through a tube comp and squashing it with fast attack and it really hits.

[apropos of nothing]

All of the above on different tracks and then mute/chop between them.

[Gummy]

Sound replace all the parts with samples of dogs, cats. and chickens. Crickets make great high hats too.

[leigh]

Sound replace it with "Levee". There, much better.

[lancebug]

"I created Punk for this day and age. Do you see Britney walking around wearing ties and singing punk? Hell no. That's what I do. I'm like a Sid Vicious for a new generation."
Avril Lavigne: (Seventeen Magazine, 2002)

Wow! I don't even know what to say but wow. Wow!

*sound of mind popping, wisps of smoke, faint smell of burnt wiring*

[logancircle]

Try adding some rhythmic delay, like quarter or eighth-note. Stereo delay works as long as your feedback isn't cranked up, and try dotting some of those notes.

[wedge]

Like, that's what I was gunna say... Use the good 'ol standbys of delay and reverb...